Invest in Tech Don't get left behind!

Is your business investing properly in the right tech to ensure you succeed?

With the speed that technology is progressing forward it can be a daunting task to make the moves that are right for your company. Instead of allowing your fear of making a large financial commitment in the wrong direction, make sure you have a solid knowledge of the direction of your business and the technology on the market that will offer you the best value and flexibility going to the future. Having a knowledgeable internal team is crucial here. Not only do you need dependable insight into your company’s current and future needs, but you need an understanding of the technology available on the market that will help best fulfill these demands.

According to Business Insights on their research of 2,450 businesses: “Of those that reported strong business growth in the last 12 months, 57 per cent prioritized IT investment, suggesting technology has played a key role in their success. Among companies with weak growth however, just a fifth (20 per cent) had prioritized IT investment."

The technology demand of your enterprise will vary greatly depending on the industry that you are in, but there are several key areas that hold true to almost all modern businesses.

Using automation either software or hardware driven, can offer huge cost savings in the long run as well as greatly improve efficiency and output. Just as robotics have famously revolutionized the auto industry, robots are starting to make an appearance in almost all modern businesses. While there is indeed a higher upfront cost to procure the appropriate hardware and related infrastructure, cost savings can be seen immediately upon rollout. Machines do not receive paychecks or benefits, can run 24 hours a day, and can be much faster than humans in most instances.

Although hardware may be the most recognizable form of automation to the common person, those in the business world know that there has been a more subtle but perhaps even more impactful form of automatization in the form of software. The driving force in efficiency behind any software or apps that people use whether its business or consumer facing is automating as much as possible. On the consumer side, Amazon must be one of the most well-known faces to take advantage of such tactics. Think about the entire shopping experience. During the entire time do you ever talk to a human?

Alternatively, on the business facing side, automation software helps keep your employees more efficient taking the mundane tasks out of their hands and ensuring processes are completed identically time after time with less mistakes and faster than a human could ever dream of. This can allow your employees to focus on more creative tasks to help drive your business forward.

Are you collecting data? With the emergence of smart factories and the IOT, data collection is growing at an unprecedented rate.

"According to research, the performance logs from a single works machine can generate around 5 gigabytes (GB) of data per week, and a single smart factory can produce around 5 million GB a week (the equivalent of more than 300,000 16 GB iPhones)." -Business Insights

If you are collecting data, are you collecting the RIGHT data? And are you using that data correctly? The correct software can help you better understand the market and be able to accurately analyze the future of your industry. In the end the companies that can determine the important data points and how to interpret them will inevitably have a huge advantage over their competitors.

If after reading all this, you haven’t learned anything new and you are already on the path that best suits your business needs, then great for you for having the foresight that your business deserves. If however this is causing you to rethink some of your strategies then I implore you to march in tomorrow morning, gather your Business Intelligence and Technology teams and get to work.

Is collaboration right for you?

Chapter 4: Writing Collaboratively

Back from the long weekend and hopefully everyone enjoyed the extra time off and kept nice and warm! We're at it again today with the next installment of Andy's rendition of what we are learning in our Technical Writing class. This week's topic is on "Writing Collaboratively" which conveniently aligned with a team project we were assigned. During the last week I experienced several topics this chapter talks about firsthand and had to carefully navigate our group collaboration.

There are several advantages of working on a project with others as well as some distinct disadvantages. First let's look at some of the benefits of collaborating.

• Draws on a wider knowledge-base 
• Draws on a wider skill base 
• Able provide immediate feedback to each other 

There are some other positive sides to collaborating such as building communication and teamwork within the organization but I want to focus on the aspects that would directly improve the project at hand. By being a part of a team, you have access to not just your own skills, but your teammates skills as well. No one is an expert in everything so it is great to have access to other peoples strengths. It is often a great starting place to bounce ideas off each other, gather feedback, and perhaps learn things that you may not have known. Remember these are people just like you who have years of their own experiences. They probably know many things that you do not and it is often beneficial and even fun to use each other to learn more about the topic at hand. Sometimes teammates are able to bring up something that you had not thought of before, perhaps it is a problem with your idea, or maybe a solution that you had not conceived.

However, just as there are advantages to collaboration, there are also some very real disadvantages that must be taken into account when deciding if a collaborative approach is right for your project.

• Can be more time consuming
• Can lead to groupthink
• Can produce a disjointed document

As the very definition of collaboration requires that you work with others, this can cause inefficiencies when time is a factor. Conversations that you may have internally with your self are very fast and often not even realized. Unfortunately when others are involved you will have to communicate with them in some fashion. This can lead to slowing down your project even when the whole team agrees. When there are disagreements, this can quickly add a lot of time. 

Groupthink is an issue when people are weary of hurting others by critiquing their ideas or do not want to cause a scene. Often trying to be the "nice guy" can hurt the overall product.

Just as we saw an advantage of collaboration being that everyone is different with different backgrounds and ways of doing things, this can also be disadvantageous. For example, if writing separately with the intent to join everyones contributions at the end you may find that people's writing styles differ or they went a slightly different direction with their piece. This could contribute to a document feeling a lack of overall cohesiveness. 

Determining roles early on is a good way to set your team up for success. Letting everyone know exactly what they are responsible for will help keep them accountable as well as allow you to equally distribute the work load on the project. It is important to set roles and responsibilities after your teammates strengths have been identified. In a work environment this will be easy as your job title usually indicates your strengths but in a school environment this will require communication and getting to know each other.

When to collaborate and when to tackle it by yourself?

While this is not an easy question, it is often dictated by either the sheer size of the project, different skill sets required, or perhaps just plain constraints. Often when attempting to complete larger projects, the sheer size of the project dictates that you need several or many people with varying skills sets. A paper may need a Manager, writer, editor, graphic artist etc. and not one person is going to excel in all these skills. If is often just a function of time. Can one person finish this project by the necessary deadline? Perhaps it is an easy task, but you are given too much work to complete by the deadline? Well it sounds like you may need to collaborate.

Inevitably when attempting to tackle your next project, you or your manager will need to ask themselves is collaboration appropriate for this project? If the answer is yes, keep these important points in mind!