Getting a new business off the ground can be daunting. A high percentage of businesses fall in the first few years, around 50 percent, and many more struggle for a while after that, around 70 percent failing after ten years. If you’re starting a new business, you need every edge you can get to succeed. 

Here are five technologies that can help you avoid the bad statistics and find success:

● Accounting Software

● Good CRM System

● Video Conferencing Services

● Robust Cybersecurity Software

● Task Management System

With any business, new or old, managing your books is a vital part to ensure proper growth. Beyond understanding where your money is coming and going, it helps you stay compliant with taxes and other regulations. Money management is a key part of a successful business. Poor accounting leads to businesses, new and old, shutting down. 

Accounting software supports invoices and estimates, expenses, tracking of time, and business expenses—all needs to be met for any business to grow and become successful. Staying up to date on your financials helps you plan your business moves accordingly.

For any business that relies on sales, Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems are vital. This is especially true for B2B type companies where a sale can represent a large amount of revenue and you need to closely manage where the prospect is in the sales process. 

There are different CRMs that work better for different types of businesses or industries. Some are more designed for freelancer businesses, while others handle small to midsize businesses, and others for bigger businesses, depending on the scale of sales noted for each size of business requiring more detailed programs and administrative capabilities.

If you have employees working remotely or need to have client meetings often, good video conferencing software and hardware is essential. Communication is the backbone of any successful company, so you would do best to ensure that communication is at its best. Break down of communication spells the end for a company. 

Depending on the needs of a particular company, you can invest in different kinds of videoconferencing equipment. Different video conferencing services serve a certain capacity depending on how many employees and clients the system is meant to handle at a given time, picture and sound quality which are tailored to the needs of a company if they need better quality for more clients, or less quality needed given that the system is only used internally, and real-time private or group chat. 

Other facets of videoconferencing services to consider are the ability to share files, downloads vs. Cloud-based or app-based, ability to record and archive conferences, using across many operating systems, customer service if anything were to go wrong, and ultimately the cost, something that would be greater depending how many features a service has to fulfill for a given business. 

Cyberattacks can cost a business a lot of money, and new businesses just can’t afford the financial or reputational hit. The more robust your cybersecurity, the more it protects against vicious attacks like malware, ransomware, etc. This is where cybersecurity software comes into play, especially with endpoint and remediation capabilities. 

Cybersecurity is a must for any business dealing in the digital age, and a proper view of just how secure the protection for you is prompts the need for proper software to inspect the entire system, especially with endpoint audit and remediation. A cybercrime can cause a customer loss of up to 41 percent, a reputation loss of 34 percent, and an operating loss of 34 percent.

If you’re managing a large team, or even a small one, having an enterprise-level task management solution is super helpful. A task management system can help keep your employees organized and helps managers track projects to keep up to date and make sure things are moving along well. 

A task management system helps teams work better and more efficiently, organizes projects into boards so tasks can be done as simply as possible, and does all this without the use of spreadsheets, updates, or emails which can bog down many projects in a business.

The competition to get to the top above all others is strong for any business. Oftentimes you will find that the competition is ruthless and uncaring. To properly function in this environment, you must be rightfully prepared. Investing in these five technologies will prepare you for the long road ahead as a business. It will also help you not be a statistic of failure. Rather, you will be one of the few that succeeds in today’s competitive world.