Business Funding Blog

In the contemporary world dominated by the Internet technology and management information systems like software, computer, and phones, the dependence of small businesses on information technology is more than ever, to gain benefits, such as –

• Scale up your commercial undertakings.
• Improve your business growth.
• Boost employee productivity.
• Make business seamless and satisfactory for evolving customer’s expectations in today’s time.

Quite understandably, the advancement in information technology has helped businesses with transformative results, such as the transition from mainstream physical shops to global household names.

The adoption of information technology due to the rise of e-commercialization is a trend gaining traction among small, medium, and big business companies, to gain a long-term advantage of streamlining business services and boosting their performance.

Therefore, the role of IT in small business landscape is substantial, based on simplifying business operations through the use of basic computer terminals to IP-hosted telephony systems of information technology.

Regardless of the size of your business, technology helps it grow with enhanced productivity and profits. By leveraging the latent power of IT, various areas, such as accounting, financial management, project management, and networking, along with other departmental areas gain visible productivity boost - a strong factor causing an enhanced growth of your business.

In a nutshell, IT helps your small business reduce expenses, boost communication, improve brand recognition, and helps develop innovative products.

The Role and Benefits Of Information Technology In Businesses

1. Streamlining an effective communication

The success of your business company depends on the effective communication you maintain within an in-house ecosystem. No doubt, the contemporary business landscape is diversely connected and dispersed.

Under such circumstances, effective communication and collaboration with employees and clients, along with leveraging the talent pool, is vital for companies to maintain.

And information technology helps you boundlessly in the context of streamlining effective communication both internally and externally for your business.

Take the example of Skype, Zoom, and GoToMeeting. These online meeting and video conferencing platforms enhance the productivity of collaboration virtually in real-time with your business prospects, clients, and employees.

As a result, it mitigates the enormous costs you would have incurred in bringing them on-site. Therefore, the role of IT for a business is to actualize seamless and effortless connectivity with global consumers and suppliers.

2. Ensuring strategic thinking and knowledge transfer

Strategic thinking and knowledge transfer are the factors with which a company can bring forth a notable competitive advantage in the marketplace. IT helps companies attain such benefits. With the help of IT, you can capacitate your business to assemble, interpret and transfer information by utilizing vast social networks and subscription databases.

Consequently, IT has helped businesses to get a deeper understanding of their customers and consumers, thereby helping them provide a better customer service experience through innovative products. With the tools provided by IT, you can help your business evaluate the market landscape and use the strategies to ensure its competitive advantages.

3. Making the workplace more efficient

When you leverage the power of IT to your business, advantages such as better workflow systems, and collaborative workspaces start to happen gradually, thereby helping your business become efficient and boosting employee productivity.

Information technology enables your company to automate routine tasks, reduce work pressure on employees, and make data analysis simplified in a way that it can be retrieved for future use.

In addition, you can use the technology to answer customer’s queries via emails, engage in a real-time chat session or help your customer get connected to an available customer service agent, through a telephone routing system.

4. Outshines your business over competitors

The apt use of IT resources can help your business gain a competitive advantage over its rivals. Take an example of business companies using a first-mover’s strategy. They can leverage IT resource in creating new products and make them stand out from their rivals.

IT also comes useful for the business companies that have implemented a reduced cost product strategy to make sure that their products cut short on employee overhead and enhance productivity.

With the right use of IT resources, a business company can outdistance its rivals and gain a profitable edge.

5. Helps businesses secure confidential data

One of the best virtues of information technology is information management that consists of storage, preservation, and maintenance of sensitive data essential for businesses.

As a business owner, you can store, share and create a backup of your sensitive data for future use. The apt use of IT resources in your business can also benefit it safeguard precious data from unwanted access.

6. Saves business from undue costs and waste

When you implement IT in your business, it may appear as an expensive investment on your company’s budget. However, this is just a blessing in disguise. The long-term benefits IT implementation affords to your business are notable, such as helping you streamline business operation and managerial processes, reduce costs and boost employee productivity.

Conclusion

In today’s business era dominated by Internet technology and management information systems like software, computer, and phones, the role of IT for businesses is crucial. It provides business-transformative solutions, in terms of helping business companies improve their workforce ecosystem, boost employee productivity, enhance business operations, and managerial procedures, cut costs, and avoid waste, etc. This explains why the role of IT in today’s competitively-charged business landscape is significant.

Firms, such as banks, insurers, and other lending institutions leverage new technologies to ensure that their business operations do better in terms of figuring out different ways to serve their clients. The financial services industry has witnessed unmistakable transformation after using innovative products, over the recent decades.

Changes they witnessed in their business operations were –

• Payment types, including credit and debit cards.
• Simplified transaction processing through telephone and online banking.
• Saving alternatives, including structured products, investment funds.

From transforming e-commerce for financial assets to risk management, technologies have done tremendous contributions in helping the financial services industry. No doubt, the financial services firms must consciously discern changes introduced by new technologies and embrace them to enhance customer experience and their business profits.

Disruptive technologies, such as artificial intelligence (AI), advanced analytics, robotics, the cloud, and blockchain are growth catalysts for the financial services industry.

