The Three Killer Small Biz Apps Coming in 2012

Charlie Sheen and the manufacturers of Two And A Half Men, unable to disregard the riches of any other season, will, in the end, reconcile. The latest Pirates of the Caribbean movie will bomb. The Mets will not make the playoffs. President Obama will win the Democratic primaries. I will pay extra for medical health insurance, not much less. Check returned and spot if I’m right on these. I’m quite confident. But no longer as optimistic as I am, approximately a few developments will affect my company and small and medium-sized groups. In the subsequent years, I predict that at least three killer apps will emerge as a good way to have an extensive effect on us all. Are you ready for them?

Killer App #1: Mobile bills

I recently observed an extraordinary way to keep the money. I don’t deliver coins. This way, none of my teenage children can dig into my pockets after I’m no longer around and walk away with ten-dollar payments to fund their pizza restore. Instead, all they find are useless credit score playing cards. Well, in more than a year, they might be unable to locate those. That’s because I’ll be doing all of it on my phone. As will most of my clients.

First, a few data. Information Week says that 38% of small and medium-sized agencies already rely on cellular apps. American Express is running on a brand-new e-wallet utility. Microsoft, Apple, and Google are implementing near-discipline communications (NFC) technology for cell payments in their next products. As we talk, Google is checking out an Android payment device in New York and San Francisco. PayPal is teaming up with innovative agencies like Blingnation to carry mobile bills to its customers.

Mobile payments are the following killer app. How will it all work? It’s no longer that complex. Your purchaser’s credit score facts will be embedded in a comfy application on their phone. You could have a wireless terminal connected to your cash check or stand on your own, so one can communicate with their telephone the usage of NFC generation, or something similar, to transmit data. Using the contact screen or camera on the cell tool, the technology may additionally include fingerprint, eye test, or some different kind of security is important. Your purchaser waves her phone over the terminal. The transaction is recorded. A receipt gets mailed all around. The transaction hits your bank account and accounting software program without greater human interaction.

Is your commercial enterprise-ready for this? You surely have to be. Quickly, a consumer will stroll on your door and ask to pay for a product using her telephone. At first, she’ll apprehend while you inform her that you won’t be given payments that way. But after some time, while more and more of your competition and different businesses are taking smart telephone payments, she will prevent being so patient with you and take her commercial enterprise elsewhere.

Will this value us extra? What do you think? Of direction, it’ll! We’ll pay the masses for new smartphone scanners, sign on for services, and absorb extra fees and costs. You realize this is going to happen. You recognize that the folks who are genuinely going to get rich are the corporations I cited above. But it may not stop us because we will need to offer this functionality to our customers in a good way to live aggressively. It may additionally even force more enterprise our way. And save a touch of time in processing, too. We’ll see.

Killer App #2: Lockers

Last week, Amazon announced that it would offer its clients as much as 20GB of storage for something they want – songs, videos, ebooks, etc. They name it a “cloud locker.” One issue’s for certain – this locker will scent a lot better than my gymnasium locker. And say what you want approximately Amazon, but these men no longer only spot trends well in advance; in addition, they start traits in their personal. I never idea humans would move for ebooks when they had been first introduced. Now I see that Amazon bought around 8 million Kindles in 2010. It shows how a lot I understand.

But I do know this: the storage area is cheap. And finding new clients is high-priced. So we’re constantly searching out approaches to hold our customers close to us. And what better way to keep them near than offering them “lockers” to store their stuff? It makes it simpler for them to return to us to shop for new merchandise. That Jeff Bezos is a clever dude. And the reality that he’s bald makes me like him much more.

Call it anything you need to name it. However, many clever business people will start imparting some “lockers” to their clients in the coming years. Not only for track or ebooks. But to shop prices, estimates, invoices, orders, documentation, photographs, etc. For example, once I sell a new software utility to a purchaser, I would create a personalized “locker” wherein they can download their ultra-modern updates, manuals, schooling courses, and all of our paperwork. It continues them tied into my agency. And it’s an additional fee-add: clients may not worry about storing all these items and might effortlessly get entry from our website. And if I want to provide some extra products as incentives, I can do this too. Each consumer could have their own space on our servers (or some server I rent somewhere) with their admission.

Killer App # 3: Apps

Another killer app? Apps.

Ask Jonathan Rochelle, a Group Product Manager for Google. “Business software program is going via a platform shift to the Web,” he stated in the latest interview. “As that happens, all earlier software can be re-wondered. So, there are opportunities for the guy who writes the software that facilitates a dentist’s workplace. The guy who writes the utility helps you run your hardware store or enables a journalist to be more efficient. The largest possibility is delivering pleasant software in that area of interest classes on this new Web platform. Web-based software is a lot less costly for customers than traditional software programs, and programmers may be a lot more progressive, so it’s worthwhile for an entrepreneur to mention, OK, permit’s begin from scratch.”

I don’t consider the entirety, he says. I don’t assume most small enterprise proprietors could trust a few guys to write an app that runs their whole enterprise. It’s in all likelihood because I promote commercial enterprise software, and that idea scares the you-recognize-what out of me! But I assume that Rochelle hits on the following killer app to affect many of us. And that killer app is…Apps.

Please look around; most massive corporations create little apps for their clients. Airlines have apps for us to look up flights, look at instances, and even use our telephones as boarding passes. Restaurants have apps for ordering and checking menu gadgets. Whole Foods, ESPN, and FedEx have apps. And did not I see a business where a father in London uses an app to turn the ignition of his Buick so his teenage daughter can take it out for a joyride with her buddies? Is she removing a Buick for a joy ride? What a loser!