3 Enterprise-Level Tools That Mid-Sized Companies Can Benefit From

Making a successful leap from a small business to a thriving, mid-sized one is worth celebrating. That doesn’t mean you are done growing. If anything, your company is probably actively looking for ways to diversify and expand. You may be adding employees, changing the strategic direction of some business units, or upgrading your brand’s look and feel.

All these activities and changes can call for a shift in how your company thinks about and uses technology. Enterprise-level tools and software solutions aren’t just for large conglomerates. You might be surprised to learn that you can scale down many of these tools to suit your medium-sized business needs.

It’s often the features of these enterprise-level tools that mid-tier business owners find necessary to support growth, efficiency, and collaboration. Medium businesses can benefit from enterprise tech tools related to data observability, website optimization, and cybersecurity.

1. Data Observability

Almost every organization collects, stores, and uses data. So you need a way to manage all that information. Data observability tools monitor the overall health of your company’s data by making sure data pipelines are running smoothly and reliably. With the power and sophistication of artificial intelligence, observability software can scan and sync information across multiple systems.

Chances are, you’ve got data on premise and in the cloud. You may have an older database program you’ve used to document and store information. Your IT team may have not got around to migrating the information from the older database yet.

In any of these scenarios, your data can have discrepancies that may lead to costly problems. Data observability tools predict and flag issues before they cause mistakes and unplanned outages. This type of data operations solution optimizes the information your company has and improves its quality, accuracy, and reliability. Without observability tools, you run the risk of not knowing what data you have, its sources, and whether it is trustworthy.

2. Website Optimization and Conversion

Your website may be the first interaction potential customers have with your company. Everything from its design to the copy can influence whether visitors decide to keep engaging with your business. Current customers also rely on parts of your website for self-service and information gathering.

If you don’t know how people are interacting with your site and its content, you won’t know whether it’s effective. Website optimization and conversion tools like heat maps and analytics can paint a picture of how visitors behave on your site. For instance, with heat maps, you can see what design elements and content are attracting the most attention. Heat maps show the level of activity for various areas of your website, such as images and separate content.

From this data, you can see whether there’s increased activity when you launch a new set of promotions. You can gauge varying interest levels for different specials or discount offers. This data may augment the information you’re collecting from customer surveys. The details could also reveal insights about your customers’ behaviors that survey questions miss.

Website analytics can supplement the data from heat maps. These tools calculate the conversion rates for individual landing pages and separate call-to-action buttons.

With optimization and conversion solutions, you can experiment with different wording on landing pages and CTA buttons. Your marketing department can run A/B tests to determine which words had a greater impact on conversion rates. This way you’ll gain knowledge of what works for your leads and customers, allowing you to adjust tactics and strategies.

Reporting features are also built into website optimization and conversion tools. You can track and compare the results of various A/B tests and conversion rates for different campaigns and test periods. This type of information is invaluable for gauging the viability and effectiveness of your marketing and promotional efforts.

3. Cybersecurity and Compliance

There’s a reason why enterprise-level security and compliance tools are built to be robust. Large companies have a lot of sensitive data that make them attractive targets for cybercriminals. But small and medium-sized organizations can be even more appealing for several reasons. One of these is that smaller companies usually have lesser IT resources.

Your technical team could probably be small in size and overtaxed. Cybercriminals count on this when they attempt to attack or breach medium-sized companies. Research shows that 52% of small and medium-sized businesses lack in-house cybersecurity experts. Criminals also assume you don’t have the same level of security tools to prevent and monitor potential attacks.

Enterprise-level cybersecurity and compliance solutions do more than scan for malware and potential network intrusions. This technology can detect vulnerabilities in your IT infrastructure and systems. It can show you what your tech team needs to prioritize and fix while assessing your company’s existing IT resources.

Regardless of its location, every single device that connects to your network is included within these detection and monitoring capabilities. Some solutions simulate various types of cyberattacks on your networked resources, including servers.

A few security and compliance packages can also scan and monitor your organization’s software licenses and versions. This can help your tech team identify which software may be out of date or failing compliance. The team can run reports and receive alerts instead of manually auditing every machine and piece of software.

Concerned about your employees’ level of knowledge when it comes to phishing and social engineering attempts? There are security and compliance tools that run simulations to help identify where those knowledge gaps exist. These tools can provide hands-on training opportunities that supplement certification or professional development courses. As phishing, social engineering, and other cybersecurity threats have become common, enterprise-level cybersecurity tools are a must if you can afford them.

Final Thoughts

Just because certain tech has been labeled an “enterprise” solution, it shouldn’t scare you away if you own a medium-sized business. You can customize many of these tools for current organizational needs and modify them as you grow.

Medium-sized businesses deal with many of the same challenges as larger companies. This includes issues like data quality, converting online leads, and cybersecurity threats. It’s enterprise-level solutions that can provide the features necessary to overcome large-scale obstacles successfully.