The evolving customers’ expectations

Customers are undoubtedly important factors for banking and financial services firms. However, what main thing to understand here is understanding the evolving nature of customer’s expectations and preferences. Experts believe that most of the customers in today’s times love to do banking with the lending institutions through their apps rather than making an in-person visit at their branch offices. And most of these customers say that the importance of their smartphone is more than the wallet when it comes to powering financial transactions.

Customers appreciate seamless experience of doing financial transactions with their banks, and mobile applications have done a tremendous job in improving their online experiences. The increasing importance of mobile apps in augmenting customer’s user experience lays the foreground for an idea that why financial services firms are on cloud nine. It is so because of extending seamless customer experiences through management of their accounts via mobile and connected devices.

That said, if a bank doesn’t provide an engaging customers-experience with its services, the customers intend to switch over to its competitor or someone offering an innovative digital experience resonating with their expectations and preferences. So, forget that the customer’s loyalty would remain attached to your banking system forever. In today’s era of rapid change in technological innovations, any firm providing a better and more seamless banking experience to their customers is bound to stay in the market.

Robotic Process Automation (RPA)

Robotic process automation is one of the creative technologies that help financial services firms to become more efficient and effective in serving their customers. You see, conversational AI is an instance of technological innovation that allows financial firms to extend improved digital experiences to customers at scale. Besides, the technology makes it easy for customers to be autonomous in controlling their finance-related activities without relying on human support.

For instance, Chatbots are emerging as one of the finest technological innovations in robotic process automation that ensures complaints of customers are instantly replied to, together with assuring quick resolution of the same, thereby boosting the individual banking experience of customers. The result of conversational interfaces for financial services firms is that they get customer feedback, thus helping them tweak or modify anything in their business operations that is worth improving or removing to make banking more customer-centric.

RPA can facilitate various key banking functions, such as –

• Customer onboarding.
• Verification.
• Risk assessment.
• Security checks.
• Data analysis.
• Data reporting.
• Compliance process.

Handling different administrative activities.

When these processes are automated, the banking functions of financial institutions become more efficient and customer-oriented. Moreover, the result of unburdening work pressures of employees is also a benefit given by automation that a banking firm can use to perform more complex and value-adding activities.

Going contactless payments

The widespread panic created by the Covid-19 pandemic among people and banking institutions has foregrounded a contactless payment system to ensure the distancing of people from one another without depriving their financial needs of fulfillment.

Though the idea of having a cashless society was evident before the pandemic, the advent of contactless payment technology and its hygiene benefits has materialized the idea, which has now grown exponentially. For example, mobile wallets have facilitated quick financial transactions, thereby giving users a fantastic experience of saving their time and enjoying digital banking experience right from the comfort of their home or anywhere.

The FinTech factor

The financial services industry has gone through a big push for innovation because of the advent of FinTech companies. Their use of cutting-edge technology to outdistance competitors in the game, including financial services firms, has dramatically influenced the customer battleground. These companies carry an approach of digital-first and customer-centric, which has given them an edge over competitors in the market. Reportedly, FinTech services enjoy improved growth of 64% while their investment apps rose by 88% in 2020, and payment apps grew by 49% globally.

Winding-up

Innovative technologies like artificial intelligence, data analytics, robotics, blockchain, etc. have perfected the banking system of financial services firms. They are being maximized by alternative lending institutions to streamline loan sanctioning processes and make loan approval faster and seamless for the qualifying businesses. The trend is indicative of how cutting-edge technologies would keep empowering financial services firms, thereby benefiting the customers in the acquisition of seamless and hassle-free experiences.

The COVID-19 pandemic has scripted a horrendous chapter for the economic condition of a country. For businesses, finding a silver lining during a crisis of such magnitude is most definitely an impression of abortive efforts. However, SaaS companies have proven to be an emerging winner from the pandemic. When lockdown measures were enforced prompting businesses to rethink about continuing their commercial operations, SaaS companies rather chose to acclimatize to the crisis and so they improvised their business operations from physical to remote workplace by taking resort to software tools and techniques hosted online. Their strategy to migrate from an on-premise business operation to a Cloud-based environment resulted in great commercial viability. Faster accessibility, reduced costs, and location independence coupled with ease of use are some attributes contributory to thriving the business of SaaS companies.

The conventional wisdom endorses the notion that businesses must stand rooted to their physical establishments. However, today’s radically changing era has prompted businesses to consider shifting from their traditional business functions to something far more futuristic and fittingly viable. And adapting a fully digitalized and automated business approach sounds more appropriate than ever. Though digital and automation are not a new development in the business world, yet the way companies are adopting these tools, we can say rapid adoption is surely a new trend. Given how pandemic impelled people to distance themselves from one another, companies chose to follow the suit and decided to expedite their process of adapting to a new business work model. The result of such dramatic adoption is such that close to 400% boost in the number of U.S. workers doing Work-From-Home has been reported.

Companies migrating to digital workspace in an era still dominated by social and workspace distancing due to pandemic are determined to hold up infrastructure and continue to serve customers by convincing them they are equipped to rapid changes. No doubt, the pandemic has afforded a very significant fallout - that traditional ways of operating business can be changed under sufficient urgency. If seen from the perspective of SaaS, there is no doubt that they are going to play a very pivotal role in dynamically progressive work life.

