FSB Podcast
FSB Podcast
How tech can help small business innovate
Looking for new ways to grow your business? As a small business owner, you’ll know how important it is to innovate and stay one step ahead of the competition to meet customer expectations. In this episode, we’ll explore how tech can fuel and facilitate innovation, from customer insights and company performance, to identifying growth and innovation opportunities. You’ll also hear how you can use the power of 5G, virtual reality (VR), and automation to enhance the customer experience.
Guests: Andy Bone and Jason Crawford, Solutions Specialists at Dell Technologies
This episode is the first of a three-part series brought to you in partnership with Dell Technologies.
This episode is in partnership with Dell Technologies. Dell can help push your business further, with innovative technology designed for small business. Visit dell.co.uk.
Jon Watkins:Welcome to this latest edition of the FSB podcast, the go-to podcast for news, tips, and important information for small businesses and self employed. This episode is the first in a three-part series brought to you in partnership with Dell Technologies to explore the ways in which technology can help small businesses innovate, improve and advance. And this first episode is titled, 'How tech can help your small business innovate'. All small businesses are looking to innovate, to grow, to stay one step ahead of their competitors and to ensure they are delivering in line with customer needs and demands. So this session will explore how technology can fuel and facilitate innovation, whether providing you with data and insights on customers and company performance to help you identify growth and innovation opportunities, delivering products and services in a increasingly innovative way, such as through digital or in an automated way. Or using the'power of things', like 5G, VR and automation to speed up and enhance the customer experience. To discuss exactly how technology can help you do that, I'm pleased to say I'm joined by Dell Technologies experts, Andy Bone, and Jason Crawford. Thanks, both of you for joining.
Jason Crawford:Thank you. Cheers. So yeah, thanks for
Jon Watkins:You are more than welcome. Look, we often hear
Jason Crawford:Well, where do we start Andy, I mean the thing having us, Jon. this term 'tech for innovation', tech that can help businesses to is probably our own adventure, with tech in our own lives, when innovate and evolve. And I think that can put people off a little bit sometimes because they don't quite understand it. Or they might think that the returns are a bit uncertain. But there are lots of ways that tech can help businesses innovate aren't there? Can you can you just share some of those to demystify it a bit? I started off in Dell Technologies, I wasn't necessarily an expert of all the tech that's available to me. But what I have found is that it's all about time, time is the most important commodity, Andy and I talk about that every day and say, you know what, making sure that we can actually focus and get the most out of the time that we put in. And that's, when it comes to a small business, that's probably the hardest thing to find. I know Andy, yourself, you've run small businesses before, have you found that that's a challenge?
Andy Bone:Well, obviously, there's only a certain amount of hours in the day that some you know, that we have. And you know, the way I look at it is that technology is a vehicle and that vehicle will do a job for you. And like any vehicles, you can get better vehicles that are faster, more efficient. And that's that's a really simple way of looking at technology. It's a way of of getting your requirements done in a timely manner. So yeah, it's very important that we use our time wisely.
Jason Crawford:I think we've seen a lot of that with the innovation over the pandemic, people have had to work in different ways we've been forced to rethink how we work and has tech helped? Yes, absolutely. We've obviously doing things like this, we're now doing more podcasts and chatting and be able to reach out to people and share some of these important ideas. And that has happened as a necessity. But Tech has helped us through this adventure at the moment. Andy and I had that experience overnight, obviously, during the pandemic, where it was like, actually, you know, what, we're gonna have to work in a different way. Now, we found that really useful. And we've actually embraced it to add it into our future working cycle, so that we're not necessarily travelling all over the country for a small meeting, we can actually just have that online and have that open discussion, either via audio via video, or, as you've mentioned earlier, we'll come and have a look at the VR solutions and the other solutions that are to come.
Jon Watkins:Yeah, and some good examples there of kind of how it can help you get time back to focus on on other things. We live in this increasingly data-lead world. What are some of the ways that small businesses can leverage tech to help them manage and process data in that faster way and to use it much more to their advantage?
