Small business can be many things to many different people. Some people look at it as something of a gamble. They’re betting the initial investment of money and time in hopes of it growing into something amazing. To others it’s the culmination of a lifelong dream. The different views of a small business are almost as numerous as the amount of people who run them. But there’s one thing that almost everyone can agree on. Running a small business is an adventure.
People are faced with something right out of a survival story. They have limited resources, big goals and only their own ingenuity to get them to the destination. This often means leveraging disparate tools in unique ways. Someone lost in the wilderness might use a piece of glass to start a campfire with the sun’s power. And someone in the depths of small business might use a pre-built software solution in innovative ways to power his own success.
Obviously, there’s a bit of poetic license with that description. But there’s a lot of truth to the idea of a small business owner leveraging his resources in innovative ways. For example, consider a company’s need for reliable internal communication. There are several texting solutions for small business that one can choose from. But the larger question is how one will make use of those resources.
People often want to go with the flashiest programs. And there’s nothing inherently wrong with doing so. But small business owners need to remember that they’re in a unique position. A business owner doesn’t need to care about how things look from an outside perspective. It doesn’t need to wow people with some high-tech appearance or skin over basic functionality. The business owner has an option to focus on leveraging tools rather than relying on larger and glossier software suites.
For example, texting solutions can involve myriad different multimedia protocols. Or it can stay as simple as raw text wrapped in a few descriptor tags. It might even stick to the SMS protocol. And in fact, this or similar simple formats can offer several benefits. One of the most significant is that tidy protocols make system integration that much easier.
People often feel that they need to start out with a pre-built software suite. But this often means inheriting the needs and additions of other companies. Starting out with a small texting protocol provides a small business with a building block. That building block can then be combined with other internally developed packages. Or it can be meshed in with 3rd party technologies which provide a user facing API.
All of this comes down to one simple principle. A small company’s biggest asset is that it’s not weighed down by the past. It can plan and move in a more agile way than larger and older companies. And it’s aided in this by using equally flexible software solutions. There are cases where a full suite can prove useful. But a small business owner should always carefully leverage the solutions he chooses in order to build equally flexible integrated systems for his company.
