The document discusses several challenges faced by small businesses and potential solutions to address them. Some of the key challenges mentioned include hiring the right staff with limited budgets, employee retention, staying competitive against larger businesses, managing cash flow, and maintaining customer relationships. Proposed solutions involve cloud staffing, employee incentives, inbound marketing, financial management software, and CRM tools. The document provides an overview of common small business struggles and how technology can help overcome resource constraints.

2. Battling the Resource Crunch
• Small businesses face challenges from every quarter as they go
about trying to sell their products to target customers. Initially, they
face teething problems like hiring the right work force and
improving visibility amongst their target audience.
Once things start moving, they need to face competition from the
bigger players in the niche, battle stagnating sales and a whole lot
more. If they are unable to meet these challenges head-on, they’ll
have to shut shop.
The good news is that for every challenge there is a solution that
helps convert the challenge into an opportunity for fuelling business
growth.

3. The following slides take you through
challenges encountered by small
businesses and their corresponding
solutions.

4. HIRING THE RIGHT STAFF IN A LIMITED
HIRING BUDGET
• Every successful business is backed by the right team.
• Recruiting the right talent is one of the biggest challenges for
any small business.
• This challenge is accentuated because they have a very limited
budget to work with.
• Inability to hire the right person for the right job can lead to
disaster.

5. But a Solution Exists

6. HIRING THE RIGHT STAFF IN A LIMITED
HIRING BUDGET - Solutions
• Cloud staffing is a great solution that will allow you to bring
down staffing costs.
• Cloud staffing allows small business owners to cut expenses
and still hire the best talent available on the market.
• You can hire talent that can work remotely, which brings down
your overheads. The money you save can be added to your
hiring budget.

7. But a Solution Exists

8. EMPLOYEE RETENTION
• Small businesses cannot compete with large organizations
when it comes to implementing policies that help retain
employees.
• The challenge is to achieve an ideal employee retention rate.

9. But a Solution Exists

10. HIRING THE RIGHT STAFF IN A LIMITED
HIRING BUDGET - Solutions
• Offer employee perks to ensure they remain healthy and
happy.
• Offer flexibility in terms of both working hours and leaves.
• Offer goal based incentives.

11. STAYING COMPETITITIVE
• Use inbound marketing tactics like SEO, content marketing
and social media marketing to generate brand awareness,
improve brand reputation, and increase sales.

12. But a Solution Exists

13. STAYING COMPETITITIVE - Solutions
• Offer employee perks to ensure they remain healthy and
happy.
• Offer flexibility in terms of both working hours and leaves.
• Offer goal based incentives.

14. Inbound marketing delivers below average cost
per leads as compared to outbound strategies.

15. MANAGING and CONTROLLING CASH
FLOW
• As small businesses grow, they find it difficult to manage their
accounts. Also, a limited staffing budget means they might not
be able to hire a dedicated team to handle accounts and
company finances.

16. In order to grow their business, small businesses
also expect extra services from accountants:

17. But a Solution Exists

18. MANAGING and CONTROLLING CASH
FLOW - Solution
• Solutions are available in the form of financial software that
are packed with a gamut of features to not only perform
accounting tasks but also a slew of functions like managing
accounts payable, accounts receivable, credit card
management and financial reporting.

19. Customer Relations
• Managing customer relationships is critical if small products
based business want to survive and prosper in a highly
competitive market.
• But the problem is, at times small business neither have the
time nor the resources to focus on improving customer
relationships as a means of boosting growth.

20. But a Solution Exists

21. Customer Relations
• Invest in cloud based CRM software to manage interactions with the
current and future customers of your company.
• With the cloud, you can subscribe to a pay-as-you-use model allowing
you to significantly bring down CRM costs and ensuring you can scale
up or down as per the requirements of your business.
• Install web-based help desk from Zendesk or chat products like Skype
on their websites to answer customer queries.
• Use a social media network like Twitter to get customer feedback and
answer queries.

22. Resources
• http://www.verticalresponse.com/blog/3-small-business-challenges-and-how-to-overcome-
them/
• http://business.financialpost.com/2012/07/16/product-based-businesses-have-own-set-of-
challenges-rewards/?__lsa=f54f-e45e
• http://www.forbes.com/sites/cherylsnappconner/2013/03/04/the-8-great-challenges-every-
business-faces-and-how-to-master-them-all/
• http://www.inc.com/michael-alter/small-business-survey-best-ideas-biggest-challenges-resolutions.
html
• http://www.internetretailer.com/2014/06/10/companies-discover-value-b2b-e-commerce-
study-says
• http://www.ezbob.com/6-challenges-small-businesses-face/
• http://www.nsba.biz/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/Technology-Survey-2013.pdf
• http://www.gallup.com/poll/167660/small-businesses-face-operational-regulatory-challenges.
aspx
• http://www.square2marketing.com/blog/bid/156517/How-Inbound-Marketing-Delivers-
A-Dramatically-Lower-Cost-Per-Lead
• http://www.gallup.com/poll/167660/small-businesses-face-operational-regulatory-challenges.
aspx
• http://investor.j2global.com/releasedetail.cfm?releaseid=777826
• http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mike-pugh/how-and-why-small-busines_
b_4620328.html
• http://www.sleeter.com/blog/2014/04/smbs-want-accountant-2014-update/