SMB Day-To-Day Operations, Digitally

For the SMB, paper is hard to part with when it comes to improving process flow and optimizing hours spent on a business day to day.

In an interview with PYMNTS, Neopost SME Digital Solutions Director Erwan Kernevez said that pain points among smaller firms include the management of inventory spend and time spent dealing with manual processes. For many smaller firms, he said, “tech addresses a part of” certain problems but is often used for individual functions rather than a holistic approach — in short, tech deployment is “scattershot … there’s the feeling among smaller firms that they can be more efficient but that they do not know how.”

To that end, earlier this month, Neopost debuted services aimed at helping SMBs communicate among disparate parts of the business (internally and externally). Neopost Business Solutions facilitates document flow and communications across the supply chain, helping to eliminate, for example, data re-entry and other inefficient processes. Lost communications, the firm said, can lead to lost sales. Early adopters, said the executive, would include white-collar services and marketing and project management firms, which “know that technology is a huge pain reliever.”

The stickiness of the paper process comes across two of the larger markets that Neopost has view of (the U.S. and the U.K.) as managers are focused on driving new revenues and grabbing new customers, when, in fact, attention could be paid to maximizing already existing revenue into maximum cash flow. And though the U.S. has found ways to reduce the “digital gap” between paper and more technology-driven processes, the U.K. is catching up. And, he said, when it comes to tech and changing business processes, “you must choose your battles.”