Teamleader Talks SMBs’ Technology Journeys

Small businesses struggling to embrace digitization must take the first step to adopt technologies, says Teamleader. Once the digitization journey has begun, the benefits are quickly realized.

Teamleader, which recently announced $22 million in Series C funding, provides Software as a Service (SaaS) to small businesses in the beginning stages of their efforts against paper. According to Teamleader product owner Pieter Reel, entrepreneurs understand the need to adopt technology, even if they haven’t yet taken action to do so.

“SMBs are still making rather basic changes in their business processes — shifting towards cloud solutions for CRM, invoicing and project management,” Reel recently told PYMNTS.

A “fear of change” is one of the largest barriers for entrepreneurs to push through the threshold into truly transformative digitization, he added. A lack of resources exacerbates this struggle, plus, entrepreneurs can find it difficult to implement a new technology, fearing it will actually slow down existing work flows.

While small businesses have a reputation for being younger and more agile than larger enterprises, there are SMBs that operate with more traditional tools and processes. Even seemingly straightforward digitization efforts, such as eInvoicing, can be a challenge.

Reel said that fear of change presents a barrier, with many professionals expressing that they miss having a physical invoice to look at and read. Embracing a “hybrid” approach to eInvoicing, in which systems support both XML and PDF formats, can ease small business owners into digitizing their invoicing processes.

In a discussion with PYMNTS, Reel pointed to Teamleader’s own research, which suggests a correlation between small businesses’ efforts to overcome these challenges, and their ability to succeed.

“SMBs that consider digitization and embrace new technologies have a better view on their next steps, and have more faith in succeeding as a company,” he noted.