Posted on Tuesday, February 22, 2005 11:00 AM
Small businesses are always looking to improve the service they offer their customers while also improving the bottom line. For some small business owners the answer might be to drop the old ways and embrace new technologies.
Let’s take the first, and most interesting I think, example in the article is a small dry cleaner who has brought “Phil” on board. Phil is what they call the hand-held scanner that is part of a $40,000 investment in upgrading the operation to leave pins and slips of paper behind for barcodes and scanners.
Although employees had some trepidations at first, they now find it faster and easier to get the right clothes to the right customer faster.
Related to this is a car-wash owner who implemented a speedpass system that reduced staff stress and has virtually elminated the lines and honking that plagued them before.
IT analysts feel that small businesses are in the best position to implement new technologies both in operations and marketing because there are fewer staff to train and generally less infrastructure to update and replace.
Sources: Small businesses go high-tech — Small Business Trends