One of the first benefactors of the rise of digital technologies, Microsoft are the team behind many of the operating systems from which individuals and businesses work. Moreover, Microsoft has busied itself, in the past two decades, with the task of producing ever-more impressive software solutions for businesses to use.
It’s in light of the wide array of solutions on offer from Microsoft that this article is composed, looking at how Microsoft software can help your ecommerce business. Read on to learn how to leverage Microsoft products for your online company in 2020.
Windows
Asking how Microsoft can benefit a business is similar to asking how humans can benefit from the air. Microsoft is so deeply embedded in our digital world that it’s difficult to extricate yourself from their near-monopoly of software provisions. One such area of dominance is in operating systems – with Windows the predominant OS in the world. That’s no surprise, seeing as it comes as a standard feature of nearly all laptops sold around the world.
Already, then, you’ll be getting a sense of just how vital Microsoft is for businesses in the modern era. They’re indispensable, and seeing as businesses are already based on their operating system, in the form of various iterations of Windows, it can seem like a no-brainer to further invest in Microsoft software solutions. When you’re using a system optimized for those Microsoft products, this can seem like a no-brainer.
Office
From the most-used operating system in the world, Microsoft also provides the most-used set of programs in the world. Microsoft Office has been used by nearly every human on the planet. Indeed, if you’ve touched a computer or laptop, you’re probably typed on Word, entered numbers in Excel, and placed pictures and graphics on PowerPoint. Having set the agenda for business software since the inception of the field, Microsoft’s dominance in this area is clear.
For ecommerce businesses, though, these programs may seem unnecessary. After all, your business is based online, and you’re trading almost exclusively through different software solutions, many of them based online, which help you connect with target consumers on ecommerce platforms. And yet, you’ll always find yourself returning to these core programs – to draft a letter, to make a spreadsheet, or to create a presentation to show off your ecommerce site.
Advanced Technologies
Microsoft has also been at the forefront of several revolutions in the world if IT in the past three decades. Perhaps the most recent of these revolutions – and certainly one of the most far-reaching – has been the advent of the cloud. As any small business owner will know, being able to save documents onto the cloud, and then access them from anywhere, on any device, is a huge change from the times during which we carried around USB sticks with data on them.
Microsoft, of course, offers its own cloud, which can be incredibly helpful for dynamic and agile small businesses. Your enterprise certainly saves documents onto the cloud; the problem is, there are several different cloud providers, and all of them are competitive in their offerings. If you’re concerned about which cloud-based software to use, contact experts at Bytes, who work with many ecommerce businesses to find the best fit for your enterprise.
Creative Software
There are several different options when it comes to creative software to use in your digital marketing, branding, and self-promotion. Many ecommerce sites, or those who sell products on ecommerce platforms, prefer to edit their own pictures and videos to enhance their sales and to encourage more customers to interact with their brand. They might use free software online to perform these actions, or they might download a software solution from the internet to help them make stunning content.
As you may know, Microsoft can bring a lot of benefits to an ecommerce company or any small company that’s looking for an accessible creative software suite to help it boost revenues through marketing. Look online to understand the breadth of Microsoft’s offerings in this regard. You’ll be surprised to find the likes of Movie Maker are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to Microsoft’s provisions in the creative software space.
Advanced Analytics
Microsoft is also leading in the battle to make the most of the digital revolution’s datasets. Data is often regarded as one of the key drivers of digital change, helping companies better understand the customers that they’re trying to target. Indeed, for ecommerce businesses especially, understanding the digital footprint of their customers can help them change their product lines, and adapt their marketing output, to attract further custom to their brand and their website.
Here, it’s once again Microsoft that offers some pretty impressive software provisions to help you crunch the numbers. By no means the only provider – you may prefer to use different suites of solutions – Microsoft has the benefit of being interoperable with several different Microsoft programs. For instance, you can export your datasets neatly into Microsoft Excel, which makes for smart and elegant spreadsheets. Look into Microsoft’s analytics software to help you make the most of the data you own.
Conclusion
There’s no doubt that Microsoft has its competitors in the modern era of business. Indeed, if there’s one certainty of the digital age, it’s that upstarts and innovators are giving the incumbents in each industry a run for their money, requiring them to find new ways to adapt and remain relevant in a time of profound change and upheaval.
But, as this article hopes to have illustrated, Microsoft remains a firm favorite of hundreds of businesses for a reason: it’s familiar, sensible, and easy to use. As such, Microsoft can bring a host of benefits to any ambitious ecommerce business, from mapping out your sales data, to drafting marketing material, saving your files onto the cloud, and using advanced analytics to understand the inner workings of your business that bit better for the future.
In this article, you’ll have learned about some of the key ways in which Microsoft can help grow your business. For ecommerce businesses, and other small enterprises, the software giant is still well worth investing in to help propel your business forward.