Jason Crawford:I think that's similar to what we've sort of covered a little bit. But actually, there's things that we don't really think about the things that are day to day, the boring detail work that can be done by computing, by technology, making sure that we keep records of our customer data; what are our customers ordering, for example, maybe they are ordering a regular item, you can actually have that on a data set on a database and make sure they actually go you know what, I'm ready for that. Because then if it's stock items, maybe you're selling a product that's physical, you can actually go back and check and go that person actually ordered as last time, let's have that ready and in place, and that improves the productivity. And I've seen a lot of organisations can go wrong, and buy in a lot of a certain item in just sheer hope. And realise, actually, my customer base is going to change over time, because those that dataset can grow and thrive as you go. Because weather conditions change, so look at us recently, the whole country, it's been up, down left, right and centre, you don't know whether someone's making an order product, maybe it's a beer or something that and you want a nice summer version, or you want something for a more darker times and for the rain, it doesn't matter what you're selling as a product, those datasets will come out over time and as your business grows, you'll be able to monitor them and use technology to find out actually what am I selling best. And that's where you're obviously growing.
Andy Bone:Yeah, and I think that's the same across some large organisations, from global organisations right through to the to the one man business, we're all collecting a massive amount of data. And what we're finding is is the organisations, the companies, the people that are taking that data and actually using it to its fullest potential, that's where you'll see the biggest differences in growth and expansion, because they're using that in ways that you know, that you'd never really think of 5-10 years ago, I mean, you know, we've got some massive corporates like Amazon, that is a really good example of like, how do they know that I want that, that thing at this particular moment in time? Because they've been monitoring data, because they've been taking that data in physical locations, like shops, you know, the larger again, we always start with the larger because that's where we're innovation tends to tends to be driven from from that from that higher end organisation. They will have sensors monitoring footflow throughout their stores, so they'll know where people are hanging about, and where they're looking at product. So what they can do is they can use those those zones as promotional zones so that in the future, they know that that is the best selling zone in that particular store, or that product, wherever we put it is going to be picked up on and we're going to be able to be able to sell that product much better. So it's about all the data that we're pulling in, and it is a colossal amount of data that everybody is pulling on and how we turn that around and use it to our best advantage is really - that's the golden egg, Mr Crawford. And if we if we were good at that, you know, we would we will be very rich people. So yeah.
Jason Crawford:We wouldn't be here.
Jon Watkins:Absolutely. I think that's a good example there of how tech for data processing and management is brilliant for your own operations and internal systems, you know, get your ordering better and more streamlined and more automated. But that also enhances the customer experience, because you know, they're getting something more relevant, more tailored, they're getting it faster, they know, they're more likely to know you've got it in stock, because you've got all that in place. That's really good. Jason, you touched on the fact that we'll speak a little bit about things like VR and augmented reality and things like that. You know, I think a lot of small businesses think this is definitely an area that's more for the big organisations, and perhaps not something they're using quite yet. Is that is that the case?
Jason Crawford:I would actually throw that the other way. I think the bigger organisations perhaps have a little bit of a fear of something like that taking over. Now, the thing is, VR is very personal experience, obviously, as is augmented reality as well. Where are the kinds of places that we see the growth, actually, we see a lot of individuals that are perhaps working in engineering, for example. So a lot of engineers, we actually find are contract engineers, and they're actually solo. And so they are small businesses in their own right. They may be working with architects to create designs, maybe industrial structures, maybe even something like analysing actual vehicles and how they're running. It's an exciting area to be in. But I think people shouldn't be afraid of tech in general and being put off by the price point, because the price point is one thing, but what we're seeing growing is more of a pc as a service or technology as a service model growing nowadays, where you are actually able to actually acquire the equipment via some sort of financial route. Now we have a multitude of those at Dell, obviously. And it just makes it easier to access something that you normally would have thought, that's an outline cost that I can't put the capital expenditure straight into - why not change that to an operational expenditure, and actually be ahead of the curve as a small business and have something that excites your customers, have something that maybe is an experience that they haven't had? If you're sharing maybe an idea of a new project or something that you're working on, VR and augmented reality is a great way to do it. What about yourself Andy, do you think any different than myself? Are you on the same lines?
