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.