Technology is affecting businesses in every industry today and it’s important for these businesses to know what they need to do to stay relevant. Indeed, with the speed at which things change nowadays, it’s become impossible to know for certain where the world will be in five years’ time. Understanding the top strategies that drive technology within business is more important than ever.

TechPulse Fun Fact: At the turn of the millennium, no one would have guessed there would now be more mobile devices than humans.

It is now more vital than ever for businesses to embrace emerging and disruptive technologies before it’s too late—to ignore them at this point will leave companies falling behind and second-guessing “what might have been” while a potentially competitive advantage slips through their virtual fingers.

TechPulse Fun Fact: In 2009, Blackberry was named the fastest-growing company in the world by Fortune, yet it was forced to play catch up—not only to Apple but to the whole mobile industry—after remaining stagnant for five years.

Here’s the bottom line: Businesses have no choice but to learn from their mistakes and avoid falling into the same traps, all while embracing the technology trends that are poised to take the business world by proverbial storm. Over the past few years, major technology trends have included 3D printing, autonomous vehicles (i.e. self-driving cars), mobile payment schemes, drones and wearables (i.e. the Apple Watch).

The Importance of Keeping Up with Technology in the Workplace

Technology is inescapable. No matter how hard some of us resist moving into the music download world, for example, and try to hold on to our physical media such as CDs, DVDs and vinyl records, the march of technology that allows for newer and more “convenient” ways of getting our entertainment continues on. Technology pervades every facet of our existence; from how we work and play to how we live our lives, technology has set into motion a revolution that will flourish and evolve so long as humans continue to advance its capabilities.

Sure, this may sound like a precursor to the events in The Terminator, in which Skynet takes over human existence, but the reality is not as frightening as the film hints. As the days, months and years go by, technology just keeps improving and what was once the latest and greatest invention is old news today.

Technology doesn’t wait for you, and if your organization isn’t keeping up with it, one of your competitors will surely leave you in the dust. Before we get into the top five things that drive technology within a business, let’s take a look at what happens if you don’t keep up with advancements.

• Fall Behind – There are over 3 billion people on the Internet today, and as an organization, it’s important to remain current with regard to technology or face failure.
• Become Irrelevant – To stay relevant, especially when it comes to technology, means keeping up with what is trending in your industry.
• Missed Opportunities – If your company has not invested in the proper technology, there is a chance it may have missed opportunities to connect and interact with customers.
• Disorganization – Companies that resist progress and function in a disorganized fashion don’t stand a chance of competing at the same level as other organizations that embrace technology.
• Obscurity – If an organization continues to resist progress and decides not to “keep up with the Joneses” of technology, it is likely to fade away into obscurity.

At TechPulse, we do not want to see your company experience any of the aforementioned setbacks.

Here are the top strategies that drive technology within a business.

1. Mobile Solutions

This one should be a total no-brainer; indeed, the “next big thing” is mobility, so much so that Google has revised its algorithms once more so priority is given to seamless mobile web browsing websites. Today, if a tablet or smart device is installed with the right software, every aspect of a business can be handled from remote locations; everything from sales enablement, content marketing and customer relations through back-end processes such as shipping and invoicing is available at the click of a button.

TechPulse Fun Fact: As the rise of millennials continues to take shape, people are using mobile devices to buy, sell, find local businesses, shop and share their retail “experiences” with friends, acquaintances, Facebook strangers and prospects on a daily basis. The book on “marketing to prospects” has literally been rewritten by this new paradigm.

2. Cloud Computing

Through “the cloud,” businesses large and small can move some of their operations to third-party servers accessible through Internet connectivity—not only are variable data packages enabled in this way, rapid (i.e. on-demand) expansion and mobility are realized devoid of the fear of crashes, downtime or permanently-lost data. Suddenly, where resources would have been cost-prohibitive for small businesses to access in the past, the playing field is evened when it comes to competing against corporations with far bigger budgets.

3. Extreme Customer Segmentation

The flow of more and more data brings an understanding of the types of customers businesses are looking for—and with analytics services expanding, companies can now segment their prospects into even more minute groups in order to target them specifically and, in effect, receive more bang for their marketing buck. Consider this: Even a simple Google account will allow a company to know where their visitors are coming from, what type of browser they’re utilizing, how they found the company’s website, what they do while visiting it, how long they normally stay and at which point they decided to leave.

4. Connectivity

What has technology done on a wide-spread basis, perhaps more than anything else? It has increased the ease in which we can all stay in touch, and this applies to the workplace too: Whether it’s making employees and coworkers available via video/text chat at the drop of a dime or having the ability to send targeted promotional email blasts to customers who are prequalified, the explosion of mobile tech has almost seamlessly fused with communication software to yield a hyper-real web of real-time information.

5. Decreasing Cost/Increasing Functionality

Two elements have come together to create a “buyer’s market” in terms of software solutions for a business: The hardware and software necessary to create these solutions have become increasingly easy to use and afford, and the number of entrepreneurial and tech-savvy minds who can take advantage of such “falling barriers” has exponentially multiplied. What does this mean? Here’s a good example: A back-end inventory system that once took a multi-million-dollar company a year to create in the not-too-distant past now takes a couple of weeks for a few recent college graduates to put together.

Irrespective of your personal opinion—the rapid advance of technology isn’t going away anytime soon. Rebuilding your business from the ground up isn’t necessary. You just have to understand how technology affects your business and how to apply advancements in order to use them to your advantage.

TechPulse can help you do just that by keeping you and your business at the forefront of business technology through a myriad of professional solutions, all of which you can learn more about here.