smallbusiness.co.uk: Helping your business think big

There are countless ways that technology has transformed businesses. Here we speak to entrepreneurs about how the latest innovations are helping them to stay ahead of the game.

‘If it weren’t for advances made in technology, my business wouldn’t exist,’ says Tabitha Potts, founder of online eco store Mimimyne.

‘Working from home has helped enormously with the recession. Although people are spending less on discretionary purchases, I don’t have to worry about having overheads. The costs have been fairly minimal. I don’t have business meetings, so I don’t need anything like contents insurance.’

Potts says social networking has enabled her to feel connected to other people: ‘The biggest problem as a mum working from home is the isolation. But I use networks and talk to other ‘mumpreneurs’ and have formed online friendships.’

Bullet proof

After suffering a burglary, Mark Houlding, founder of PR company Rostrum Communications, was grateful he had in place an effective business continuity plan.

‘My work laptop was stolen from home, but because everything was saved though our online backup service, the next morning I was in the physical office, using the spare laptop as if nothing had happened. It’s incredible when you think about it.’

Peter Czapp, director of accountancy firm The Wow Company, agrees that having backup systems in place offers vital protection against unforeseen circumstances. ‘Through our backup systems, all our employees can work from home, which meant when the snow hit earlier this year, we could afford to be relaxed about it,’ he says. 


Work on the move

Dustin Newport, commercial director of software MindGenius, regularly meets existing and prospective customers to demonstrate his products

‘All I need is a laptop and a mobile phone. The laptop is a prerequisite for giving presentations. Most venues have a projector, which I just plug it in to. However, on occasion there have been places that don’t have one, so I purposefully bought a really large Dell laptop so I can still give a good presentation just using the screen.’

For Newport things have come a long way since he first started. ‘I’ve been giving presentations on the road for around 18 years now. Previously you’d have to take lots of print outs and copies of the presentation, but people don’t expect that anymore. Back then every detail of the journey had to be planned, now all you need is a postcode to key into your sat nav, a laptop and phone.’

Desk-bound travel

Wendy Shand, founder of child holiday accommodation advice site Tots to Travel, runs her business from home manages agents across Europe from her home through web conferencing.

‘The way things are going, we’re going to see a greater dependence on video streaming through websites, better and better relationships with video and internet telephony. If it wasn’t for these things, it would be too expensive to run the business as we’d need to have people physically working here in our office.’