SaaS being the facilitator of contemporary work is contributing best to facilitate remove workspace. Even though the pandemic may afford some semblance of letting up in near future, many companies, including Twitter and LinkedIn have officiated work from home permanent for their employees. Under such circumstances, the benefits afforded by Cloud-hosted software products have contributed growth even prior to Covid-19 pandemic. And the contribution of SaaS is said to be far-reaching in this context.

Therefore, follow the tips below to succeed your SaaS business in an era of radical change.

1. Innovative beyond what market has at present

To succeed in a SaaS business requires the involvement of various efficacious strategies. However, if you follow one fundamental principle for your business success, then the coveted result is sure to happen and that principle is innovating and going beyond what the market is currently offering. Do you have the reason behind the success of Google? Among many, one of the reasons is that the giant search engine never stopped innovating. Its innovations are virtually dominating the SaaS space today with a total of 137 cloud-hosted software products. The catch is, Google’s cloud-hosted products address a broad suite of topics, ranging from Productivity Software like Google Docs to Advertising Models called Google Ads. While some products cater to business users, others offer solutions to consumers. With the help of these software products, Google has built a solid user base of diverse audiences, an upshot caused by Google’s relentless pursuit of pioneering solutions for businesses and consumers.

2. Dream big

To succeed in a business is not a dreamless pursuit. Apart from introducing innovations through thinking along new tracks, as a SaaS business owner, you must also dream BIG. This involves building solutions that align several functionalities which were unmanageable via a solo interface. Consequently, the upshot of such solutions would mean simplifying the workflows of your customers.

Companies like Shopify are the epitome of exemplifying how dreaming big works. For example, Shopify never stops growing and is now the world’s leading e-commerce solution company. The continuing success of this company is the result of the comprehensiveness of its software that caters to every aspect of e-commerce, ranging from products and inventory to payment and shipping. The company is also engaged in serving a broad range of businesses serving small and midsize businesses (SMBs) and enterprise customers. The motto here is – create a versatile product serving a whole range of things, to help your customers save money and precious time.

3. Nothing inspires better than creativity

Software products lacking creativity soon find themselves replaced by their standard counterparts. As a SaaS business owner, your priority should be enabling creativity in building software solutions that can inspire and empower your target customers. A corporate culture that is the confluence of free thinkers, creators, and builders encourages creativity boosts in building innovative products and apps transcending the expectations of clients. While pandemic has virtually obliterated the physical workspace for professionals to brainstorm ideas creatively among themselves sitting in a room, it has been replaced by cloud-hosted software solutions enabling your teams to work together creatively. Dropbox is a good example of a creative cloud-hosted software solution that simplifies storage and organizing files. When local and cloud storage both are integrated seamlessly, it allows teammates to work creatively.

4. Adapting to a change is long-term survival mantra

The failure of Nokia has many contributory reasons, one of them is that the mobile manufacturing company didn’t acknowledge Android as the biggest market disruptor. While it is okay to focus on innovations, dreaming big, and enabling creativity to succeed in your SaaS business in today’s rapidly changing business landscapes, you must have to keep abreast with trends and adapt to a change. Since digitization emerged, innovations in technology have gone through rapid progression. Apparently, the companies which understood the accelerated technological innovations and adapted to the change consequently survived and thrived. Therefore, be ready to stay ahead of the curve to succeed and build sustainable momentum.

5. Create A Software Solution That Excites

As a SaaS business, the vibe and coolness of your software product largely determines the success of your business. That said, if your target customers are taking interest in your product, enjoying it, the success of the product reaching out to big users’ base is bound to happen. An exemplary role model to this context is Slack, a proprietary business communication platform equipped with innovative design.

Conclusion

To be successful in your SaaS business in an era of rapid change requires adherence to several factors, such as embracing a change, innovating and being creative, apart from dreaming big. These are the attributes that finally constitute eventual success of your business in today’s competitive business landscape.

An omni-channel communication helps marketing leaders to channelize their brand message more productively and efficiently. The support of emerging technologies in multi-channel communication has been instrumental in helping out financial marketers to communicate their business messages to prospects and their existing clients tactfully. Quite understandably, these emerging technologies have fascinated financial companies, most of them already leveraging their potential to their business favor, say for example providing an integrated customer experience.

There is no doubt as to how important innovation stands in the context of boosting the market size in financial services. Innovative omnichannel communication, in this context, bear a meaningful connotation of how financial marketers can leverage these technologies for a lucrative upshot of their business in the future. According to the report, the projected growth of$28.5 Trillion would be a milestone for the financial services industry in revenue generation based on $22.5 Trillion growth pace it achieved in 2021.

The financial service industry focuses on perfect utilization of emerging technologies. It would fulfill their activities, such as retaining the right message, upselling, acquiring prospective clients, increasing new leads, and indulging in cross-sell with existing clients. Besides, it would help cultivate business engagements in both B2B and B2C segments. 

