Technology is rapidly reshaping our everyday lives, providing us with greater access to information and allowing us near-seamless communication with anyone, anywhere, at any time.
We tend to perceive the digital and technological drive towards transformation as a possible threat to our ordinary and seemingly nostalgic way of life. Yet, technology has enabled us to better understand our planet and those around us. It’s helped us create a better understanding of life and everything that makes us human. It’s allowed us to make faster, better, and more accurate data-driven decisions and mitigate the potential of long-term risks.
For all of this to happen, continuous investment in innovation and the masterminds behind them ensures that humanity, in collaboration with machines and Artificial Intelligence (AI) can reach further parts of the universe, come up with better solutions to social and inequality issues, and act as the pivotal moment that enables us to enter a new digital era.
Implementing Technology in Your Business
With all of this technology, endless digital tools, reams of data, and countless resources, why wouldn’t you want to invest in the potential of technology and the future of your business? While an important question to ask, the more important thing to consider is what tools you have available and how they will help increase employee satisfaction, drive customer engagement, and improve overall productivity.
Technology helps to reshape our way of thinking, interacting, working, and communicating. Already, businesses are seeing the potential of technology on a wider scale and leveraging new tools to help scale their business, increase market share, and put them ahead of their competitors.
As a result, more than half of business owners - 56 percent - have recently reported that they have started increasing their investment in technology, according to a report by cloud-based accounting conglomerate Xero.
Following this, a robust 40 percent have mentioned that they strongly intend to further build on their technological investing in the year ahead, purely as these tools are helping them reach new customers, increase their market presentation, and help scale their business.
For any business owner, introducing a new strategy, concept, or idea often requires careful consideration. Understanding your organization’s strengths and weaknesses can help identify new opportunities and help you and others pay close attention to potential risks, including cybersecurity pitfalls and malicious cyber threats.
ExpressVPN just earlier this year published research on 2024 scams to be aware of and found out how American adults lost more than $2.7 billion last year on social media scams and fraud. This alarming amount is only set to increase in the coming years as more people begin to use technology for everyday activities and companies and governments continue to digitize their infrastructure.
Through the right tools and facilitating training sessions for employees, without having to disrupt day-to-day workflow or further increase budget expenditure, your company can develop a digital transformation strategy that increases employee output, boosts productivity, and promotes overall team engagement.
How Does New Technology in the Workplace Benefit Employees?
Whether you employ a handful of people or are in the process of rapidly growing your employee headcount, right off the bat, it’s important to consider how new workplace technology will affect, benefit, and influence the way staffers are working, communicating and engaging with their peers and your customers.
Increased Workflow
Your employees’ time is valuable, and often, the disconnection is that with technology, employees will have more work on their hands instead of alleviating their workloads - although this isn’t always the case. In one estimate, experts believe that automation in the workplace can help improve 90 percent of knowledge workers and help to further replace repetitive and time-consuming tasks.
By implementing the right set of tools, you can help minimize potential barriers for your teams, whether it’s communication gaps or employees working in different time zones, help boost creativity, and minimize the need to complete time-consuming tasks in their day-to-day lives.
Improved Productivity
Thanks to technology, and the right sets of tools, your employees can now get more done in less time, ultimately helping to drive overall business output. In one report, businesses in software, telecommunications, and internet publishing have seen productivity grow by 5.5 percent since 2005, well above the lackluster 1.4 percent U.S. average.
These companies have seen productivity propelled by the innovations and wide-scale introduction of internet services, software, and cloud computing. By enabling employees to have access to the right digital assets of your business, you’re not only investing in near-term successes but long-term scalability.
Data Harvesting
On the back end, data plays an important role in the entire business structure. With access to the right data and information, companies can better understand their consumers and help provide them with the services they need. However, as an employer, this provides an opportunity to find and retain highly skilled individuals, train new employees more effectively, and monitor performance.
With data at the helm of things, owners can now ensure that employees receive training in areas where they may be lacking critical skills. They can further help to improve communication abilities among teams, as they now better understand their peers and their clients' needs.
How Does Technology Benefit My Business?
Next, you should be considering how technology, in the wider scope of things, will help benefit your business right now and in the future.
Improved Customer Engagement
Having your eyes and ears everywhere all the time can be challenging. Fortunately, tech enables you to increase your presence, not just physically, but in the way through which you interact, engage, and communicate with clients.