Andy Bone:No, absolutely, I think it's really important that the 'customer first' is key to, technology at the moment, because it all spans down to the fact that we've all got some consumer devices such as tablets, mobile phones, maybe not so much tablets now that the mobile phone has pretty much taken over that role. So the mobile phone can pretty much suffice - it is a small computer. In fact, the pocket calculator from many years ago, which I can remember, I don't know about yourselves, but the pocket calculator had more compute on it in its day, that actually was onboard the Apollo rocket that went around the around the moon, just to give you an example of how technology has advanced in the number of years that we're talking about there. So it's all about that end customer experience, if the customer doesn't get a good experience within, we talk about a seven second rule: seven seconds to achieve that customer get that customer onboarding. And if you don't get that, that customer will go and find it somewhere else. And it's really important that we enable that. And technology is a really key tool to enable that engagement. And so just think 'customer first' all the time, think about what the customer wants, think about what you want, because at the end of the day, would you want a bad experience with a piece of technology or a website or anything that you're looking for to actually gain products or or purchase products? So yeah, it's really important to start at the the end, the end user, I believe.
Jon Watkins:Yeah, brilliant. And you mentioned that technology as a service, can you just explain a bit for our audience about how that's changing the way they can tap into and use technology?
Jason Crawford:I think the simplest way to sort of describe it is, we all, most of us, the majority of us that are probably on this and listening to it, the fact is, our mobile phones, many of us get a mobile phone, not many people actually buy them outright, usually have some sort of purchase programme where you either buy over several months, or you buy as a service and then replace it after maybe three years is a good example, for most tech. I think with mobile phones now I seem to be replacing them very quickly at the moment, but that's just my luck of the draw, because I'm not nimble handed. But yeah, we can actually go in and purchase something and actually, when it comes down the line, we can choose the time that we want to upgrade. Because technology is evolving so quickly, that many organisations actually are changing their equipment out within a year. And I'm not just thinking about their pcs, I'm talking about their laptops, is every single thing is evolving. So we actually need to be able to do that. So doing it as a service, rather than doing as'I've bought this equipment outright', which means you've got that piece of tin, effectively, which is 'What do I do, just dispose of that later on? Or can I actually make any money back out of it?'. You'll see it in the car industry as well, many consumers now just going actually, it's not so much, will just go and buy the car, but will actually go in and get it as a monthly payment and things like that. So that's probably the easiest way to sort of demonstrate on our personal lives across to our business life. And it's definitely a cost effective way of getting the latest tech in your hands as quickly as possible.
Jon Watkins:Yeah, that's really useful. I think when we're talking about tech for innovation, maybe there's a bit of a tendency for some of our audience in some sectors to
think:'Oh, well, that doesn't really apply to me, you know, I'm a building firm, or I run a cafe' or whatever it might be. And they think, oh, this isn't really you know, innovation isn't isn't really for me. But that's not really the case. Is it? I mean, are some small sectors, more likely to be able to leverage tech for innovation? But, you know, on the flip side of that, are there forms of innovative tech that can be used by everyone?
Jason Crawford:Every person needs tech every day of their lives, don't they Andy...
Andy Bone:Absolutely. I mean, you mentioned cafes, and things like that. I mean, in my early days, I used to run bars. And back in 1995, I actually launched my first online food ordering so that it would alleviate the stress of lunchtimes on my bars, so that people could preorder food, and we knew where we stood then. So we didn't have this backlog of of orders coming in, it was all very seamless. And that was back in 1995. So even a simple cafe, you know, can alleviate that pressure, it's looking at the pinch points, basically, that's what we need to do look at the pinch points of the business. There are many, you know, for every business, and they're all different, and how can how can we alleviate those by bringing in technology to actually help us smooth them out. And I think that's another good way of looking at it, you know, what's hurting, and how can we make it smoother, because technology will have a way of doing it.
