Business Is Changing Due to Technology | For about a century following the Industrial Revolution, business as usual prevailed, but that is unlikely to happen again. The rate at which technology is evolving, changing, and adapting, especially in the year 2020, is exponential, and it will carry you along with it whether you like it or not.
If you had access to a time machine and traveled back fewer than 10 years, you would be surprised to see:
- Not having a single, unified platform for all company communications (like Slack) hinders productivity across the board.
- The lack of innovative company marketing platforms like Instagram.
- There is no voice shopping or product information searching via the Internet of Things.
- Short-form video sharing is underutilized in both personal and professional settings.
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Never before in history has technology altered every facet of a company’s operations so rapidly.
1. The Way We Share Information and Communicate
Every business has to communicate. Technology makes everything faster, easier, and more efficient. We all have benefits and cons to using Slack, Zoom, Microsoft Teams, social media platforms, chatbots, and more. Sales enablement tracks buyer-seller conversations and analyzes user activity. Deeper intelligence makes it easy to gather customer data and improve customer experience.
Technology that uses client data to personalize messaging improves communication. Automated communications over several channels enhance marketing productivity and client reach. We must be careful not to lose consumer relationships and the personal touch in our businesses.
2. Mobile-First Businesses
Mobile-First will stay. Smart devices or tablets with the correct software offer remote management of all company aspects. Sales enablement, content marketing, customer interactions, shipping, and invoicing are all clickable. Your customers use mobile too. Millennials are using mobile devices to purchase, sell, shop, find local companies, and share their retail experiences with friends, acquaintances, prospects, and even Instagram strangers every day.
This paradigm has rewritten prospect marketing. Technology makes communication easier. Mobile technology and communication software have created a hyper-real web of real-time information, allowing you to text/video chat with coworkers at any time or send targeted promotional email blasts to prequalified customers shopping at nearby businesses.
3. Permitting Telecommuting
Covid-19 promoted telecommuting. Likely good:
To keep projects operating and statuses updated, companies needed remote log-ins, video conferencing bandwidth, and project management solutions quickly. Not hours. Better now. Production rises. A two-year Stanford study found that remote workers worked an extra day per week! Real estate, carbon emissions, agility, and scalability decreased.
4. Application of AI
AI is widespread and changing business and consumer sectors. Technology has revolutionized company procedures in practically every industry and is essential for staying competitive. AI can be used in machine learning, security, CRM, finance, and real estate. AI tracks buyers’ search behaviors, and views, and opens to anticipate their desire to buy in sales enablement. Some worry that AI will eliminate jobs, but the general consensus is that new jobs and functions will be needed to adapt. People will need to integrate AI-replaced workflows. AI is developing rapidly and may have a major impact on the economy.
5. Cost/Functional Improvement
Commercial software’s “buyer’s market” is due to two things. Hardware and software make software development easier and cheaper. Second, tech-savvy and entrepreneurial minds have proliferated to exploit such dropping impediments. A few college graduates can construct a back-end inventory system in two weeks which took a multi-million-dollar organization a year. These solutions don’t require expert staff or long-term service contracts.
6. Enhanced Collaboration
Due to the impossibility to talk in the break room, visiting a coworker’s office, or meeting in a whiteboard conference room, collaboration has increased. According to McKinsey Global Institutes, 60% of work time is spent collaborating, learning, or communicating. Google Drive/Docs, Slack, Microsoft SharePoint, and OneDrive, Monday.com, and others are used by companies. These simplify team discussions, file sharing, project collaboration, tasks, and storage. Aligning people and goals with these technology improves efficiency.