These objectives of the financial services industry are bound to be achievable by leveraging technologies, namely - artificial intelligence, blockchain, data analytics, and RPA. The fusion of these ground-breaking technologies with the industry’s commercial goals can be deemed efficacious for market players to generate better customer experience in the long run.

In this blog, we are discussing four futuristic technologies which will rule the roost in financial markets. We will shed some light on how financial companies or marketers can maximize the latent potentiality of such technologies into their business advantage.

Artificial Intelligence

The value of artificial intelligence is uncontested as FinTech companies harness its latent power in processing client requests and transactions.

You see, multiple retail banks make use of Chatbots to address customers’ grievances and process them in real-time. No doubt, the role of AI in the automation of processes is quite significant. However, the involvement in AI can perfect the communication channels as the technology will be used to detect segments accurately validated and make predictions supported through analyzed data of client’s preferences and behavioral patterns like interactions and activities. 

AI-based segmentation results in conclusions derived from multiple factors transactions, firmographics, demographics, geography, and others. The analyzed data helps predict the possibility of a specific group of clients making a beeline for future financial decisions, apart from predicting their investment choices. Another value of artificial intelligence technology in the financial services industry is that it mitigates information irregularity and uncertainty related to transactions. 

A host of elements constituting AI, such as machine learning, computer vision, natural language processing, and self-monitored learning can expedite the flow of real-time financial data in customer segmentation. As a result, the upshot will also accelerate the process of calculating accurately the decision tree and propensity modeling. A supervised ML algorithm called Support Vector Machine helps accurately target and draw on personalization for client groups.

Blockchain Technology

The most popular cryptocurrency, Blockchain enjoys a widespread application in multi-sectors like digital currency, cross-border payment, hybrid collaborative innovation, cross-chain protocols, and trade financing.

The role of blockchain technology is valuable in the context of figuring out your target audiences by using a set of automated rules that help your omnichannel campaigns in identifying prospects, without having to leverage inflated metrics.

Blockchain also contributes to data management by using accurate KPI leading to a better understanding of decision-making for clients. With blockchain, you can also control and customize dynamic ads, banner placements, and content personalization easily.

Since blockchain is a decentralized cryptocurrency, it, therefore, will help the marketers collect entire campaign metrics accurately. As a result, it will help them visualize buyers’ personal.

Robotic Process Automation (RPA)

Robotic Process Automation (RPA), a form of business automation technology, is popular among financial institutions for its ability to terminate manual errors in expediting the compliance process.

The technology is also used to improve procedural efficiency or streamline account reconciliations. The idea of RPA being leveraged to optimize digital marketing processes holds water, considering it can effectively handle repetitive tasks such as running marketing campaigns.

This noninvasive technology involves processes leveraging unassisted autonomous bots which answer to keyword inputs of clients. For example, Chatbots, which engages in compelling discussion with your clients, helps them with solutions resonating with their quest.

The upshot of such a robotic conversation leads to quick resolution of the query raised by clients, thus enhancing better customer engagement with your business. The alternative lending industry makes better use of such robotic bots, to fetch customer’s data and make a better decision in provisioning affordable business loans to eligible applicants.

Workflows get streamlined by robotic process automation, thereby helping companies with results, such as more profits, flexibility, and responsiveness, apart from reducing employee dissatisfaction, and boosting workforce productivity by weeding out mundane tasks from their workdays.

One of the features of Robotic Process Automation is being noninvasive so that it can be implemented rapidly. As a result, the process of digital transformation picks up speed prompting automation of workflows comprising legacy systems in want of APIs, database access, and virtual desktop infrastructure.

The reason why RAP is a transformative technology stems from the fact that software robots can execute repetitive, mundane, and lower-value works tirelessly. Unlike people, they are code-wired to multitasking and absorbed amid distractions.

By incorporating the power of machine learning with RAP, an upshot of developing better learning insights and thoughtful decisions happens. As a result, the technology significantly reduces time dependency on repeat analysis on digital ad placement campaigns.

Cloud Computing and Big data

Structured and unstructured data in large quantities pile pressure on organizations in the context of storing and managing massive amounts of data systematically for concentrated use cases. Data of such large amounts, oftentimes, are found scattered across diverse business units causing to pose a herculean task for organizations in unifying customers’ profiles.

Cloud computing is a centralized system offering database marketers benefits, such as scalability, functionalities, computations power and better insights into the ocean of complex data in real time. This consequently benefits the marketers in prompt decision making for their marketing purpose.

Say, for example, alternative lenders can boost their services to loan applicants by using the cloud computing feature in deploying solutions or protecting against higher security risks.

In addition, cloud computing allows infrastructure as a service called (IaaS) in terms of storage and services from the popular brands like AWS, Azure, Rackspace, and Google. They empower an organization to control their marketing activities, apart from helping them avoid expensive alternatives like infrastructure, etc.

Conclusion

The financial markets become growth-driven due to advancement in technology that affords advent of cutting-edge tools and techniques. They are effectual for financial companies/firms or alternative lenders to minimize dependency on legacy systems for processing customers’ data and expedite the same by using smart technologies. Not only they enable marketers gain deeper insights into customers’ pain points, but can speed up processing of requests from customers thereby saving their time and providing timely assistance.

