Technology Reshaping What It Means to Be a Startup

Are new startups claiming market share? Here’s what established businesses should know about startup technology. It’s propelling startups in your industry    

Each year, thousands of ambitious, hard-working people decide to kick life in a cubicle working for someone else and venture out to pave their way. Approximately 63% of these ventures start at home. And while it’s widely quoted that 50% of businesses fail in four years, most entrepreneurs take the “glass is half full” approach. That’s 50% who make it past that mark and start to grow.

And something is changing among startups. Business Technology is making even solo operations more productive and competitive. Guerilla Marketing and shoe-string budget strategies are being replaced with advanced analytics, automation and productivity tools once reserved for large corporations.

How Business Technology Is Transforming the Startup Phase

It’s happening in retail, transportation, hospitality, service sector and more. Startups are building themselves from the ground up as fully technologically-integrated entities.

They have the advantage of working from scratch rather than having to retrofit existing operations. And that’s disrupting many established, profitable, and even customer-loved businesses. These up-and-coming brands siphon off long-time customers with fresher and often more seamless customer experience.

This leaves many businesses that felt themselves very ideally-positioned in the market, wondering about their futures. But a surprising number continues to delay bringing new innovations into their organization, seeing their business as a rock, able to withstand changing winds, which they believe will quickly die down.

But the truth is these aren’t fads. These technologies may get better. But they aren’t going away.

Startup Technology: It’s Getting Faster, Cheaper, Better

What kinds of technologies are startups investing in? They’re integrating technologies in these areas:

• Advanced analytics – They can better understand their customer journeys and the competition
• Automation – This has many uses from delivering the right message at the right time online to make the sale to streamlining operations by automating tedious, repetitive tasks.
• Machine Learning & Artificial Intelligence – Deploying tools that can apply advanced algorithms to teach themselves over time to optimize operations and customer experience. Many of these tools are still out-of-reach for startups, but they’re using what they can access.
• Productivity tools – From the latest Windows tools to third-party tools, these businesses are taking advantage of the collaboration, communication, and productivity tools available to them.
• Cloud servers – Instead of paying millions to build and house servers, they’re leasing server space through cloud solutions
• Cloud computing & Software as a Service (SaaS) – Instead of investing in the purchase of advanced technologies like those listed above, they can instantly access advanced tools for a monthly fee. Eliminating the need to build the massive business technology infrastructure it once took years to create. And since they’re leasing rather than buying, if they do go under, there’s less at stake. That makes these businesses very agile.

These kinds of tools are delivering tangible business results. They’re proving to the business that they’re worth the investment. These kinds of tools pay for themselves very quickly to deliver ROI.

If they didn’t, startups who often struggle with long-term investments, wouldn’t be able to afford them.

These tools are helping startups do things like:

• Deliver more personalized customer experiences without having to dedicate a single account manager
• Scale quickly – These tools scale with them as they grow, the need to build out infrastructure never stunts growth.
• Introduce more niche offerings – At one time, we had to focus on delivering what the masses wanted. It would have cost too much to try to please everyone. But more advanced business technology is helping startups do that.

And customers love it.

What Established Businesses Need to Know

Startups are using the technology available to disrupt business across industries. Those who have established companies need to understand how accessible and cost-effective many of these technologies are becoming.

As an established business, you can benefit from these technologies, often even more so than startups. You have more capital to make smart technology decisions.

You must bring your organization up with 2020 business technology standards because the only constant in business is changing. To stay up-to-date on changing business technology trends, follow our blog.