Small businesses have long been considered the backbone of the economy. And this notion only continues to grow, especially as small and mid-sized companies are nimble, adaptive, and with a multitude of cloud apps and solutions at their fingertips, are able to provide products and services to customers that directly compete with those of larger, established enterprise organizations.
While size once played a role in the success of B2B organizations, advancements in technology and innovations in IT have made size less of a determining factor in business scalability, sustainability and overall success. Companies without an official IT department can now leverage cloud technology to affordably add IT capabilities on an as needed basis.
In addition to investing in IT staff, in the past only large and established organizations could afford fully integrated and scalable IT systems architecture. With the rapid adoption and ease of use associated with these same cloud-based offerings, now all companies have access to affordable IT integration services. All together, this ultimately increases competition among service providers and benefits the customer.
SMBs with fast-scaling, cloud-based IT solutions that empower business users to handle low level tasks themselves, such as data transformation and onboarding, now find themselves able to do business with major vendors in a matter of minutes, something that until very recently, was not a reality.
The next generation integration and IT solutions effectively give technical capabilities to companies that would have never had the budget or manpower to do so in the past, simply because of their size.
What’s the result?
Businesses of all sizes can get products out into the market faster, onboard vendors and suppliers in a fraction of the time, effectively evening the B2B playing field.
Additionally, the cloud-based nature of these solutions allows SMBs to scale IT solutions organically, as their businesses grow. Previously, a hefty investment in IT hardware and software was required upfront—something many small businesses are not able to afford.
As a result, the B2B landscape is undergoing significant changes across the board as well. Smaller, niche vendors can be on boarded quickly and can work with suppliers more quickly than ever before so as to effectively compete with larger, established players.
IT innovations in software integration and cloud-based technology have empowered small businesses big IT capabilities, forever altering the traditional notion of the B2B ecosystem.