How Well Can SMBs Adapt to New Trends?

SMBs are projected to become more mobile, smarter and agile in 2013, and need to be in a state of readiness to adapt themselves to new trends if they want to become more efficient and productive.

According to j2 Global Inc. – the cloud services provider for small business – mobility, expansion of the cloud, and integration of business services are the three key trends that SMBs must be prepared for in the coming year.

Smartphones have invaded this planet and will continue to deepen their inroads into markets. Figures for 2011 indicated that these devices outnumbered the number of PCs sold during the same period.

This trend suggests mass mobilization of the global workforce will only continue to rise, and if that happens, smartphones will graduate from being merely a mode of communication to some dizzying heights, by calling the shots with collaboration tools, business systems and a wider range of apps that can be used anytime, anywhere by a liberated work force.

This may eventually allow them to be more connected, more available and more productive than before.

Speaking of dizzy heights SMBs are likely to attain, there soon could be more heads in the cloud, as cost, competition and quicker deployment become factors they have to contend with. Lower barrier to entry, flexibility and virtual/remote capabilities of cloud options are likely to set the pace of demand for business service models, as cloud computing and “Anything-as-a-Service” (XaaS) become the default choice for how SMBs leverage technology.

With the advent of social tools, new business and collaborative systems, SMBs will begin to work toward a tighter integration of social tools into business platforms and processes to drive results.

This will yield bridging marketing and sales technologies, which in turn is expected to boost revenue.

If all this happens as projected, SMBs could well be on cloud nine, but are they prepared for this momentous change? 

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