Small business owners want to be big business owners. Some fortunate few of them actually make the transition. As they all can tell you, it takes more than an exercise of will and an attitude full of positivity.
No one questions your fortitude as a small business owner. Everyone who has taken even a few steps down the entrepreneurial path knows how hard you work and how much you have sacrificed just to achieve even moderate success.
We also know what you have risked. Had things gone horribly wrong, it would not have been without consequences. Small business owners are heroes in a way.
That is why it is essential that you know it takes more than heroics to grow to medium, then to large. You are all heroes. What you need are some upgraded technologies and services.
If you are in the process of making that transition, here is a helpful look at what big businesses have that you need:
A reliable CMS
It doesn’t matter what type of business you have. As it happens, content is still king. Content is any messaging you have about or from your business intended for public consumption.
These days, public consumption is done on the web. The content you put out there is managed via a content management system (CMS).
You may not need an enterprise-class CMS provider like Zesty in the beginning. But as you expand your reach, you are going to need to take content management a lot more seriously.
Your CMS is going to need to handle the following just for starters:
- Blogging
- Product descriptions
- Newsletters
- FAQs
- Testimonials
- Advertising
There is a lot in this checklist that may not apply to small businesses. At a certain size, you don’t even need to know what a CMS is. But as a big business, you can’t live without one, and a good one at that.
Insight into future trends
Blackberry is a shadow of its former self when it was RIM. But it is still an enterprise-level company that can’t cede the competitive landscape to the bigger competitors. Blackberry still has to stay ahead of the latest technology trends and offer compelling products in a timely manner.
That is exactly what Blackberry is doing in the wearables space. No one has won this market just yet. And there is still time for an outsider to swoop in with a better idea and implementation.
This is not a big concern for smaller businesses. They don’t have the resources to commit to potential products that are years, if not decades into the future. They need to be more focused on the challenges directly in front of them.
But to solve the big problems, you have to know what they will be and start working on solutions well before people even realize the problem exists.
Every big business needs to be figuring out how to get one of their products or services into self-driving cars, even though there is no such thing at the moment. As you get bigger, you have to have a clearer view of the distant future.
Enterprise-class security
You will not be ready for enterprise status until you have a plan in place for enterprise-class security. If you do not know how to develop an enterprise security policy, you need to outsource it to someone who does.
One of the biggest mistakes new enterprises make is bringing with them the same security mentality they had when they were much smaller. They believe that since what they were doing seemed to work for them in the past, it is a good way to proceed. It most certainly is not.
At scale, everything changes. Your threat level is exponentially higher. People will assume you are more secure than a smaller company and trust you with more sensitive information. And as you get bigger, there will be more ways you can be targeted.
Congratulations on making the transition from a small business to a big one. To do it right, upgrade to a professional CMS. Develop insight into future trends. And harden your security so that it can handle enterprise-level threats.
Photo credit: The feature image “woman working on laptop” was done by Jan Vašek. The “business meeting” photo was done by 889520 and the “happy office worker” was done by Rawpixel.
Source: Chloe Spilotro (Zesty.io blog article) / Marko Maslakovic (Gadgets & Wearables) / Marc Gartenberg (Computerworld)
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