Paying for a cup of coffee on an iPad is mainstream in big cities, but the majority of small businesses — the backbone of our local economies — have not yet fully come online. And as e-commerce outfits increasingly follow Amazon’s lead in adopting a purely data-driven model to provide greater value in the face of squeezed margins, retailers and service providers that don’t embrace technology will be at a major disadvantage. Small businesses like restaurants, which have an 80% failure rate in the first five years, are some of the most challenged in curbing inefficiency and meeting the rising expectations of tech-empowered customers.