Saturday, January 4, 2020

The Year Ahead for Small Business: Experts Weigh In on What Small Biz Owners Should Expect

What lies ahead for small business owners and entrepreneurs? Many people I’ve talked to feel like they are living in a Dickens novel.

It’s the best of times: “The economy is going strong, driven by consumer spending,” says Sharon Miller, managing director, head of small business for Bank of America. She says according to bank data, “consumer spending is up 5.5% on $3 trillion worth of transactions, which will help drive momentum into 2020.”

It’s also the worst of times: Many small businesses are struggling to find qualified employees to fill jobs, are baffled by the rapidly changing world of digital marketing, and are facing numerous other challenges.

To get some answers I turned to business leaders, entrepreneurs, and thought leaders to get their insights and perspectives on what 2020 (and the new decade) has in store for small businesses. Of course, there are no guarantees. But hopefully, as my friends at Fundbox say, these “trends bear a history and trajectory that demonstrate their value in guiding your company’s efforts—and ones you can “depend on to help gain a competitive advantage in 2020.”

SMB general outlook for 2020

Jon Fasoli, Vice President & Small Business Segment Leader, Intuit

Worldwide there are 800 million self-employed professionals and small businesses, which make up 98% of all businesses and employ 60% of the global workforce. Yet the odds of succeeding are stacked against them. Half of these self-starters and small businesses fail in the first five years, two out of three in the first ten years. Additionally, 59% of private sector economists expect a recession by 2020 and 71% of small businesses feel there will be an economic recession in the next two years.

In spite of this, small businesses around the world are maintaining a positive outlook. According to a recent study by Intuit QuickBooks and Wakefield Research, although SMBs are concerned about the economy, they feel confident in their businesses: 48% of small businesses think their revenues will increase in the next 12 months, anticipating an opportunity for more hiring and more work.

Meredith Schmidt, EVP & GM, Salesforce Essentials

Small business owners and leaders are feeling positive about the future as we head into 2020. Confidence is up, and they expect revenues to rise too (according to a WSJ/Vistage survey of small business CEOs). That sense of optimism and certainty is going to propel small businesses to new heights because they are comfortable taking risks, hiring more, and expanding their goals.

Impeachment

Charley Moore, CEO, Rocket Lawyer

Your business should be able to flourish no matter who the president is. And I think that’s especially true for small businesses. On the other hand, who’s in charge does matter, so you should really understand in your business what policies are opportunities and threats for your business.

If you’re a business that relies on immigration, like much of the tech sector, the tightening of H-1B work visas for skilled tech workers has been a real challenge for Silicon Valley companies. With all of these various policies, it’s important for small businesses to understand what policies are opportunities and what are threats to their businesses. From a business standpoint, owners should plan and participate accordingly.

The economy

Sharon Miller, Managing Director, Head of Small Business, Bank of America

On tariffs: Miller notes the Fall 2019 Small Business Owner Snapshot from Bank of America showed many small business owners were affected about tariffs. Going into 2020, the tariff situation is “uncertain” and that is concerning to small business owners. She says, “The concern about tariffs is up three points from the Spring 2019 Snapshot and nine points from Fall 2018.” The increased tariffs have led to a rise in the cost of goods, which “55% of the business owners are passing along to their customers.”

Charley Moore, Rocket Lawyer

On a potential recession: No one knows when a recession will happen, everyone knows that it will. You should always be ready for a recession, especially now that we’re in the late stages of an economic expansion. I think a business should aspire to have durability and manage prudently. There’s no better time to be in business than a time when all of your competitors are struggling and you’ve got resources.

Business owners should want to be the one hiring when everyone else is firing, and a great way to do that is to be aggressive and prudent at the same time. This can be done by planning, doing your work now by taking advantage of this great economy, and ultimately being ready for when the weather changes.”

Artificial intelligence

Kushagra Shrivastava, Managing Director, Yahoo Small Business 

AI coming of age will revolutionize small businesses: Everywhere we look, the buzz around artificial intelligence and machine learning is growing. While AI already provides opportunities for “smart” marketing and business practice recommendations, AI in 2020 will take a step forward and be able to recommend tactics, while also predicting the result and benefits of those recommendations. AI tools that SMBs adopt next year should not only give a recommendation, but should also be able to explain why a recommendation is being made.

This will help transform decision-making for small business owners and provide them with tools that go beyond experimenting with growth and instead focus on changes that are most likely to help a business succeed. Here are some specific use-cases that AI will impact in 2020:

  • Generating micro-cohort of existing or new potential customers—Leveraging predictive algorithms and using AI to build micro-cohorts will make media buying more efficient, effective, and successful in engaging small businesses’ specific target audiences. With deeper AI integration, emerging technology and marketing automation will go beyond advising businesses on “what” they should do and will recommend both the “what” and the “why.”

