Introduction Digitalisation can be a gamechanger for SMEs but it needs to be part of a wider strategic plan to develop your business. Choosing the right digital products is key to delivering fast and sustainable results. For today’s SMEs, competition is rife wherever you look. In the start‑up phase, you need to win market share to survive; in the rapid‑growth phase, you need to refine your processes for scalability to beat out established, mass‑market‑ready brands. If you overcome these challenges, then you will typically reach the maturity phase where cost control, optimisation for profitability and innovation become the focus. At every stage, if you don’t make every effort to differentiate yourself from your competitors, you may well fall behind and lose the race to the top. This lifecycle is not new. But what is atypical is the pace at which market conditions are changing, forcing SMEs to respond—and quickly.

Embarking on a business transformation through technology requires a good understanding of these 10 questions. Question 1 Could IT make new competitors more agile and gain more market share? There’s no doubt about it—technology is a competitive weapon. Companies can use it to solve critical problems, slash time-to-market, build barriers to competitor entry and even, sometimes, to completely reinvent the way business is done in an industry. From grooming (Dollar Shave Club) to bookselling (Amazon), the restaurant industry (Deliveroo) to banking (Starling, Revolut), traditional players have had to catch up or die. Where are your competitors in the race to innovation?

Aabyss are launching a new program bringing together SMEs in the Liverpool city region to help drive growth through technology innovation. The SME Digital Growth Peer Network will be exploring technology strategy with 10 powerful questions that boards should be asking. We will be exploring these questions over the coming weeks both on-line and via a series of peer networking events.

In many industries, there are seasonal spikes in business around specific times. For example, Accounting firms, though busy all year, generally see a spike in business around the time of the self-assessment deadline, etc., the retail and e-commerce industry sees a boom around the Christmas period, and so on. During such peak times, it is common practice in the industry to employ part-time staff to meet the immediate resource needs. While this works well in terms of costs and for handling additional work/client inflow, this poses a few challenges from the IT perspective. In this blog, we explore those challenges so you know what to watch out for before bringing part-time staff on board.

A business continuity plan is the blueprint you need during an emergency to keep your business running smoothly. If you don’t already have one, here are 3 key reasons why you should focus on creating one ASAP.

There are times when you do not have the technology expertise required within your company to plan a project or to solve a problem that feels like it is crippling one or more business operations. There is no need to feel discouraged.

The new year has been ushered in and we have found ourselves with another 365 opportunities in which to fulfil our aspirations. Figuratively speaking, most people take the new year as an opportunity to experience a rebirth of sorts. New diet, new hobbies, new values, new standards, new objectives. All admirable and essential if we are to evolve and grow, but they all represent aspirations and not, reality!

Why do certain people and businesses succeed where others fail? Why do certain people and businesses find success consistently and repeatedly while others don't?

Dependable outcomes prove a productive business. Whether productivity derives from acquiring new customers, streamlining business processes or maintaining an organisational workflow, a proper business plan provides a welcomed resource for progress in all areas concerned. Designing and adhering to a plan however can unearth difficulties that must be addressed. Optimising a business plan through a focus on technology will not only discover problems, but it will also allow management to comb finely through each business process and sort out incongruities that cause delay, waste and frustration. It will further provide support to expose any unsuspected or unknown risks that might deter future growth. By committing to act through a technological objective, businesses can expect to see real, tangible returns.

The Successful Business "If you want to climb a mountain, start at the top of the mountain." Implicit within this analogy is an underlying need. That need is for C-Suite executives to know how each department, function, team and individual will be performing when the business is successful.