Believe it or not but finance is the lifeblood of digital transformation. This is because of the reason that without money, no business will ever survive. This is why experts lay emphasis on financial data readily available to support your business standing necessary for growth.

To allow digital transformation take its root within your finance team, make sure critical, consistent, accurate, and real-time data is accessible across organization’s finance team to understand the business from proactive lens.

Sadly, the finance team at today’s fast-growing SaaS business face unusual challenges such as –

• Close the books quickly.
• Support diverse billing scenarios of business based on subscription.
• Track deferred revenue.

And generate SaaS-centric metrics consisting of –

• Customer acquisition cost.
• Annual recurring revenue.
• Customer lifetime value.

The whole segmented features mentioned above is collectively known as finance tech stack – an integrated collection of software applications contributing to your business success.

What involves in the finance tech stack?

• Accounting/Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP).
• Financial Planning and Accounting (FP&A).
• Payroll.
• Spend Management.
• Accounts Payable (AP)/Accounts Receivable (AR) Reconciliation.
• Financial Close.
• Equity Management.

It should be born in mind that creating an ideal finance tech stack is not like playing a child’s sports, given several pitfalls in this context can cause messy integrations that would hinder the progress of closing the books and ramify reporting packages.

Discussed in the following are some key lessons you can choose to undertake in the process of improving finance tech stack.

Build apps keeping in mind the future

It would be difficult to predict that building a tech stack for the future would afford conclusive results in favor, considering the action is tantamount to walking on a double-edged sword. For instance, if your developer is building an application but doesn’t consider how it will scale, adding some extra features to the app may be a likely solution but they would make it too odd to manage.

If you are choosing an alternative course like investing heavily in costly tools and services in anticipation of exponential growth in the future, you would be out of money by the time your application would ever find success in the market – if it ever does. Under such a dilemma, the best strategy is to start from simple, like web apps using open source tools. It is always prudent to gravitate toward something more viable technologies and languages when in doubt than risk loss by staking hopes on expensive alternatives.

Fine-tune your tech stack with needs analysis

The needs analysis refers to figuring out the core problems associated with your existing tech stack. Whether your business struggles to integrate cutting-edge yet mutually-garbled software solutions or it suffers an absence of standardization or transparency, the needs analysis is a must to get to the bottom of what needs to be done to fine-tune your tech stack. This involves identifying business processes currently functional, and those in immediate need of replacement or upgrade.

The needs analysis includes underscoring pain points and areas that would put your tech stack to unsavory risk exposure. Corrective measures prioritized thereof will ensure timely generation of values and savings. Be warned that your chosen software solutions must be intuitive, mobile-friendly, and can integrate perfectly with data sources and other applications of your software ecosystem.

Develop a strategy

Since you are already aware of the purpose of your tech stack, now figure out what tools you must have to meet your requirements consistent with your budget, features, and accessibility. Thereafter, develop a strategy to implement the tools. Remember that strategy must be consistent with your actual needs addressing your pain points and areas. For instance, a startup equipped with a single-person finance team and minimal corporate infrastructure would favor a stack allowing simplicity, seamless use, and scalability. Familiarity in this context matters a lot, considering trust mounts on software solutions you are already familiar with, such as QuickBooks for bookkeeping, etc. Visionary startups may choose to work with a software solution provider allowing them to address their biggest pain points first.

Implement wisely to build on your success

To build greater success requires identifying the biggest pain points first. Automate workflows in your financial close to mitigate the resources required to generate timely results and subsequently allow your team to work on rather more strategically important tasks. Leveraging machine learning could afford process automation and advanced analytics.

Technology innovation has afforded a measured degree of productivity to small businesses. When we talk about appointment scheduling software, we immediately see some notable advantages that the technology offers to business companies.

With in-built reminders, alerts, and notifications, these software products are today becoming an instrumental part of the core operations of a business. They can’t afford the absence of these features in their corporate function.

For example, Healthcare industry experiences hundreds of billions of dollars’ losses resulted from patient no-shows, as the report points out.

Therefore, the productivity of solutions offered by appointment scheduling software is visibly impressive in boosting your business’ administrative efficiency, customer engagement, a better synergy between sales and marketing, and inducing so many benefits.

What is Appointment Scheduling Software?

In the most simplistic term, an appointment scheduling software allows businesses and professionals how to manage the scheduling of appointments and bookings or automate scheduling tasks, in order to…

• Manage and control customer footfalls on-premises.
• Ensure that the service requests correspond to staff competency.
• Enhance operational and staff productivity.
• Reduce the workloads on staff.
• Manage online appointments effectively.
• Help your business organize, save time, and be punctual with appointments.

With the use of customizable and scalable scheduling software solutions, the notable benefit of enhanced customer service efficiency is also set to happen, apart from depleting the counts of no-shows.

Mentioned below is the list of the ten best appointment scheduling software that small businesses can leverage for the efficiency and productivity of their core operations.

The Working Mechanisms of Appointment Scheduling Software:

• It allows customers to book an appointment digitally or by calling a customer care center. They can select desired service, or staff, if available. Later, the customer is informed about the booking confirmation.
• As the appointment date draws near, a reminder, along with a check-in link, is sent to the customer.
• Customer chooses to check-in by themselves with the help of the link sent via reminder.
• The customer gets a mobile ticket followed by the check-in to monitor his place slotted in the appointment sequence. Entry to the venue is not allowed until the customer’s turn is confirmed.
• The customer is called after confirmation of their turn and receives the service.

