IoT for SMEs: 4 Ways Smart Technology is Supporting Small-to-Medium Sized Business Growth

The Internet of Things ( IoT ) may be a hot topic in technology, but even ten years ago in 2008, there were more “things” connected to the internet than people. This fact may shock you, considering only 0.06% of things that could be connected to the internet are.

There’s no doubt about it, the internet of things is still growing and its full potential is largely unpredictable. What we do know is individual people, households, and businesses alike are leveraging smart technology to get ahead of the curve.

Small-to-Medium sized businesses are making great strides using IoT devices. Through smart technology, they’re able to make better use of their resources, driving revenue and market share. In this blog post, we’ll discuss four ways SMEs are growing and thriving by incorporating the IoT into their business strategies.

Optimizing Marketing Dollars Through Customer Data

Enterprise organizations have the budgets to employ multi-level marketing teams who run million-dollar marketing campaigns, but SMEs are often limited in resources. To maintain a competitive edge and hold their own in their industry, SMEs must adopt a customer-centric attitude that persuades consumers to choose them over the biggest brands.

Enterprises like Starbucks and Amazon claim that customer insights are at the core of their marketing strategies. Through collecting customer data, these companies and others like them can learn about consumer behaviors, adjusting their products, customer service, and their marketing messages accordingly. Small-to-medium sized businesses can capitalize on customer insights and analytics through IoT devices. Something as simple as a sensor can tell a business owner how customers are using their products. Something as complex as big data can provide business owners with a thorough, 360-degree view of their customers, enabling them to create the most effective and targeted marketing strategies possible. When your marketing strategy is based on solid facts (with the facts being customer behaviors), you’re making more responsible use of your marketing budget. An optimized budget is an efficient way to facilitate business growth.

Going Green With Smart Technology

While new technology is always an investment upfront, it’s indisputable—installing smart technology optimizes your resources and ends up saving you money in the long run.

We’ve discussed smart lighting and thermostats previously on our blog, but to recap, businesses save big by leveraging smart technology. Smart LED lights use anywhere from 50 to 90 percent less electricity than standard light bulbs, helping you save on monthly utilities. Smart thermostats learn about your schedule and your preferences, adjusting heat accordingly while you’re not even at the office. This makes things more comfortable for staff, all while helping business owners control heat and their energy bills.

What’s more, smart technology can help you meet (and exceed) regulations, ensuring your small-to-medium-sized business is sustainable and environmentally conscious. Through connected devices, business owners can track and analyze their energy usage on an app. This allows them to strategize ways to reduce costs, make their employees more comfortable, and meet environmental regulations.

Boosting Efficiency With Connected, Smart IoT Devices

Efficient business practices = more time. More time = more money. If there’s one thing smart technology is good for, it’s taking care of the mundane, tedious tasks that often eat uptime.

Incorporating smart technology into your small-to-medium sized business model allows you to achieve more accuracy and more efficiency. IoT devices can learn about your processes and automate tasks, enabling your human resources to focus on activities that help you accelerate business growth.

Take the retail industry, for example. Theft is a huge problem in retail, but with connected devices, managers can keep an eye on their store via their mobile phone. IoT devices have a huge impact on security, and retailers know that better security means less theft, and less theft means more revenue. Another great example is the push notifications. Imagine you run a restaurant, and in the middle of the night, your fridges shut off. You get there in the morning and realize all of your food has gone bad. You’ve lost thousands of dollars worth of product and may not be able to open for the day. Connected devices could have prevented this.

By using smart appliances, the sensors in your fridges would have sent you a push notification, informing you of issues in the fridge. At this point, you could have fixed the problem and saved yourself a ton of money and time.

Smart Devices Improve the Way We Do Business

At Deprolabs, we’re committed to developing IoT products that free up the time often spent on mundane tasks, enabling people to take more control of their time. Our first product is the Goldoon. The Goldoon is an automated plant watering device for individuals and small-to-medium sized businesses alike, allowing them to experience the benefits of plants without dedicating hours a day to caring for them. If you work in an office for small-to-medium sized businesses, check out the Goldoon and discover how it can help you save time and money usually spent caring for plants.