Like a home, your business needs to be built on the right foundation. Without concrete, wood, and metal to build on, the structures of the home — its walls, fixtures, and roof! — would collapse.

If you think about building your business like building a home, you’ll need to get set up on technology with the right features to lay a strong, yet flexible foundation so that when you grow from five to 50 or from 50 to 200, your business can weather through any season (and the competition!) and still be standing tall. Ask yourself these 4 questions to make sure your technology has the features to build your business on the right foundation for future growth:

1. Is it mobile?

To successfully get your business up and running, you’ll need to make sure you and your team are using technology that enables collaboration and can easily be set up anytime and anywhere.

When you adopt technology that is mobile, your productivity increases. Whether you’re on the road or in the office, you can run your business from a simple, yet powerful mobile app and know your teammates can do the same. And with a cloud-based solution, you don’t have to be the one managing hardware and software; you can access software from anywhere while it’s hosted from an outside party. Now, your small business doesn’t need to run on the time of “experts” who would take time to configure, test, run, and update applications. You can start instantly on a flexible, versatile, easy-to-use platform from wherever you are.

2. Can it scale as you grow?

When you’re building a small business, you need to make sure you’re mindful of the future and that your technology is scalable. The more customers, employees, and processes that you add into the mix, the more robust features you’ll need. You shouldn’t need to worry about changing systems and processes entirely while you scale. Instead, you’ll need a technology that scales with you from the beginning, meaning a system that supports adding or subtracting users over time and easily integrates with other apps to make your processes more efficient.

3. Is it secure?

If you’re using spreadsheets or sticky notes to keep track of your contacts, opportunities, leads, customers, and other data, how do you know that you’re using a trustworthy system? The truth is, you don’t. Your data and your customers’ data can be copied, shared, and taken any time. To build your business on a stable foundation, it needs to have a core value — trust. All your information (and your customers’ information) should always be stored on a secure system.

4. Is it using Artificial Intelligence?

Sometimes it’s not about working hard; it’s about working smart. In order to be innovative and competitive in our data-driven, fast-paced world, you’ll need to be make sure your technology can automate manual processes and automatically surface insights while you focus on what’s more important — fostering customer relationships. With Artificial Intelligence, you’ll be able to dig deep into insights, serve your customers better, be prepared for anything that comes your way, and understand the “why” behind every outcome.

Looking for one technology that includes all these must-have features? Learn all about our newest CRM for small businesses, Salesforce Essentials, and how it can help small businesses grow by downloading our new e-book "Getting to Know Salesforce Essentials."

Salesforce can help you find customers, win their businesses, and keep them happy so you can grow your business faster than ever. Learn more about our small business CRM solutions or follow us on Twitter @SalesforceSMB and join the conversation with #SalesforceGROW.