List of Best Appointment Scheduling Software for Small Businesses

1. Acuity Scheduling

The intuitive setup mechanism of cloud-based Acuity Scheduling, among its other salient features, places it on the top chart in the list of appointment scheduling software. It comes equipped with robust integrations, calendar customization, affordable pricing, a user-friendly interface, and supports nearly 36 users. From its inception in 2006 to now, Acuity Scheduling has grown to become instrumental in the digital management of appointments for small businesses. Apps of this software are compliant with iOS and Android-based devices.

Salient Points of Acuity Scheduling

• A user-friendly, cloud-based appointment scheduling software that features an intuitive setup.
• Suitable for small businesses, medium businesses, and enterprises.
• Free trial to assess the viability of the software for their day-to-day business scheduling needs.
• With the ability to put your brand on reminders and follow-up communication, it drives growth in your sales and marketing campaigns.
• You can integrate the platform with digital payment solutions like PayPal and Stripe, to help your customers pay easily after scheduling an appointment.

2. Calendly

Founded by Tope Awotona in 2013, Calendly is a user-friendly and robust scheduling software currently managing scheduling for more than nine million businesses and individuals. The software has a valuation of over $3 billion in the market.

It works as a personal assistant for numerous companies for helping them save time, boost sales volumes, and enhance service quality. It is deemed as an efficient replacement for outdated ways of scheduling appointments via email, interviews, calls, demos, and phone tags.

Salient Points of Calendly

• Allows scheduling meetings professionally and efficiently.
• Rules out chancing upon the hassle of back-and-forth emails.
• Auto-piloting your entire meeting workflow, sending reminder emails to everything as a professional assistant.
• It lets you schedule meetings with prospects in a few clicks – reduces cancellations.
• By booking meetings and other appointments faster and easier, it helps you utilize your time effectively.
• Eliminates the chance for double bookings as the software connects all your calendars that you can customize based on needs.
• The buffer feature of the software allows you to take intervals between meetings before the next appointment.
• With the ability to detect time zone, the software automatically shares the right time conducive to the customers based on their location. So, it eliminates the problem with appointment times.

3. Checkfront

Checkfront offers a seamless and cloud-based booking and customer management solution. equipped with several useful tools, the software also features integration with several famous digital services so that users can make the reservations and bookings fast and easily.

Payment processing facilitated by the software accentuates another feature of it, aside from allowing you to maximize your data from your analytic tools.

The first official launching of the software was in 2009 to integrate appropriate websites and services and facilitate booking processes, reservations and payments faster for the online buyers.

Salient Points of Checkfront

• Easy bookings with real-time calendar availability.
• Faster payment processing, and quick email confirmations.
• Allows your guests to self-book on your website using a live calendar facility and mobile-friendly booking steps.
• Centralized dashboard to keep track of bookings, get real-time business insights.
• Automates repetitive tasks, thus reducing workload considerably.
• Several famous payment systems, integrated with the software, allow you to make an easy upfront payment, seal the deal for businesses and customers.
• Equips with SSL security protocol to protect all accounts and cloud-based database. Supports devices based on Android, Windows, iPhone/iPad, Mac, and web-based.

4. Picktime

Founded in 2017, Picktime is a creative appointment scheduling software making inroads to success with its innovative features and customizations.

Touted as one of the most beautiful appointment scheduling software products for small businesses, Picktime is a budget-friendly software offering many features such as -

• Scheduling appointment.
• Sending reminders.
• Invoicing.
• Managing teams.,
• Syncing Google, Outlook, Exchange, Office 365, and iCloud calendars.

Salient Points of Picktime

• A creative appointment scheduling software that allows you to sync your Google, Outlook, Exchange, Office 365, and iCloud calendars with it.
• Host of features like sending reminders, invoicing, scheduling appointments, and managing teams make it one of the best software products for small businesses.
• Allows you schedule appointments, class bookings, and interviews.
• Eliminates a chance for double bookings or missed meetings.
• Protects your digital payments via PayPal, Stripe, and Square.
• Depletes the numbers in no-shows.
• Simplifies your Virtual Meetings and Classes via integrations with Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, Zoom, GoToMeeting, and Jitsi Meet.
• Track the activity of your business located elsewhere, from a single dashboard.

5. Square Appointments

Square Appointments, founded in 2009, has been one of the most productive software tools for small businesses. It showcases a host of powerful features, such as sales tracking, appointment scheduling, inventory management, and a default system called POS that executes real-time tracking of payments for individuals and businesses.

Salient Points of Square Appointments

• Android and iOS supported mobile app to manage appointments on the go.
• Synchronize your schedule across diverse time zones.
• Contains features like Google calendar sync, automated emails, text reminders, multi-location management, and Data Security (PCI) compliance.
• Business-centric benefits such as multi-location stock management, automatic inventory sync, and custom email marketing campaigns, etc.
• Apart from being cloud-based, it is also available in apps for iPhone, iPad, and Android.

