Building Your Competitive Advantage in Uncertain Times
How can cloud tools like data analytics, artificial intelligence and machine learning help small and medium-sized businesses retain their edge at this time of uncertainty?
Cloud technology today is more accessible and affordable than ever before, and discussions about the cloud have evolved from “What is it and why does it matter?” to “How can businesses maximize this technology?” This shift has democratized the cloud to the point where advanced tools like analytics, automation, artificial intelligence and machine learning (AI/ML) are accessible to even the smallest businesses, helping them face off against larger firms to compete on a global scale. At a time of thinning margins, labor shortages and increasing business costs, businesses that are leveraging technology to enhance innovation and improve operational responsiveness are cutting costs, mitigating risk and making money.
The digital advantage
According to Bloomberg Intelligence, the cloud only accounts for approximately a fifth of the more than $1.9 trillion annual worldwide IT market, and SMBs are increasing their speed of cloud adoption––fueled by early adopter financial services and healthcare enterprises. "The cloud" refers to the global network of remote servers that function as a unified ecosystem on the Internet, with tools offering businesses with accessible data, automatic syncing, remote work facilitation and easy backups. For SMBs, the cloud offers easy and affordable access to thousands of solutions to specific business challenges like cutting down costs associated with operational inefficiencies, boosting productivity and encouraging innovation. These tools are no longer exclusive to large enterprises, and the challenge now is for SMBs to identify the tools they need. “We’re seeing around the world that our SMB customers know what these technologies are,” says Claire Gribbin, Head of SMB Worldwide at Amazon Web Services (AWS). “They’ve heard of automation and AI/ML, and have an understanding of the use cases where it can be applied, but they don’t really know how to get started with it.”
From AI chatbots to automated marketing, plenty of cloud solutions can improve competitive advantage, but deciding on solutions can be somewhat daunting. “The right way to think about digital innovation is to think about coming up with the best outcomes for your customers. That will simplify your tool selection process and lead to the business results you’re trying to achieve,” says Kristine Henley, Head of SMB Partnerships Worldwide, AWS. Amazon’s formula for innovation starts with working backwards, she explains: “We start by learning from our customers about their challenges and what we need to do to optimize their experience. SMBs need to do the same thing.”
For example, global omnichannel sportswear retailer Footasylum has seen viral growth since its launch in 2005 through its “hyper-local” marketing approach, but in recent years, the AWS customer’s marketing efforts were stagnating. The company’s spray-and-pray approach to email marketing wasn’t generating traction, says Gribbin—and this was resolved by the work-backwards approach: “They started by looking at the results, and realized that they weren’t providing a positive customer experience through email marketing,” she says.
AWS works with its network of certified partners to help customers sift through solutions and find which fit them best. Working with AWS partner Peak, Footasylum migrated its on-premise historical data into the cloud, where it’s easier to store and analyze. As a result, the company has built hyper-personalized, AI-driven email campaigns that help determine which customers are most likely to be engaged with—and ultimately purchase footwear from—the company. This data helps the retailer better target audiences through social media to acquire new customers and improve the lifetime value of existing customers, seeing an 8,400% return on advertising spend—30 times the industry average and 10 times higher than the company’s previous marketing metric. Utilizing ML, Footasylum achieved a 28% boost in revenue per email and a 75% reduction in cost per social click, generating $84 for every $1 spent.
“There are a lot of different use cases out there. It really is unlimited, so thinking about where your business is coming from is the first step,” Gribbin says.
Let technology do the heavy lifting
Because of the nature of the cloud, SMBs can just buy the solutions they need when they need them, and find “way more power and capability than they ever could when everything was on premises,” says Gribbin. “Unless technology is really your business, you don’t need to do this yourself. Small businesses can take advantage of these kinds of really sophisticated technologies for their use cases.”
For example, Green Flag, a UK vehicle-rescue SMB, is leaning on existing tools to digitally transform its operations so it can compete with bigger rivals such as the Automobile Association (AA) and the Royal Automobile Club (RAC). The company migrated its database to the cloud to remove data silos and extract valuable insights to improve customer experience on Green Flag’s mobile app. Features like real-time location and estimated time of arrival of rescue vehicles, as well as an automated chat bot service—launched in under two weeks—has boosted the company’s ability to serve its 3.5 million customers.
Expanding the definition of data
In the next two years, many organizations expect that the volume of information they receive will increase by up to 4.5 times1, and it is estimated that more than 57% of this data will be semi-structured, like an invoice, or unstructured, like a verbal contract. SMBs may not realize that this kind of information, including paper records, is all usable data, says Gribbin. “The beauty of a company that may never have been on the cloud or may not have adopted much technology is that they can leapfrog their progress now. If they’ve been keeping paper records, they can work with companies like [AWS partner] Snapdocs that can manage their data hygiene and bring that data into the cloud,” she says.
As a business grows, the resources it needs will grow alongside it. Cloud tools allow SMBs to scale effectively and appropriately in a matter of minutes, eliminating the need for making major (and expensive) infrastructure changes. Bringing technical experts in can help take the complexity out of the process. For SMBs looking to find quick solutions to on-demand project work, AWS IQ is a platform that connects certified freelance experts for hands-on help. “It's a very easy way for smaller businesses to get started. They don't even have to really fully articulate what they need. They can sketch out what they're trying to do and have professionals guide them through the right solutions for them,” Gribbin adds. There are tens of thousands of partners in the AWS network, which can make the cloud journey a lot less daunting for SMBs as they focus on incremental solutions to their most pressing business challenges, one step at a time.