An example of this would be where currently a small business owner might get a recommendation they should start advertising online to find new customers, and very soon that recommendation will include details on where, when and how they should advertise, as well as predicting how many new customers they should expect to earn and how much revenue those customers are likely to bring.

By recommending channels to most effectively reach audiences, engage new customers, and drive purchasing decisions, AI will enable small business owners and decision-makers to make smarter decisions. These decisions will span demographics, shopping habits, and all the factors that go into driving sales and increasing a customer base.

  • Smarter mobile interfaces and user experiences—This strategic shift will also drive new advertising tactics, specifically focused on the power of mobile. Mobile AI interfaces will evolve and reach the always-on consumer wherever they are and whenever they’re online. Virtual assistants and bots will become increasingly important, engaging many audiences the way they want to engage with businesses.
  • Robotics process optimizations (RPO) tools will come alive complemented by simple, unified dashboards—In addition, in 2020 we’ll see AI increasingly help small business owners with management of their key processes. The emergence of ecosystems such as single sign-on, single invoice, unified dashboards, and mobile-first solutions will interface with the tools and services small businesses need to run operations from a single platform.

By consolidating the selection, activation and use of essential services—such as development and maintenance of an online presence, point of sale system, set up of legal packages, and marketing—will simplify the development and running of a business. AI-based operations and increased automation of key business processes also will increase operational efficiencies and create time to prioritize business growth.

  • AI will help navigate macro-economic climate including trade wars—AI integration will give entrepreneurs the edge they need to become competitive. Managing and growing a small business can be difficult with the constantly shifting business climate, including selling against the trade war and the new tariff backdrop. However, with deeper AI integration in business development, management, and sales strategies, small business owners can take their businesses to the next level—transcending issues that threaten to hold them back and overcoming difficulties in today’s complex business landscape.

Raju Vegesna, Chief Evangelist, Zoho

In AI, data cleansing and auto-tagging will become widely implemented. Smaller organizations will begin to expect AI functionality in things like spreadsheets, where they’ll be able to parse information out of addresses or clean up inconsistencies. With auto-tagging today, your smart phone can recognize and tag objects in your photos, making your personal photo library much more searchable, but in the future, we will start to see business applications auto-tag information to make it much more accessible.

Today you can find your top customers in a CRM by running a report and sorting by revenue. In the next five years, you’ll be able to search “top customers” and your CRM will know what you’re looking for.

Phil Grier, Commerce Engineer, Yahoo Small Business 

Small businesses will integrate AI into their overall business strategy, transforming business practices and modernizing marketing tactics: In 2020, artificial intelligence will help to close gaps in merchant capabilities that many small businesses with limited resources face. With AI, small businesses can manage their stores seamlessly and efficiently, both by automating work processes (such as employee management, IT service administration, or compliance regulation management) and enabling better inventory and delivery management. AI-based chatbots and virtual assistants further streamline business transactions and increase operational efficiencies, while also providing an optimal customer experience.

We also expect 2020 to bring an uptick in new services that make AI app development more accessible and affordable for small businesses. These services will be similar to those offered by large public cloud providers, but easier to implement and manage, more affordable, and scaled to meet a small business’s needs. Due to their smaller and often nimbler nature, small businesses are poised to more easily and quickly adopt and implement corresponding emerging technologies. While AI efforts in larger enterprises sometimes become isolated and neglected by the overall executive team, in small businesses we expect to see a significant return on investment for AI initiatives as they focus on business-wide alignment, investment, and integration.

In addition to transforming business practices, AI will also transform marketing strategies and tactics. For small businesses that may not have a specialized department or resources available to dedicate solely to marketing, the use of AI assistants can help track metrics, detect anomalies, analyze ads, create and publish content, optimize campaigns, generate reports, and more. Implementation of AI assistants will also be used as a marketing tactic, streamlining the customer experience and improving transactions. Video, images, and AI assistants also will become increasingly important and relevant to SEO. With this, solutions to help SMBs in these areas will grow in popularity.

Srivatsan Laxman, CEO, True Lark 

The days of chatbots killing customer love are numbered: The rise of conversational AI assistants will make chatbots irrelevant in many customer-facing use cases. While the big global technology companies will continue to invest in cracking the code of bringing AI assistants to the mass consumer market, companies (like us) that are laser-focused on solving the specific business problem of front desk customer engagement, efficiency, and productivity will win big. Conversational AI assistants that understand context, learn as they go, and are easily customizable will rapidly replace the limited linear chatbots that have failed to live up to their promise of improved customer engagement.

