Limited time, energy, and resources are just some of the challenges faced by small business owners on a day-to-day basis. Thankfully, entrepreneurs today have tools such as PCs, tablets, and smartphones to help them be in control of the game. Here are some tips on how small business owners can leverage technology to boost their productivity:
1. Use technology to help you work better on-the-go
Most small business owners today are extremely mobile, moving from meeting to meeting while trying to squeeze work in between. With time already at a premium, ultraportable PCs such as convertibles allow you to leverage the power of a full keyboard device for better content creation and productivity while on-the-go. Consider a device like the Lenovo ThinkPad Helix which combines the performance of a business Ultrabook with the mobility of a tablet.
2. Keep your PC running at peak performance
With limited resources, every second of your day is precious, and you don’t want to waste valuable time waiting for your PC to open a file or even worse, spend a few hours fixing a hardware or software issue. Solutions like the Lenovo Solutions Center (LSC) are designed to keep your PC running at peak performance, to improve the user and business experience. It assesses software and hardware, diagnoses issues and provides tips to fix potential problems before they impact the business and can also be used to schedule backups, create recovery media, update software and manage virus protection, firewall and passwords.
3. Charge up, move on
Another major time saver is having a laptop or PC which you can charge up in an instant before leaving the office for your day on the road. Imagine if you could charge up 80% of your laptop battery in the space of half-an-hour – well now you can with the Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon Touch’s RapidCharge technology.
4. Don’t waste time managing your PCs
As a small business owner, you have bigger things to worry about than running hardware and system maintenance. However, it’s these small nitty-gritty details which help your business run optimally, ensuring your point-of-sale (POS) system doesn’t malfunction and your website stays up-and-running. With Lenovo Solutions for Small Business (LSSB), you can ensure that all your critical business programs and applications are running in the pink of health, and designate maintenance tasks such as software updates, backup, disk defragmentation, deletion of cookies or temporary Internet files to be carried out after work hours.
5. Windows 8.1
If you’re a longtime Windows user, have a think about upgrading to Windows 8.1 – which comes with all of Lenovo’s latest PCs – as it features powerful applications which will help increase productivity. Apps like Evernote Touch help you organize everything from photos to scanned documents to Web pages, while cloud-based storage applications like Work Notes Pro allows users to record and share videos, voice messages, stored drawings, notes and photos in private clouds.
6. Networked Storage
As a business owner, you probably own more than one device – probably a combination of tablet, PC and smartphone. While these tools keep you productive on-the-go, it would be even better if you can easily access your content from any device without having to bother about transferring data via USB. You can now do this with networked storage – such as the Lenovo Iomega StorCenter ix4 Desktop Series. Suitable for small businesses and home offices.