3 Trends Transforming the Modern Small Business Office

The way things are now, there has never been a more favorable climate for small businesses and startups. However, this doesn’t mean that everyone is destined for success. On the contrary, the more businesses there are the tougher the competition making, which makes it all even harder. Because of this, every business hoping to succeed must have one trait- willingness to adapt to new circumstances. Still, in order to do so efficiently, one must know how to adapt to latest trends. One of them is a proper management of your office. Even though there are many directions your business can take and many different possible courses of action, here are 3 transformation trends that are bound to take your small business office to a next level.

Digital office

First thing first, it is absolutely vital that the very notion of the word office is reconsidered. For instance, today there is a statistic claiming that one in five Americans is working from home, which is on its own something that just a decade ago no one could have imagined. Even though this research more or less restricts itself to American soil, you can see pretty much same thing in most if not all first world countries such as UK and Australia.

In fact, you can just walk right into a Starbucks or any other coffee shop with fast Wi-Fi and see it for yourself. There, you will encounter hordes of people with their laptop, working as if they were in their office cubicle. However, this doesn’t mean that the idea of office is something to be discarded (after all, no major company has left their office spaces yet) only that it has migrated a bit into the digital world. This migration was made possible due to the existence of modern mobile devices such as phones and tablets. Hyper-connectivity of the modern world allows us take our work with us when we go home, as well as to assist in group projects even if we are on the other side of the globe.

Internet of Things

However, the notion of Internet of Things (IoT) has allowed us to improve the quality of our actual office work as well. For example, modern printers are growing more and more independent and today the idea of mobile printing might seem quite mundane although not so long ago it would appear as something from a Sci-Fi. The very notion of IoT, although heavily relies on the idea of connection, depends on independent devices with the ability to act on their own when the need arises and the smarter they get, the easier your job becomes.

Because of this, the next logical step of improving your business would be to further explore this idea of intelligent printer. Seeing how there is a statistic of average office worker printing up to 10,000 pages a year, finding a way to make printing more efficient can be absolutely lifesaving. Another thing that could help here would be a smarter management of printer consumables, which means switching to recycled paper or even finding a more favorable deal for your Sharp toner cartridges. In other words, every page counts.

Acting globally

Last but perhaps the greatest accomplishment of the modern age is the ability of even the smallest businesses to outsource their work all over the globe. In the past, geographical proximity was one of the most important factors when hiring people while opening an international office was something only major conglomerates used to do. Luckily, these days are forever in the past and modern business owners can finally focus on the things that really matter such as quality and price of service. In other words, when hiring, you can now practically disregard where someone is from as long as they fulfill your other requirements.

Of course, there are some countries in the world that are simply more business friendly, and as true digital nomad you should always look for greener pastures. Freedom of communication and various group project tools (a thing we mentioned earlier) allow us to work in a completely digital environment with people thousands of miles away from us. A company made this way can easily operate even if the owner and most of the management are from a completely different region with inability to visit the premises in person.

Today small business’ have more options than they ever had before. Most of the drawbacks that prevented them from fully developing their competitiveness were quickly removed with the help of technology. Now, one thing should be set straight, even by embracing all these changes there is nothing that can guarantee you success 100%. Still, exploiting each of these trends in just the right way can significantly improve your chances which is on its own a great deal. Finally, new ideas emerge every day and the ability to adopt them and adjust to them quickly is usually what separates the best from the rest.

from http://monalisaofblogging.com/3-trends-transforming-the-modern-small-business-office