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The current period, accompanied by rising interest rates and inflation, makes it difficult for small businesses that face many challenges in the management of payments, marketing, accounts and what not.
According to a report by the Small Business Agency, in 2020 the business sector in Israel numbered approximately 625,000 businesses, the overwhelming majority of which (99.6%) are defined as small and medium-sized businesses.
Unfortunately, 50% of these businesses close within 5 years of their establishment, and only 28% manage to survive 15 years until the time of their closure.
Fortunately, many technology companies in Israel and around the world provide solutions to exactly these challenges, to make it easier to deal with a market that has become more competitive than ever through advanced technology, save costs, and spend less time on routine tasks that can be done automatically.
As an added value, the use of advanced technologies helps to attract an audience that is looking for the same innovation, and especially the Z generation, which grew up with a smartphone in hand, is used to dealing with digital interfaces, and above all, constitutes a growing share of the employee and customer market.
Artificial intelligence as a marketing springboard for business
"The marketing challenge is one of the most significant challenges faced by small businesses," explains Mati Ram, CEO and founder of AdScale, which specializes in advertising for e-commerce sites. "Most businesses cannot afford the high costs of advertising agencies, and they have no knowledge and experience in digital marketing.
In the absence of professional marketing, small businesses find it difficult to compete with the campaigns of the giant companies."
"For that," Mati continues, "artificial intelligence systems allow small and medium-sized trade websites to advertise themselves like the big competitors, save costs and deal with common problems quickly.
Such systems connect in one place the site's data with all its advertising channels, including search engines, social networks, email and SMS mailing systems and more.
Such a system will know how to automatically build personalized campaigns in all channels based on the insights it derives from the information.
Some of these systems are even capable of producing videos,
Managing financial processes - not just for economists
"A small business is a washed-up definition for one person who has to do everything - work in his profession, that is, provide the service he provides, manage funds, market and deal with administration," says Adam Kima, CEO of PayMe, a fintech company that provides and develops financial solutions for small businesses
. "One of the big problems is that most businesses fail to manage their accounts and payments well under the load and get into financial pits that are very difficult to get out of.
One of the significant factors in the closure of thousands of small businesses every year is the difficulty in getting credit and financing from the banks, especially today, when interest rates are rising."
In addition, Kima says that "in opening the business and in the day-to-day management, a lot of services are needed that involve significant expenses and bureaucratic involvement that makes it difficult for the business owner.
This is precisely why today there are advanced technologies available to business owners that help them carry out tedious bureaucratic processes with a few clicks and save a lot of money in the long run."
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Management and operation of employees in a technological age
"The increase in operating expenses is causing the belt to be tightened. Businesses that survived the corona are currently facing inflation, and in order to survive, many have to cut expenses," says Amri Aral, VP of Marketing at Connecteam, which developed an application for managing employees in a non-computerized environment. "These new concerns are added For all the usual headaches: recruiting and training employees, staffing shifts, calculating salaries, and more."
According to Aral, "in order to reduce the burden, it is possible to harness technologies that will ease the complexity of managing employees and operating the company's logistics, so that the business owners can focus on what is important - stability and growth of the business.
In times of recession, many companies also try to save money by switching to 'all-in-one' style technological solutions, which include many operational capabilities such as location-based attendance clock, shift management, tasks and forms, communication, surveys, updates and notifications, human resources, trainings, Bonuses and gifts for the holiday.
According to him, "the new generation of employees is used to applications in all areas of life, and has an expectation that the workplace will also advance to modern digital interfaces."
Another company that helps small businesses is the digital recruitment company mynextworker which replaces an entire recruitment department and is just right for companies that don't want to spend tens of thousands of shekels a month on hiring employees.
The system makes it possible to advertise the offered position on dozens of recruitment platforms that are suitable for the nature of the position, and even manage the screening tests and the initial interview with the candidate using WhatsApp.
At the end of the process, the system allows the recruiter to give the candidate a suitability score according to the defined criteria.
In conclusion
If until recently advanced technologies were reserved only for large companies and businesses, today it is actually small and medium-sized businesses that may benefit more from implementing innovation in the business.
While the implementation of technology in large organizations is a long and slow process, the same technologies, which are now also available to small businesses, help them adapt their business activities to the technological age and gain significant and rapid growth right from the start.
Small businesses that stay technologically up-to-date will manage to maintain the element of competitiveness, while those that avoid this will find themselves out of the game.
Marketing and digital
MarTech
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small businesses
technology
artificial intelligence
Marketing
Personnel
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