admin Technology is on the rise. The rising levels of technology has impacted all sectors of businesses. They are now facing a situation where the changing landscape of technology is forcing businesses all over to adapt, transform and grow. Businesses are transitioning from the back room of an organisation directly into the hands of the customers, employees and society. Fast paced development cycles, disruptive business models and increased competition are underlining the increasingly essential role of technology and automation in business. This essentially means that the success of business in the current world heavily relies on the optimal and proper usage of technology.
Technology has brought about a revolution in business as we know it; business leaders and companies across numerous industries are looking to harness it for various reasons like improvement of their workforce, building brand recognition and strengthening their sales line. Some areas in which technology has transformed businesses include accounting, data collection, sales and digital promotion. Some of the actions of technology in business include accounting systems, management information systems, point of sales systems, and other simpler or more complicated tools. Indeed, one of the earliest business technologies ever used was the calculator.
Here are some ways that technology has fundamentally changed business (for better or worse).
- Communication
If sales is the backbone of a business, then communication is its nervous system. Communication and the sharing of information are critical for every business. The technology that we have today makes communication and sharing of information unimaginably fast, tremendously precise and way more versatile. With applications like Slack, Zoom, Microsoft Teams, social media platforms, chatbots, and more being leveraged daily, supported by the sophisticated hardware like mobile phones and tablets that can run these applications seamlessly, it has made the lives of businesses much easier. Communication is effective when technology makes use of customer information to help create posts and messages tailored specifically for them. Ability to automate communications using a variety of channels like emails and SMSs help businesses boost marketing productivity and reach customers. It has bridged the gap between companies and customers, which ultimately helps in creating brand recognition and awareness.
- Artificial Intelligence
Artificial Intelligence has been in the news a lot lately. And for good reason. What was once considered science fiction is slowly becoming a possibility. However, AI of real world may not be as flashy as those depicted in movies, games and books, but their functions and capabilities are nevertheless impressive. AI is mostly used hand in hand with machine learning; massive amounts of data are processed quickly and put into digestible context for people. They consume the data and give out information which can be further processed by different AI for forecasting and predictions. For instance, banking and investment firms can leverage machine learning models to predict how well a particular investment is going to do based on historical data. They are also used in chatbots to accurately answer customer queries. This helps in immediately transforming a site visitor to an actual customer. AI is coming along at lightning speed, and although the effect is unknown at this point, it will likely have a significant impact on the economy.
- Cloud Computing and Digital Transformation
The rate of change is accelerating faster than ever before. Digital Transformation “drives foundational change in how an organisation operates, optimises internal resources, and delivers value to customers. Cloud technologies provide the foundation for becoming more agile, collaborative and customer focused”. Cloud computing has become increasingly popular and major companies in various sectors like automobile manufacturing, food and beverages, airlines, etc are moving from traditional on-premise systems to cloud systems. Cloud systems allow businesses to move some of their operations to third party servers accessible via Internet connectivity. This allows for variable data packages and rapid (on-demand) expansion and mobility without the fear of downtime, crashes, or permanently lost data. Companies adopting the cloud can innovate quickly, scale efficiently and even bring new market capabilities more quickly. This has had an interesting side effect which majorly benefits small and medium sized businesses. As major corporations are now moving to cloud, the demand for on premise systems have gone down, and thus have become cheaper. This allows small to medium sized businesses access to resources that would have been pretty expensive for them in the past. It has evened the playing field when competing against corporations with far more funding. Small and medium sized businesses too can now take advantage of technology that was previously out of reach for them.
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