Top 5 IT Investment Stories Small and Medium Business Leaders Are Reading (2022 Edition)

As the 2022 calendar year comes to a close, small and medium businesses (SMBs) such as yours are likely planning ahead for the new year. Whether your financial and operational plans are fully finalized or still being adjusted, there is one line item that doesn’t cost anything: curiosity. Smart businesses recognize how important it is to constantly champion creative, innovative ideas that can lead to growth—even if it will take a while to fully realize.

Turning a curious thought or vision into reality doesn’t need to be difficult. Seeking inspiration on how you can reduce IT costs, improve scalability, better understand your customers, and more? Read our most-viewed stories of the past year. The value of these stories is that they cover topics SMB operational leaders like you care most about while having enough thought starters to share with your more technical counterparts.

At Amazon Web Services, we recognize SMBs face their own unique challenges and hope these stories help you define where investment is needed to achieve business success.

If you’re curious about the impact of inflation on IT…

Five Ways Smart Businesses Can Drive Greater Efficiency Amid Rising Costs

By: Michael Wegmann

Much of 2022 saw significant economic fluctuations—from stock exchanges, to raw materials, to grocery store shelves, and more. The economic uncertainty is typically felt most by those who are resource-constrained and cannot easily absorb extra costs. Read author Michael’s perspective on how SMBs can optimize their business strategies to find opportunities during volatile times.

If you’re curious about reducing IT costs…

How E-Commerce Companies Can Optimize Cost with Serverless Technologies

By: Malini Chatterjee and Mike Tuszynski

If you’re an SMB retailer that sells physical goods, this blog post will help you understand foundational concepts in how you can restructure inventory management to save money. The authors, Malini and Mike, even included a pricing table (in USD) to show the estimated cost savings.

How to Manage Cloud Costs for Your Small or Medium Business

By: Patrick Duffy and Bani Sharma

Are you totally new to the cloud computing pricing model or hoping to better understand what business benefits it offers? Let authors, Patrick and Bani, show you the difference in pricing models which can impact your bottom-line. They cover the top five key performance indicators SMBs should measure, how to analyze billing data, and ways to optimize costs.

If you are curious about how to plan the most efficient cloud migration…

How to Simplify Your Cloud Migration with SMART Goals

By: Mahesh Biradar and Jim Fernandes

At AWS, we help our customers plan for strategic growth, rather than provide purely tactical IT recommendations. Whether your SMB is planning its first or fourth workload migration to the cloud, having clear, measurable goals will keep all teams accountable. In this blog post, authors, Mahesh and Jim, apply a classic SMART framework to cloud migration and provide examples of how you can achieve this, even if you do not have in-house IT staff.

If you’re curious about scaling your business…

Five Ways Small and Medium Businesses Can Better Understand Their Customers

By: Pierre Semaan, Siddhesh Jog, and Aman Sharma

Customer intelligence is one of the many keys to improving sales and reducing acquisition costs, but few SMBs have the staff or technical resources to act upon that data. Authors Pierre, Siddhesh, and Aman demonstrate how SMBs can work toward a full understanding of their customers with scalable AWS solutions. They discuss how businesses can start with basic customer profiles (using raw data) and eventually use time, location, and activity to anticipate needs.

Next steps

Don’t let your curiosity and enthusiasm diminish—we can help you make sense of your business requirements to meet your goals for 2023 and beyond. If you’re ready to connect, speak with an SMB cloud expert. Still trying to learn about the value of cloud computing for your business? Take a closer look at AWS Smart Business for basic cloud computing benefits, specific use cases, and relatable customer stories.