NEWS FLASH: Tech is completely changing the way the world does business.
Okay, so that’s probably not the most shocking headline you’ve ever read. Obviously, technology has become an indispensable strategic asset that we use every day to improve productivity, profitability, and customer experience. The ways tech disrupts various industries are seemingly endless (mobile applications, big data analytics, collaborative cloud computing, etc.), but one thing cannot be overlooked: Companies that can master the digital age are the ones that consistently lead the pack in their market.
1. New Competitors / Disruption
With all this new, emerging technology often comes new business models that challenge the traditional way of doing business. This completely disrupts the competitive landscape, creating new waters to navigate with new players in the game. Now, instead of keeping an eye on the same competitors you’ve grown used to, you may find yourself competing against an innovative powerhouse that threatens the status quo.
We’ve seen this come to fruition over the last decade with companies like Amazon, Airbnb, and Tesla changing the way society thinks about each of their industries. Make sure your business has a budget in place to stay relevant.
2. Staying Competitive
Aside from new competitors in the market, your business cannot lose sight of its existing competitors and the measures they take to keep up in the digital age. Strategic implementation of new technology stacks is critical in maintaining the edge over existing competition. This means creating a regular schedule to thoroughly examine your current technology, compare what’s new to the market that could ease your day-to-day bottlenecks, and search for opportunities to implement profit-boosting technological processes.
3. Increased Complexity of Systems
As the number of technological systems increases, it becomes harder to get your business tools to play nicely together. Getting technology integration nailed down can feel impossible when you’re consistently adopting new systems and hardware. Sometimes, it takes a village to get the pieces to fit together, and that village should be made of internal resources and external partnerships. You want a team of strategic experts who can recognize and plan for changes in your field, with an extensive background of managing complex configurations.
4. Consistent Customer Experience
At the core of every brand is the experience it brings to its clientele. Ensuring that each guest or customer’s experience is always the same reinforces brand loyalty. Technology is helping to standardize, enhance, and streamline experiences in many service industries. The examples are seemingly endless but think about things like POS systems at restaurants, retail store mobile apps, personalized recommendations from Amazon, etc. All of these things enhance and streamline the customer experience across each interaction.
What does mean?
When it comes to technology, you get out what you put in. What we mean by that is that companies must invest in robust technology stacks to support the innovation occurring across all industries. It can be very challenging for small- and medium-sized businesses to identify, implement, and support an appropriately powerful technology ecosystem for their business. Navigating the waters of business technology will continue to increase in complexity as the world continues to innovate; we foresee more businesses moving to an outsourced IT model to properly manage these additional complexities.