Jon Watkins:Yeah, and we talked at the beginning about specifically using tech to innovate for growth. And I know lots of the things we've discussed will help facilitate that. You know, things like getting more time back so you can go and focus on your core activities and growing customer sales and things like that. But are there other ways that tech is helping organisations grow?
Jason Crawford:And yeah, there's a huge amount it at the end of the day, as he said, time is obviously the priority there. But as well, the thing is it's just that understanding of the customer bases at every level, we talked earlier, just briefly about our stock items, we can actually then look at things that are going well for us and actually predict our future growth. Because we can actually go, you know, what this has worked well, let's accelerate in this area of the business. And let's ignore the parts that we're actually not doing weapon actually disable those. And that's all through analytics. And without having control of your data and having maybe all of that on your computer on your server and your storage, it's a lot harder to do on paper. And I'm sure Andy you've experienced a lot of paperwork. And I can remember you cringing about a few of the organisations that you've been in, or the few of the organisations that we've met that keep things on sheets. I know my accountant, for example, he's a very good guy for that, I go into his room, he's got a 20-pack of cigarettes, and a big pile piled up of sheets of paper. I don't know how he does it, I let him do his miracles. But with computers, as I've said too many times, it will make his life so much easier. And maybe he can put the 20-pack of cigarettes aside, less stress.
Jon Watkins:That's brilliant, you know, just looking a bit further forward, I guess, you know, just how futuristic might things go here? I mean, you know, what might innovative tech for small businesses look like sort of five or 10 years from now? What might it allow them to do that they're not currently doing? And I guess you know, we may not hold you to account on this and come back in 10 years and check. But it is fun to look forward and try and understand just what the parameters might be.
Jason Crawford:I think it's exciting isn't it Andy, I know you are passionate...
Andy Bone:I think it's just it's good to look back five years, let's look back five, six years. Let's look at that. And let's look at let's look at some of the successes and we look at digital first. So we look at Uber, for example, Uber, come on it's a taxi, a taxi is a taxi, but no, Uber's now gone into a into a global organisation. Let's have a look at the food ordering that I was mentioning, the basic food ordering in a single site, look at how someone just took that concept and just changed into a into a global phenomenon with, you know, your company's like Just Eat, and again, Uber Eats. And the way that you know if you're if you're there first, if you think about a digital first strategy about what is commonplace in, in the marketplace now, but actually, how can we digitise that fully to make it a digital first strategy with no, you know, there's no physical attributes to it at all. It's just digital. So you know, it's it's about how can I make my business, a digital business and maximise that digital capability of that business as possible. A great one we came across actually was when we were in an event in I think we're in Sheffield, actually. And a guy I was speaking to, he owned a theatre props company. So basically had a massive warehouse full of in fact, everything you could possibly think of whether it be cars, props, from back to the 20s. So everything so you can imagine the amount of stock that you had in this warehouse. And I said,'Well, how'd you how'd you put that across to customers?''Because well, I have a physical catalogue that the customers look through'. And I was going'Well, surely as we develop and you know, it's about the demographics and the demographics of people are changing. So the workforce is becoming younger, you're getting, you know, so in the in the film industry, for example, if someone wants something very quickly, they're just gonna go on a mobile phone and find it. Yeah, they're not going to go, Oh, can you send me a catalogue? Or can I pop down and have a look to see what you've got in your warehouse?' You know, everything needs digitising. So that's a really simple solution is digitise, if you're if you're a physical store, if you're selling product, you need to make sure that that is so accessible again, that seven second rule, if someone wants that product, or you want to get rid of that product, you need to be able to make sure it's visible to everybody. And the demographic of today's society is changing to enable or is changing that that need is is more than ever in place so think about digital first strategy.
