The Advent of Business with Technology
With constant advent of technology, businesses in the current era have been able to add multiple dimensions thanks to the increasingly enabling power of technology to bridge several challenges that sometimes have a detrimental effect on businesses, especially ones that have a solid approach and serious potential to scale-up. No longer are businesses held back by a clout on the resources of time and place with technology providing a cutting-edge to streamline these factors.
Having solutions being belted out left, right and centre for communication, design, documentation, file sharing, project management and software, the onus is now on implementation rather than ideation. A shift such as this, thanks to ample data available to analyse consumer behaviour and patterns, has left the world of business looking at a vast expanse of untapped potential.
In this blog, we will be taking a cursory look at some elements of business that have been vastly improved and influenced by the growth of technological solutions. The domains have been broadly classified under the below mentioned categories:
- Communication – Technology holds a direct connect in determining an organisation’s ability ability to reach out to their customer. In the current environment, quick, crisp and concise information is the need of the hour. Websites serve as a comprehensive hub and as one of the first contact points between the business and the consumer.
Fast shipments allow businesses to move products over a large geographic area with efficiency and reduced down time. Technology also facilitates a strong brand image by creating transparency and credibility for the users who interact and network on public forums thereby ensuring visibility.
- Production, Logistics & Operations – Optimising production and operations used to be a painstaking task that required familiarity of handling, and set practices that needed to be perfected over time and repetition successfully. Technology also throws sufficient light and solutions on how to preserve precious resources such as time and physical space.
Warehouse inventory technologies let business owners understand how best to manage the storage and costing of holding a product. Logistical nuances are easily solved by eased connectivity and communication making for a well-networked resource pool which is the hallmark of a successful business.
- Finance – Helping a business understand its cash flow is one of the biggest developments that technology has brought to the financial aspect. Whether it is keeping track of expenditure, tracking revenue, dispensing salaries, maintaining financial data or providing end-to-end financial solutions, technology has truly merged accountability to financial operability that forms the crux of any relevant business.
Companies often use programs that sync accounting with point-of-sale terminals and bookkeeping programs, such that each purchase or sale transaction is automatically captured in an accounting platform. Using technology to manage financial record-keeping minimizes manual processes, reduces costs and helps protect against human error.
- Security & Data – Most businesses in the modern era are subject to security threats and vandalism. Technology provides a non-compromising platform to protect financial data, confidential decisions and other proprietary information that may give away competitive advantages.
Simply put, technology helps businesses keep their ideas away from competition. Passwords and encryptions afford layered security to manage and keep such important data away from the wrong hands.
- Sales, Marketing & Customer Relations – Technology has galvanised the function of sales and marketing. A website isn’t just a place to sell products; it can also be a brand statement that raises a profile across the globe.
Search engine optimization (SEO) is a marketing strategy that increases the likelihood that when someone searches online for a product or service sold by a business, the first search result listed is the business rather than a competitor. Another online marketing avenue is digital advertising in which ads are positioned before a specific targeted audience but revenue is only paid for those ads when a potential customer clicks on one.
Several customer facing inventions also have been surfacing that are aimed towards driving engagement and repeated serviceability, whilst managing to bag important data regarding consumption patterns for media and products thereby providing a detailed analysis of the consumer mindset.
Summing up, technology has helped businesses position themselves in a place where the amount of work put in is visibly translatable into a revenue stream whilst eliminating variable factors such as agents of time, place and resource.
Chai Point is on board with the symbiotic development of technology to aid business as highlighted by our nomination for the Most Innovative Companies 2019, where our business-tech capabilities were highlighted and lauded.
We hope that this blog has given you some basic insight unto how you can leverage technology to improve or scale-up your business. Keep your eyes peeled to this space for more such literature!