Through technology, businesses can now provide around-the-clock customer service with things such as chatbots. They can follow trends, understand how customer demands are changing, make quick and accurate decisions, and, most importantly, enhance the customer experience by providing them with the answers they want.
Provides Competitive Advantage
Customers expect you to be where they want you to be, but it's a bit hard to get going when you’re only a handful of people running the business. With digital tools, owners can begin to connect the dots, seeing where their customers are and how they can stand out against their competitors.
Making the switch over to technology will enable you to plan for changing market trends and provide you with the insights needed to gain a footing above other businesses. Delivery of high-value insights, such as consumer data and macro data, helps you better understand your positioning in the marketplace and how to navigate challenges.
Importance of AI
You’ve probably realized that you might need to introduce some form of artificial intelligence into your business. In fact, one survey of 1,000 small business owners found that 91 percent of those who had implemented AI witnessed an improvement in their success. AI is helping improve company efficiency, driving productivity, and helping boost employee workflow.
More than this, AI is designed to provide personalization, allowing businesses to create content and ideas that are closely related to their business and their customers. AI enhances the customer experience through unique algorithms, helps to gather and sort data more efficiently, and provides customer support when no one is around. Artificial intelligence helps to fill the cracks and bridge the gaps, ensuring your business is always operating at its peak performance.
What Are the Security Concerns Regarding More Tech in the Office?
Cybersecurity plays an important role in a business that works, communicates, and engages mostly online.
Potential Security Risks
There is no such thing as “too small” of a business to experience a cyberattack. In 2023, more than 73 percent of small business owners and leaders reported a data breach or cyberattack. Cybercriminals come in all shapes and forms, often disguised as unsuspecting emails, a link on a social media post, or even a text message.
Not only this, but the various types of threats a person may encounter can range from malware attacks, spyware injections, ransomware, or social engineering attacks. You always run the risk of coming face to face with some sort of suspicious cyber activity, and when that time does come around, you’ll need to be best prepared.
Employee Cybersecurity Training
While it’s important to provide employees with sufficient digital training, other aspects, such as cybersecurity training, can be just as important for any employer and their business. Knowing what a cyberattack might be or what it looks like can help employees use predetermined models to curb potential threats.
By making sure that your employees are well-trained and know what to do in the event of a cyberattack, you can protect valuable information and reduce the risk of losing money or having your company’s reputation tarnished.
What Are the Short-Term Considerations?
Although it’s important to think about the long-term success of a tech transformation in your business, the near-term turnaround is perhaps more important at the moment.
Employee Training
Being ready for the future means preparing everyone right now, and that includes sufficient employee training. Your technology will only be as successful as the teams using it, and without adequate training, employees tend to lose interest or often feel demotivated to work in collaboration with technology and artificial intelligence.
You want to hire a digital consultant to provide insight regarding training boot camps. You can talk to employees long before implementing any technology to better understand their opinions and level of expertise with certain programs and digital tools.
Communication is key, and the more there is of this, the better, that’s because 74 percent of employers think they’re helping employees learn new skills, when in fact, only 38 percent of employees agree.
Available Resources
Unfortunately, implementing new technology in the workplace isn’t a simple plug-and-play scenario. From the first day, you will need to make sure that you have the capacity to handle such a big transformation and that you can manage all the various facets of a digital transformation.
You’ll need to make sure that your team has the necessary skills to work with certain tools, and if not, how you can provide them with sufficient training. Additionally, you will need to develop a standard operating procedure that employees can use as a reference when they are unsure of something. Holding regular training sessions and making sure you have the necessary resources will help make the transition feel less unorganized.
Running Costs
Next is the cost of implementing the office tech and the initial operating costs that will follow. Typically, business owners only plan for the initial cost of implementing and starting up their new office tech; however, other unforeseen costs can arise at any given moment. Routine maintenance, upgrading tools, or even replacing some components are all normal things that come with having office tech.
As a business owner, you should ensure that you have a budget and the necessary finances to cover the cost of new technology and all the various components that come with such a transformation.
Final Thoughts
The future of work is beginning to change, and business owners need to continuously deliver exceptional digital solutions to ensure they remain ahead of their competitors and perhaps more importantly, leverage technology as a way to grow and increase their market share.
With the right set of tools and the right skills, your business can transform from a robust company to a seamlessly running enterprise that uses technology to promote communication and engagement among employees and customers and provide sufficient, timeless, and relevant data-driven solutions that can benefit the scalability of your business.