Where Digital Business Owners Can Save in 2021

Created December 21, 2020

Starting a business in 2020 may not seem like a wise idea with positive prospects, but you’d be surprised to find how many people are willing to start up their business and let it carry on to next year.

While the world might feel like it’s ending for a lot of people, technology is still there to help business owners and employees create successful business models, sustain a good virtual connection media, and deliver quality products for customers across the world. With technology, small business owners can save a good deal of money as they kick start their business. If you’re planning on doing so in 2021, here are some tools that will help you do so.

VoIP

Once you start your business, you’ll still be expected to take calls from clients either nationally or internationally. A landline can serve you well when taking and making calls, but you’ll soon find the costs that landlines entail will pile at the end of the year. To avoid these types of costs in the first place, you might want to switch to Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP), which has proven time and time again it’s superiority over landlines and regular cellular calls in terms of costs and effectiveness.

Since WhatsApp introduced VoIP, several apps and software programs began to adopt it, which prompted multiple business owners to establish them in their own business to facilitate communication. You can use a VoIP app to create a business account and attach a common business number to it. Skype and Voxox are two of the most common apps that business owners use.

WhatsApp can easily compete with apps like Skype and Voxox when using the GB WhatsApp modification, which allows you to use voice and video calls with the platform. 

Cloud Storage

One thing you’ll start suffering from soon after your business runs for a few months is data storage. Assuming you’re a digital business owner, you likely won’t have any data stored in paper form and will likely have it stored on your computer.

Unfortunately, computers run out of space, not to mention that data stored on computers can be easily compromised. In addition to that, getting extra storage like external HDD drives can be a bit costly in the long run. To avoid these complications, the folks at BackBlaze.com recommend that you store your data in a safe cloud space where you can store important customer and employee data without risking breaking the bank.

What’s great about cloud data storage is that it is secure and provides a high degree of control over who can access it. Cloud storage can also create a backup in case you lose data and help you manage your data with ease.

Mobile Payment Systems

Because you’re managing a digital-based business, people will expect you to provide a method with which they can make payments that don’t involve payment on delivery. Luckily, you can utilize mobile payment systems, which will be a more flexible method for customers and cost-incentive for you.

With tools like Intuit’s GoPayment, you’ll be able to accept any payments through your customer’s smartphones, which will ultimately help you make business transactions through different areas and receive payments for your services and products with more ease.

Document Collaboration Tools

The effort that goes into reducing the number of documents, emails and any other data that eats up storage is phenomenal. Unfortunately, solving this problem with traditional data storage spaces will be costly, as you’ll keep buying storage every time you run out of space, which will happen pretty often. To reduce the overflow of emails and wasted data, you can use a document collaboration tool, preferably one like Google docs. Moreover, one can easily import data from multiple sources on Google sheets. Luckily Google services like Google docs and Google sheets are completely free, which will help you save both money and space.

Collaborative documents will also help your client review your progress. For example, if you’re working on a marketing plan for your client, adding this plan in a Google document will help your client review it at any time they please and also add comments whenever they want you to make adjustments.

Automation

Human error is quite frequent in any business, irrespective of whether or not you have the best working team there is. Human error can lead to fatal, costly mistakes, which might irreparably damage your customer experience. Using automation tools with tasks like data entry and customer service is a great way to reduce the risk of entry error; therefore, saving money and time for your staff to focus on more pressing work-related tasks.

With these tools, you’ll be able to save money in the upcoming 2021. Since these steps can make foundational changes in your business, it’s important to notify your employees before applying them. Digital tools can be hard to get used to, but they can increase efficiency and cost savings in the future, so be sure that you utilize them to their fullest potential.