Small businesses are turning to technology to automate tasks

Small businesses support more than $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 Small Business Empowerment Report. These numbers are powerful and highlight the importance of using technology in businesses, regardless of size.

“As someone who has built and grown businesses and now helps others do it, (I think) it’s extremely important that we use technology,” said Flossie Hall, CEO of Stella, a 501(c)3 that connects founders, identified as women and investors to the right resource at the right time. “When I work with a small business, the first thing I do is implement technology to help them.”

Hall explains that today’s small business technology tools are more accessible and easy to use than ever before, and can greatly help business owners with project management, design, automation, communication and many other areas.

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

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

“I’ve been working and leading remote teams for about seven years, and I can only do it with technology,” said Hall, who is based in Rochester and leads a team spread across multiple 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 weren’t available, and creating a website meant you had to know HTML or hire someone who did. Since then, the technological barriers have come down, and Hall wants to encourage those small business owners who might be afraid to dip their toes in the water to give it a try.

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

Hall also stresses that it’s okay 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 through the Urban League of Rochester, the 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, clinical associate professor of marketing and director of the undergraduate programs in business leadership and business, artificial intelligence and innovation.

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

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

“It revolutionized AI for the small consumer, small company, non-profit, etc. because it made it easy for people and companies to have some amazing tools that seem to be getting better every day and for minimal cost,” Weber said.

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

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

“We have young data scientists who want to work in an internship environment,” Weber said. “You might be able to find a minimum wage guy to help you get started on this. And after a semester of internship, you’ll probably understand it 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 that small businesses today have two choices: to adopt new technologies or not.

“Small businesses are at risk of becoming worthless when they don’t keep moving forward,” Valentine said. “And I don’t think it’s measured by 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 applications of cloud technology are file storage, data analysis, communication, data archiving, 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 clients are opening new locations in other areas and hiring people in new ways or new roles that didn’t exist before. There are all kinds of opportunities for smaller businesses to stay relevant.”

Last month, Innovative Solutions announced that it had achieved the 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 drive the advancement of services, tools, and infrastructure that are central to deploying generative AI technologies.

Caurie Putnam is a freelance writer from Rochester.

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