6. Appointlet

Founded in 2012, Appointlet is seen as a productive software solution for problematic email overload and scheduling madness.

It helps streamline your appointment scheduling and allows you to share personal bookings with your customers and prospects. Simple and user-friendly, this cloud-based appointment scheduling software solution is functional on any device.

It is productive for sales by allowing you to focus on sales while reducing the times for going back and forth scheduling meetings and appointments.

Salient Points of Square Appointlet

• It entails a variety of features, including custom branding, multi-languages supported booking pages, and customizable reminders, calendar syncing, and integration all over your sales funnel.
• Helps you save time and eliminate manual reminders & appointment administrative tasks, thus reducing your sales cycle.
• Your time booked by your customers and prospects is automatically added to your calendar and theirs.
• Boosts conversion rates and closed sales by 300 percent, as prospects book you at the peak of their interests.
• Offers convenient and simplified online booking experience to your customers and prospects, thus helping your business gain loyal customers.

7. Setmore

Founded in 2011, Setmore offers an appointment scheduling software solution for customers to streamline booking appointments directly from social media. It enables you run your business like clockwork by helping you manage appointments through a single dedicated digital calendar planner.

It eliminates the hassle of dependency on invoices, as you can receive payments easily and safely online with help of its streamlined and optimized payment system. The process of booking appointments is made simplified and you can send reminders to customers easily.

The software is also compliant with cross-device platforms like desktops, tablets, and phones. It comes equipped with different features, such as –

• Automatic booking confirmation.
• Sync calendars.
• Social media integrations.
• Custom branded messages.
• Email and text reminders.
• Reporting tools for tracking your performance.

Salient Points of Square Setmore

• Multi-featured elements to streamline your appointment scheduling needs.
• Available in free, premium, and pro pricing tiers.
• Allows you to modify your virtual office with personalized page URLs, colors, logos, etc.
• Setmore calendar can be integrated with your preferred apps to make scheduling seamless.
• Customize your schedule planner by creating custom-branded URL, adding your logos, and integrating with website and social media.

8. Doodle

An online scheduling service provider, Doodle simplifies scheduling meetings or evens for people with other people experiencing conflicting schedules. This is why Doodle is called a best team scheduler, as it lets your handle meetings with a team of nearly 20 attendants whose time zone varies from one another.

Salient Points of Doodle

• A web-based scheduling application with apps supported on iPhone and Android devices.
• Removes the chance for double bookings by allowing you to sync your Google calendar, Office 365, or iCal.
• Give a clear visual snapshot of your availability to outsmart back-and-forth emails. Quick and collaborative.
• Checks availability of key attendees across different time zones to ensure nobody is left from attending the meeting.
• Keeps all the updates and reminders in one place, thus making everyone’s inbox clean.
• Keeps every attendee on the same page about the meeting, due to its integration with Zoom, Slack, and Microsoft Teams.

9. Appointy

Appointy is online scheduling software that makes it easy for you to automate scheduling and drive growth to your business. The mission-critical solution it offers is reducing hours of admin work, no-shows, and manage your staff, get more clients and have the freedom to customize your available slots, calendar, receipts, SMS, and emails.

This intuitive software has a powerful user interface, helps you grow and manage your business, and enables staff productivity by automating daily tasks. It has also a very unique feature to let you customize a possible length of an appointment and the number of possible attendees who would sign up for the meeting.

Salient Points of Appointy

• Simple yet powerful appointment scheduling software with a user-friendly and great user interface.
• With web-based scheduling its features, you don’t have to rely on email/call back-and-forth.
• Daily tasks are automated efficiently which ensures that staff productivity is boosted and the entire schedule is managed in one place.
• Bookings can be received directly from your Facebook, Instagram, or Google and your business website.
• Helps you get to understand your customers in a better way and deliver a personalized experience to them.

10. 10to8

One of the finest appointment scheduling software tools for small businesses, 10to8 is galloping on success, considering more than 50,000 businesses worldwide use the software.

It offers a plethora of exciting features which qualify it to become one of the most sought-after tools for small businesses looking for quality appointment scheduling tools best suited to their business needs.

Salient Points of 10to8

• Brings down no-shows by nearly 90 percent, due to automated booking reminders attendees receive via SMS, Email, and even Voice Calls.
• Allows to set up 2-way calendar sync with Google, iCal, Exchange, Office 365, and Outlook. The system can be integrated with any website.
• Features native integrations with Zoom Video Conferencing and Salesforce.
• Allows better engagement with sales prospects, interview candidates, or students.
• Helps you improve customer retention.
• Helps you organize your team’s schedule, bring your clients and staff together in the right place, at the right time. It ensures the elimination of wasted time for your business.
• You can fetch data on staff performance, track attendance, the popularity of your services, and report on no-shows.
• Helps your clients book and manage their appointments.

Conclusion

Small businesses can bring forth several notable changes in their business by choosing the right appointment scheduling software best suited to their business and budgetary requirement. Thankfully, there is no dearth of innovative appointment scheduling software tools, some of which we have recommended in the above details.