$75 billion business dilemma will find a friend in conversational AI assistants: Franchises and location-based businesses will increase investments in front desk optimization and automation. These organizations will increasingly invest in conversational AI assistants for their front desk operations in order to help counter the estimated $75 billion in lost revenue caused by poor customer services such as missed calls, slow response to leads, and front desk attrition.

AI assistants will help businesses manage the shift to a deskless workforce and gig economy: Some 80% of the global workforce (3 billion people) work in a deskless environment, while ~1% of the world’s software is designed with this workforce in mind. Technology tools such as conversational AI assistants that create consistency, connect the dots, and help provide centralized intelligence and analysis will be key. Similarly, as more employees work on a contract or project basis, the knowledge they gain around an organization’s process and customer engagement simply dissipates when they move to their next gig. In the case of front desk teams, conversational AI assistants will play a critical role in capturing the intelligence of customer engagement patterns and maintaining consistency—thus operational efficiency—in front desk processes.

Jon Stross, President & Co-founder, Greenhouse 

AI will play a larger role for HR teams: Machine learning is helping to make HR tools smarter. Next year, we’ll see the technology become more useful in previously unexpected ways, such as customizing job board options for candidates and streamlining the scheduling of interviews. We’ll also see AI/machine learning integrated into other aspects of the hiring process.

AI can help with mitigation of unconscious bias among hiring managers to increase qualified diversity hires. Also important is the candidate experience. AI and machine learning can support HR teams in offering applicants a more informed and personal candidate experience from start to finish.

Cybersecurity

Sydney Ivey, General Manager of Small Business, Bank of America Merchant Services

What scams should small businesses look out for in 2020? Our data security and cybersecurity experts recommend that merchants be more vigilant against phishing attempts and ransomware attacks in the coming year. According to our research, data compromises can be traced back to a credential compromise where the client was phished. It also has been found that most small business owners and operators do not deploy multifactor authentication.

One of the most important things small business owners and operators can do is to ensure they—and their employees—are aware of the ways to protect against phishing attempts. Some important tips to remember are never sharing personal information for any unsolicited email or text, or clicking on any links provided in emails if the sender cannot be authenticated.

Do you expect more cybercrime vs small businesses in 2020? Our data security and cybersecurity experts expect to see more attacks on small businesses—especially those that have not deployed any secure technology such as EMV capable terminals, point-to-point encryption (P2PE) along with tokenization. But it’s not just small businesses with brick-and-mortar locations that need to take precautions—small businesses that have an e-commerce site will continue to be targeted as well.

To keep their own and their customers’ data secure both online and in-store, small business owners and operators must ensure they are deploying multilayer security protections such as CAPTCHA, fraud detection software, and enhanced ASV (approved scanning vendor). While keeping data secure is important, it’s also about keeping customers coming back. Based on our 2019 Small Business Payments Spotlight, the number of consumers who will never return to a small business that has had a data breach reached close to 30% in 2019—that’s up from almost 20% in 2017. Small business owners can work with their merchant services provider to help guarantee their payment systems are secure.

Growth

Dan Biewener, Senior Content Strategist, Fundbox

Going fast is better and inevitable: Speed has always been important for business, but 2020 will make it imperative. Digital transformation has already swept through large enterprises. Slow movers in adopting such technologies as AI, cloud computing, and digital marketing have failed to remain competitive—or even failed completely.

Although small businesses can’t be expected to match the pace of large organizations in making a digital shift, they can still take immediate advantage of such capabilities through third-party applications and service providers. For example:

  • Real-time social media monitoring enables continuous tracking of multiple streams of social media data. A Sprout Social survey said that 41% of people would use their social networks to share a bad customer service experience, and about half of consumers would boycott a brand if they received a slow or poor response to a complaint on social.
  • Credit at the moment of need is another valuable service now available to small businesses.
  • Banks and other traditional lenders can take more than a month to approve a small business for a loan, plus another three months on average to actually get funding. Online lenders can use AI-enabled underwriting technology provide approvals for small business lines of credit up to $100,000 in just hours, not weeks, with funds available in days, not months.
  • Immediate payment of receipts and the ability to offer longer net terms (up to 180 days) for your B2B customers will also become more popular in 2020. By eliminating the delays caused by paper checks and extended terms, fintech companies can reduce the cash flow disruptions and foster your business’s growth.

Robotic process automation: Robotic process automation (RPA) applications or services also promise to become more prevalent in 2020, even for small businesses. By automating many repetitive, routine, back-office tasks, RPA can help free up employees time and enable small businesses to focus on more strategic functions or valuable support for thei

from neb biz feed 1 https://ift.tt/2QmtLwq
via Nebula Biz Local Loans

No comments:

Post a Comment