Jason Crawford:Also, Andy, I think one of the things I think we're looking at the future, what's coming after that, looking into the past is important to looking to the future. In fact, so much so that I've been going to all the Bond films recently, and going through those at the cinema, I was amazed at the amount of technology that actually is now just day to day basis that was predicted in the 60s on a book that was written probably late 50s, to be honest. So that was really exciting to me to see things like that. All the films I grew up on, a lot of this has come to life. Back To The Future is a classic example of that when he travels forward in time to 2015, which is just amazing to see things like 'Oh, can you just use your thumbprint to give some money to charity?' Can you do whatever, all of that is here today. If I am not the innovator, I'm not the secondguesser of what's next. But I think a lot of the stuff is going to be, we won't actually necessarily have the mobile phone device in our hand, it might just be the earpiece to communicate with. But at its core, the back end, there still is going to be some sort of brain or some sort of compute somewhere, wherever that works. I know that future state, they're looking at different ways of processing data on multiple layers and holographic processors and things like that, that might change the way it looks. But at the end of the day, it still data has to be processed somehow. So it might look a little bit different, we might be walking around with the fun glasses that record everything as we're going around, and all of that fun stuff. But at the end of the day, it will be something that probably will be unknown, that will change the game. It's something that someone's probably sitting on just now. And if I was sitting on that idea, I wouldn't tell you just now either!
Jon Watkins:You know, small businesses, our audience, they, you know, what's important to them when they are buying in goods and services is reputation. And how innovative is Dell Technologies offering? And how do you stay on top of the latest trends to make sure it continues to be so? How do you make sure that you guys are adapting what what the offering is so that small businesses can rest assured that they've got everything they need going into the next period?
Jason Crawford:I think the important part of this is agility is key. And Dell has always been at the forefront of being agile, to be able to change things as we go. As far as organisation is concerned, we started off the first sort of just-in-time manufacturing process, that means that we could actually make the system with the latest components and the latest internal parts that were going to be ready for the customer. As they required, we still can build to order systems as well. So if a customer has a particular requirement for their particular device that they need, maybe it's a biometric fingerprint reader, maybe it's going to have a higher resolution camera, etc. We're still quite agile, in retrospect, we offer many versions, it's not just a laptop, when you see something that says, oh, it's a 7,000 latitude. There's different ones of that available. So having that agility is good. And the importance is listening to the customers. And that's something that we've taken quite back to the core, maybe actually now, I'd say about seven or eight years ago, we started a thing called Workforce Transformation. And what it was about looking at is how the workforce is changing? How do we need to change our devices to adapt to how those workers are working, because not everyone does the same thing. In fact, probably every one of us works in different ways. So having the most amount of available different devices to our end users. And having that wide variety of choice, depending on who that user is, is vitally important. Whether you're working in heavy industry, maybe as you said earlier, you mentioned building trade, things like that we do have devices that can go out on site, because more and more as we see our digital requirements increase and having that data available to us, we need to have the devices that can actually withstand being in certain environments, too. So it's a whole variety. It's about having the right product for the right person in hand.
Jon Watkins:That's fantastic. Listen, thank you both for that brilliant walkthrough of how technology can help businesses innovate. And I'm sure that's going to be really helpful for a lot of our audience that are looking to use tech to innovate and to improve their businesses and to buy themselves time to focus on their core activities. As I say, that was the first in a three part series of podcasts looking at how technology can help you innovate, improve and advance and was brought to you in partnership with Dell Technologies. Thank you also to our audience for listening. While I have your attention, I would just like to remind you that you can subscribe to the FSB podcasts to receive regular updates and guidance on the big issues affecting small businesses and the self employed. And do please also remember that you can find a whole host of additional webinars, podcasts and other content on the FSB website at fsb.org.uk . Many thanks.
Sponsor's message:This episode is in partnership with Dell Technologies, Dell can help push your business further, with innovative technology designed for small business. Visit dell.co.uk .