It has always been a challenge to run a successful business, and with fewer resources, experience and cash than larger organisations, keeping yours afloat gets even more daunting. And while this was true before Covid-19, this pandemic has made it at least a few magnitudes more difficult.

While Covid has created an unprecedented roadblock for small businesses, they have risen to the occasion. With increasing frequency, many have been forced to turn to digital technology to assist in recovery. This rapid transition has created a number of new opportunities.

Small businesses looking to take their phone game up a notch should look at VoIP plans. These digital voice communication platforms facilitate more complex communication within a business structure.

These plans allow an employee to forward their business phone calls to any phone line, whether a landline in the office, a business-provided smartphone or even a home phone number.

VoIP plans also open up possibilities for a virtual receptionist – on a small scale – or even a unified virtual call centre.

These VoIP services can also integrate neatly with Customer Relationship Management software that can offer additional automation and support, such as recording and robo dialling.

While hardly new, video conferencing has experienced significant growth fuelled by the pandemic. According to Digital In the Round, 76% of employees use video conferencing for remote work. Additionally, productivity via video meetings has improved by 50%, and 47% of video conference users indicate that they have been able to benefit from the reduction of their travel costs. It is no wonder that for 2020, video conferencing internet traffic saw a staggering rise of 535%.

While just about any business smartphone can support video conferencing, a handful of platforms have emerged as the leaders when it comes to small business. Thankfully, what would have been a frustrating exercise a decade ago can now be done with ease. Some things to consider when shopping for a conference app are the number of simultaneous users on the platform, the ease with which a screen can be shared among conference participants, the ability to record the conference and whether there is support for custom backgrounds.

Small businesses also need platforms to gain efficiency, such as when making a proposal. Recently, some companies have looked to upgrade from clipboards and paper to proposal software. This allows a business to grab a template, which can automate the writing process, combine elements for a professional look and use email to send out the proposal right away. All this combines to enable a small business to get an edge when making a proposal, and to get back to work.

Not every solution for small business needs to be so fancy, or complex: Enter mobile scanning. With workers remotely and more mobile during this pandemic, there is a definite need to be able to efficiently scan documents. While dedicated desk scanners with paper feed mechanisms are a good solution for office-based workers, this would be an expensive outlay to give each remote worker. Also, factoring in the scanning of documents may be only an occasional task. Again realise that sending documents through email is 100% Covid-19 free. Once you enjoy the convenience of having the power to snap a pic of a document with a phone and turn it into a PDF in seconds, there is no reason to go back to photocopying pages.

Enabling your small business staff with mobile scanning is as simple as choosing which app to download onto your smartphone. Features to look for cover integration with online storage solutions, integration with email, tiered pricing plans to suit your needs, support for multi-page documents, and optical character recognition (OCR) that can transform the scan into an editable document.

With a risk of infection, consumers have shied away from using cash. While the actual risk of Covid-19 infection is likely low from using cash, contactless payments are still on the rise.

Small businesses are smart to embrace this trend. Rather than using the traditional credit card systems, with the older magnetic stripe technology, or the newer (and much more secure) chip readers, consumers are expecting to have contactless payment options. These are the so-called “tap and go” transactions that happen via radio waves and antennas with digital tokens for security. This allows a fully contactless payment system.

Remote working has its challenges, and an important one is keeping the team synchronised, while working together from multiple locations. Keeping the team on the same page can start with a shared calendar, also known as a synced calendar. While this once may have represented a daunting task, with an executive assistant in charge of coordinating multiple calendars, this has been simplified through the use of the cloud.