SmartBiz: How To Help Small Businesses in Your Community Thrive

Small businesses are the bedrock of our society, fueling local economies and helping communities flourish. The odds are also stacked against them. Of the 33.2 million small businesses across the United States, it’s estimated that only half will survive more than five years. Business owners face a long list of challenges—finding the right productivity solutions to support their growth is yet another issue they must tackle.
 

As their local broadband service provider (BSP), you are well positioned to help them improve their chances of success. With Calix SmartBiz™, you can offer a managed productivity service that addresses small business internet requirements, whether they’re a pizza place, boutique, auto repair shop, or accounting firm.

Purpose-Built for Small Businesses

Until recently, small businesses never had a productivity solution that was “just right” for their needs. Their options were either repurposed residential products or complex, expensive enterprise-grade solutions. SmartBiz allows you to offer an in-demand managed service that is purpose-built for small businesses—packaging Wi-Fi, network security, and business productivity on top of high-speed internet access. SmartBiz delivers:

• Dedicated networks ensuring that different users—business owner, staff, point-of-sale (PoS), and customers or guests—have appropriate access to the network resources and business systems they need.
  
  
• Robust network security that protects staff, critical business infrastructure, and customers from cyberattacks, with content restrictions tailored for the business.
  
  
• Network resiliency that ensures critical business systems stay up and running—and productive—no matter what.
  
  
• A customizable customer Wi-Fi portal improving the guest experience with safe, secure Wi-Fi while building brand loyalty and providing insights for future marketing activity.
  
  
• An intuitive mobile app that simplifies how business owners self-manage their service, while reducing support calls for their BSP.
   

With SmartBiz, you can give small businesses critical productivity capabilities without the need for dedicated IT staff or the hefty price tag typically associated with such solutions. And because they no longer have to worry about IT, they can focus on what they do best: growing their business.

Get Into Market Quickly With a Differentiated Offering

You finally have an offering that allows you to capitalize on the lucrative small business opportunity. But that’s just one piece of the go-to-market puzzle. As a marketer, you need to identify potential subscribers for your service, develop materials that clearly convey your value proposition, and drive high-impact campaigns to capture mindshare and market share.
 

Introducing a new service—or, in some cases, entering a new market segment—may seem daunting, but Calix works with BSP marketers to simplify the process and get you into market quickly:

1. Leverage data-driven insights to identify potential small business customers. Calix Marketing Cloud enriches subscriber experience insights with demographic, psychographic, and geographic data to help you easily find small businesses that could benefit from SmartBiz, either in your current service area or in new geographies. Once you’ve identified your prospects, you can reach them—in just a few clicks—with tailored communications via their preferred channel.
   
   
2. Wow small businesses with high-impact, agency-quality marketing materials. You don’t need a Madison Avenue agency when you have the Calix Market Activation Program and Electronic Content Builder. Calix delivers sophisticated, ready-made marketing materials for SmartBiz, including a launch campaign, web template, social and email assets, how-to videos, and more. All you need to do is customize them with your brand and you’re ready to wow.
   
   
3. Take advantage of expert guidance and best practices. Smart Start for Managed Services ensures you can plan, launch, support and grow managed services like SmartBiz quickly and with confidence. Calix Customer Success experts help you align and enable your teams with a cross-organizational, step-by-step blueprint to successfully introduce new services in your market.
    

Although small businesses have long been overlooked by the technology sector, BSPs finally have a purpose-built managed service that provides the business productivity services small businesses need to thrive. With SmartBiz, you can develop a differentiated offering that moves you ahead of the competition and improves the odds for small businesses in your community. Now that’s a winning proposition.

Learn how you can meet the needs of small businesses in your community. Download our eBook “How Broadband Service Providers Can Become the Catalyst for Small Business Growth.”