Small businesses turn to technology to automate tasks

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Small businesses support over $17.7 trillion in profits and more than 99 million jobs when they use technology, according to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s 2023 Empowering Small Business report. These numbers are powerful and underscore the importance of using technology in business regardless of size.

“As someone who has built and scaled businesses and now helps others do so, (I think) it’s incredibly important to leverage technology,” said Flossie Hall, chief executive officer of Stella, a 501(c)3 that connects female-identified founders and investors to the right resource at the right time. “When I work with any small business, the first thing I do is implement technology to help them.”

Hall explains that today’s technology tools for small businesses are more affordable and user-friendly than ever and can inordinately help business owners with project management, design, automation, communication, and many other areas.

“If there’s a task that you’re doing repetitively as a small business owner, you should try to figure out how to use technology — or automate it — because you should be baking the cakes or making the scarves, not manually typing in your accounting receipts,” Hall said.

She explains that many technology tools today automate tasks and are excellent sources to lean on, not only for organization and operations but scalability.

“I have worked on and run remote teams for about seven years, and I can only do so with technology,” said Hall, who is based in Rochester and oversees a team spread across several time zones and continents. Among the many technology tools the team uses are Slack for communication, Asana for project management, Canva for design services, Squarespace for websites, and Google Drive folders for organization and collaboration.

Hall recalls that when she started her first business, tools like these were not available and creating a website meant you had to know HTML code or hire someone who did. Technology barriers have since decreased and Hall wants to encourage those small business owners that may be afraid to dip their toes in the water to try.

“I think when you’re not used to using technology in your everyday work, it’s scary to use and learn something new,” said Hall, who notes small business owners are also often exhausted from their work to learn something new. “A lot of the work that I do is I take those barriers out and say, ‘Let me help you set it up, and let me show you why it’s important.’”

Hall also stresses that it’s OK to ask for help and that there are many excellent resources in the Rochester area to support small business owners, including the ROC Women’s Business Center via the Urban League of Rochester, Small Business Development Center at SUNY Brockport and resources at many of Rochester’s other colleges and universities.

Now is a great time for small businesses when it comes to access to technology, according to Nazareth University’s Mark Weber, who is a clinical associate professor of marketing and director of the Business Leadership and the Business, Artificial Intelligence and Innovation undergraduate programs.

“Up until November 2022, it was tough for small businesses to afford some of the latest technologies like artificial intelligence and the things that went along with them, like big data and the Internet of Things,” Weber said.

He points to generative AI platform ChatGPT’s public rollout by OpenAI in November 2022 as a watershed moment for small businesses.

“It revolutionized AI for the small user, small company, nonprofit and so forth because it made it easy for individuals and for companies to have some amazing tools that seem to get better every day and for minimal cost,” Weber said.

Among the many uses of generative AI for small businesses are messaging, data aggregation, image creation, content marketing, and more. Some of the tools helpful to small businesses, Weber says, are DALL-E  – an AI system that can generate images from text descriptions – and Zigzag – an AI-powered management system.

For small businesses interested in integrating technologies like generative AI, but don’t know how to start, Weber recommends reaching out to the internship offices at local colleges and universities.

“We have young data scientists who want to work in an internship environment,” Weber said. “You may be able to get a person for minimum wage to help you get started with it. And after a semester of an internship, you’ll probably have it figured out to the point where you can do it yourself.”

Jeff Valentine, president of Innovative Solutions, a Rochester-based Amazon Web Services (AWS) Premier Tier Services Partner, believes small businesses today have the choice to take two paths: adopt new technologies or not.

“Small businesses are at a risk of becoming irrelevant when they don’t continue to advance,” Valentine said. “And I don’t think that’s measured with financial numbers. I think it’s measured by innovation.”

Valentine notes that, in addition to generative AI tools, the cloud is another technology that can help small businesses prosper. Among the many uses of cloud technology are file storage, data analytics, communication, data backup, and scalability.

“There’s always an opportunity to create something innovative to help transform your business through the power of the cloud and with generative AI,” Valentine said. “Our customers are opening new locations in other areas and hiring people in a new way or new roles that didn’t exist before. There are all sorts of opportunities for smaller businesses to stay relevant.”

Last month Innovative Solutions announced it achieved AWS Generative AI (GenAI) Competency. This specialization recognizes the company as an AWS Partner that helps customers — many of whom are small businesses — and the AWS Partner Network propel the advancement of services, tools, and infrastructure pivotal for implementing generative AI technologies.

Caurie Putnam is a Rochester-area freelance writer.