Old adages often ring as true now as when they were first spoken or written. In business, if you stand still, you are going backwards. As a technician, if you fail to plan you might as well be planning to fail. It is becoming increasingly more critical for businesses to evolve as technology develops in the digital age. Necessity is, after all, the mother of invention.
Put simply, if they do not evolve with the latest technology, they will get left behind. This applies to any company in any industry. It is the same whether a company has to react to changes in Google’s search engine ranking algorithms or find cleaner ways of burning fuel. Failure to adapt to new ways of thinking, new protocols and new systems – not to mention challenges presented by COVID-19 – could spell the end for a business with its head metaphorically buried in the sand.
All businesses must strive for continual improvement. Improvement in every area – from cutting costs to working efficiently to delivering the best product or service for their clients that they can. Technology – if harnessed well – can be enormously beneficial for companies looking to evolve. It can help them find more leads, win more clients, complete more sales and ultimately drive up turnover and profitability.
Technology has changed the way the world now does business. The traditional 9-5 working day barely exists anymore. Workers can now process emails and perform multiple other tasks wherever they are using mobile phones or tablets. Video and voice calling is now secure and reliable. Technicians have even built bespoke solutions enabling people to work from home as if they were in the office. Remote access was once complicated to set up and hard to use. No longer is that the case.
How businesses communicate has also gone through a rapid transformation. Social media gives everyone a voice and enables companies to reach a wider audience. Smart technicians have learnt how to harness that voice and reach their target market on a variety of platforms.
The rapid proliferation of online chatbots means businesses can interact with website visitors in a way that was never previously possible. They even make possible interactions outside of regular opening hours. However, technicians need to build, maintain and refine these chatbots and the software that drives them to make sure they are useful and they accurately respond to customers’ demands.
Customers are smart. They will notice when a company – perhaps by looking at its website or seeing its social media activity – is not keeping up with the latest technological developments. A variation on another old cliché rings true here: it only takes one bad decision to lose a reputation built up by many good ones. Once you lose a customer to a competitor, you may not get them back.
If all of a sudden, your competitors – or even market leaders – are taking advantage of new technology and you are not, then you could be in trouble. Those companies that do not evolve, do not ask enough questions of their technicians or do not take enough interest in developing trends are the ones at risk.
There are plenty of examples to back this up. One of the most significant potential growth areas is automation and business intelligence (BI). It might still be relatively new for some, but technicians should already be thinking about how their businesses can fully capitalise on this potential. Automation of certain tasks could, for example, free up skilled workers to spend time on other tasks and boost productivity. BI and machine learning could eliminate the need for specific other tasks entirely.
What is more, successful implementation of business intelligence and machine learning enables companies to handle more data more reliably and quicker than when it was done manually. By designing user-friendly interfaces, technicians can even allow employees access to datasets and the information it holds, enabling them to make better decisions. In turn, technicians’ time, rather than answering repetitive queries, can be better spent learning about the latest technology and how it can be applied to the business.
Cloud computing is another massive development that has changed the way businesses operate. Sharing documents used to be cumbersome and finding physical room to store data was difficult. That should no longer be a concern as cloud storage offers a secure way of managing and storing everything a business needs. It makes that data much easier and quicker to access, and it is especially useful for those companies who need to handle a lot of data.
In fact, cloud computing has facilitated big data developments. Big data will continue to get bigger as technology evolves to capture, process and make sense of more of it. With cloud storage, companies should not need to worry about where to store it. That is excellent news for business because the more data that a company can use before making a decision, the better.
For some time now, the internet of things (IoT) has been talked about as one of the most significant technological revolutions the world will ever see. It is here already, even if just in its early stages. Major companies have made significant moves in this domain, and it is set to become incredibly competitive. What company wouldn’t want to benefit from customers or potential customers having access to their products from the comfort of their own home?
There are now growing demands on businesses to ensure that everything they do carries a high level of security. This is more about necessity demanding evolution. Adhering to the latest security requirements is not possible without technicians putting in place new systems to ensure that data and source code is kept safe.
In fact, the more platforms and software that technicians develop, the more potential threats there are. This should inspire technicians to focus more on security than ever before. After all, businesses cannot evolve without deploying more and more technology but to do so, they must have the right security framework in place.
At the end of the day, companies must evolve with technology because their customers will come to expect them to. They will stand out if they do not. Technicians must, therefore, invest time and resources to develop tools that use the latest technology to push the company on, keeping it relevant, satisfying the needs of its customers and driving more sales.