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Small businesses discover the power of mobile apps

The joy of movement

Sponsored article This article is sponsored by EE.

Using your smartphone is about so much more than making a call. We can probably all remember the news reports a couple of years ago that said making a phone call is only the fifth most popular use for mobile phones.

We are more likely to be using them to browse the internet, monitor social media, listen to music or play games.

That is all very well in a social context but what about at work? Surely your smartphone is for making calls, checking emails and perhaps using the calendar function to make appointments or the navigation to help you find your way to a client’s address?

You might be able to search for information on products or people on your phone or tablet, but there is not much opportunity to do any other useful work while you are away from the office, is there?

Well, yes there is. A large number of familiar office processes can now be comfortably conducted on mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets – and without any huge additional cost. Even the smallest of small businesses can benefit from the productivity gains that come from being able to work efficiently on the move.

It is all made possible by the advent of 4G networks and cloud computing. 4G networks deliver mobile broadband at speeds of up to 60Mbps, which is faster than most people’s fibre-based broadband.

Access to this valuable resource is not just for the elite. EE’s 4G network, the largest in the UK, already covers 75 per cent of the population and is on track to reach 98 per cent by the end of the year.

Smell the coffee

Take the case of award-winning independent coffee and delicatessen shop Bailey’s Deli in Carshalton Beeches. Founder James Bailey says takings have risen, primarily thanks to 4G enabling the staff to work smarter and to analyse data quickly on the go.

“It has enabled us to work on the business rather than in the business,” he says.

By implementing a new till system and bringing on 4G, he has been able to sync everything to the cloud, he says. He can also train staff by streaming video content and live instruction manuals onto handsets and tablets.

4G has enabled the business to capitalise on its presence at farmers’ markets

In particular 4G has enabled the business to capitalise on its presence at farmers’ markets. Bailey finds customers like to use cards rather than carry a lot of cash and 4G lets him take mobile card payments very quickly.

There is no need for the mobile app version of a piece of business software to come with a big compromise in functionality that limits the processes you can complete when working remotely.

EE has pulled together a range of suitable business apps into one store. You can review the whole range here.

Rely on cloud

They are held in the cloud and accessible by phone or tablet for a low monthly subscription fee. For example, productivity and finance tasks are covered by apps such as Microsoft 365 and Sage One.

And because it is all held in the cloud the business can be sure that all its data, whether it is financial data, emails, calendars or whatever, is in a secure data centre, up to date and in sync.

EE is also offering apps such as Moonfruit and Zendesk through its small-business app store.

Moonfruit is a website-building package while Zendesk is customer relationship management software that collates customer queries received by phone, email or social media on a central dashboard. It assigns a ticket to each query and sends out an alert when a new ticket comes in.

Small and nimble

Another app carried in EE’s app store is Receipt Bank, software that extracts key information from bills, receipts and invoices, removing the need for manual data entry.

It can publish the data to the business’s accounting software or make it available to download as a spreadsheet or to be used to create expense reports.

Like Bailey’s Deli, a business can even opt to accept payments on the go using iZettle. All it needs is a compatible smartphone, an iZettle account, the iZettle app and a chip-and-PIN card reader.

A report from Deloitte last year entitled Upwardly Mobile found that small businesses were much more receptive than larger organisations to the concept of mobility in the business.

With apps increasingly being tailored for small-business use, and the advent of devices and high-speed networks to deliver mobile broadband at speeds which would have been unthinkable just a short time ago, these forward-thinking small businesses are well placed to take advantage of all the productivity benefits that being mobile can deliver.

Who knows, they may even get one over on their larger competitors. ®

EE

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