The point is, when it comes to tackling business challenges smartly, anything that is deemed prudent to solve such challenges must be added to the business. Appointment scheduling software tools have made it simple for businesses to cut short on time and budget to book appointments with customers and prospects without an outcome of no-shows of the attendees scheduled for a meeting with you.

Based on the details furnished above, you can make an informative decision as to which type of appointment scheduling software tool you should choose for your business purpose. You can also visit their websites to know more about pricing details, features, and plans.

Over $700 billion in sales is generated by Latino-owned companies in the Unites States. This boost is not just beneficial for the economy — the sheer number and volume of dollars generated means that Latino-owned businesses are integral to the community. While some Latino-owned businesses are run by a sole proprietor, many more have employees, which further affects the economy on a personal level. In fact, the latest U.S. Census Survey of Business Owners (from 2012) indicated that Latino-owned companies employ 2.3 million people — and that number is expected to greatly increase based on the analyzed trends.

Growth of American Small Business is Tied to Latino-owned Companies

Twenty-five percent of new businesses in America are owned by a Latino, according to the National Bureau of Economic Research. However, these companies are often met with seemingly insurmountable obstructions to growing their businesses. Research points to the fact that a mere 3% of Latino-owned businesses (and 6% of white-owned businesses) reach the $1M+ revenue mark, according to an article co-published by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, the Stanford Latino Entrepreneurship Initiative, and Interise. The barriers prevent Latino-owned businesses from gaining traction to become bigger and more profitable entities. Following are eight key findings from the aforementioned study “Latino-Owned Businesses: Shining a Light on National Trends”, co-published by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, the Stanford Latino Entrepreneurship Initiative, and Interise.

Finding #1: Informal Financing Drives Latino Business Owners

Latino business owners are nervous about finding official financing options because they do not want to be in debt, so they tend to rely on their personal savings accounts and financial assistance from their family and friends. Often, the financing available to these business owners does not carry terms that these owners are comfortable with. The downside of not taking on debt and using personal money to fund a business means that Latino business owners are not able to develop a strong credit report and they have difficulty scaling their businesses as they grow.

Finding #2: Latino Business Owners Are in Peril of Personal Financial Risk

Since they aren’t borrowing money in the form of a financial loan, Latino business owners are unable to build up their credit scores and expand on their credit history. Due to the aversion to financial loans, these business owners often rely on credit cards, factoring, and cash advances, all of which typically charge higher interest rates than a loan would. When they do seek financing, 47% do so using personal guarantees, vs. business assets, to secure it. Another issue is that 49% of Latino-owned business are classified as medium or high credit risk — this can be attributed to the fact that most of these companies are start-ups, as well as their issues with finding affordable growth capital.

Finding #3: Latino Business Owners Face Financial Challenges More Frequently Than White Business Owners

Since they aren’t borrowing money in the form of a financial loan, Latino business owners are unable to build up their credit scores and expand on their credit history. Due to the aversion to financial loans, these business owners often rely on credit cards, factoring, and cash advances, all of which typically charge higher interest rates than a loan would. When they do seek financing, 47% do so using personal guarantees, vs. business assets, to secure it. Another issue is that 49% of Latino-owned business are classified as medium or high credit risk — this can be attributed to the fact that most of these companies are start-ups, as well as their issues with finding affordable growth capital.

Finding #4: Scaled and Unscaled Businesses Saw Different Operational Challenges

Among scaled Latino-owned firms, there is a talent shortage. To answer that challenge, many companies are working to break from the crowd and be seen by talented workers by developing programs to develop talent. Unscaled firms find it difficult to gain credit to assist with cash flow management.

Finding #5: Cities with High Latino Populations Don’t Have the Most Latino Entrepreneurs

Miami and Chicago were the only two cities with dense Latino populations that saw an equal rate of entrepreneurship. Other major cities neglect to support Latino business owners due to their infrastructure issues with property values, minimum wage laws, tax rates, and local economic development.

Finding #6: Relationship Banking is Superior for Latino-Owned Businesses

Latino business owners find greater success in developing banking relationships at small banks to achieve their goals of obtaining credit, cash advances, and loans. This could be attributed to the fact that small banks have the ability to develop personal relationships with their customers; that advice is integral to a business owner’s success.

Finding #7: Revenue Sources are Opportunities, Especially in B2B and Government Sales

Sixty-four percent of Latino-owned businesses sell their products to individuals, while 42% sell to other businesses. A mere 16% of Latino-owned firms sell to local governments, and 11% sell to the federal government.

Finding #8: Mentorship, Density of Business Networks, and Capacity Building Programs are Essential

Mentors make the world go ’round. Imparting their experience and knowledge on start-up Latino entrepreneurs helps them succeed. For example, Latinos in San Diego join trade associations at twice the national rate (of Latino business owners throughout America). Chambers of commerce are another great resource; Phoenix Latino business owners join their chamber at a rate of 28%, compared to the national rate of 10%.

Overall, Latino-owned businesses have great potential to unlock — with the help of supportive banking/financial systems and mentors. This is where companies like Funderial are essential, by offering business owners: Small Business Loans, Business Line of Credit, Equipment Financing, Accounts Receivable Financing, Startup Business Funding and Franchise Financing.