Modern business environment drives businesses to focus on innovation to stay competitive. Technology is a necessary investment. Even established corporations will struggle if their tools and methods become obsolete.
This is why implementing more efficient technologies can transform the way they do business.
The modern connected world is enabling new technologies to emerge. The internet is providing many opportunities for companies from various industries and sizes.
Whether the company in question is a local plumber or an international retailer, they can integrate technology to improve everything from accounting to warehousing and become more organized and efficient.
When considering an investment in new technologies it‘s necessary to reflect the potential disruption of regular processes during implementation. However, it‘s also important to understand the value and long-term benefits that such solutions offer.
In this article...
Implementation and Advantages of Applying Technology
Small businesses spend 6.9 percent of their revenue on IT. Companies are becoming more aware of how technology is critical for achieving business results.
While business owners appreciate the benefits of technology, they sometimes fail to realize that digital transformation requires more than just deploying new solutions.
The way businesses implement and leverage the technology is often more important than which solution companies choose.
Successful companies use tools that create opportunities for more revenue, better collaboration, and improved customer satisfaction, but they also optimize business processes around those tools.
Here are advantages that the proper implementation of technology brings:
1. Streamlining Business Operations
Modern technology enables automation and relieves employees from mundane routine tasks. This allows them to focus on more meaningful work while ensuring greater productivity and accuracy.
Business intelligence systems gather data from diverse sources to enable real-time reporting for better decision making. Companies can now manage resources with more efficiency and better planning.
New generations look for the more comfortable working environment. Technologies can empower employees by allowing them to work remotely.
Companies can leverage remote workforce as they become more flexible and motivated to offer greater value to the business.
But, this creates challenges that need effective solutions for communication and organization of remote teams.
Modern technologies give tools to those challenges by streamlining collaboration, training, and management.
2. Becoming a Customer Centric Organization
Technologies allow businesses to collect data and gain deeper insight into their customers. With meaningful customer data, businesses can provide better user experience more tailored to each customer.
Gathering data helps educate employees about clients needs, how to address them and how to achieve empathy for a customer. The positive effect of this practice is the repeat business in the long run.
3. Establishing a Global Presence
Companies that leverage technology can expand market reach and create other income streams.
Technology can enable even small startups to improve their global presence. Through the internet, it’s possible to enter new markets around the world and work with the clients that were impossible to reach before.
How Technology Enhances Different Functional Business Areas
Companies structure functional areas (departments) according to certain business requirements which depend on individual needs and the work that is being practiced.
After they set up separate business functions, they can perfect each department to increase efficiency and improve overall operations within the company.
Modern technology can streamline company departments, and help employees work smarter, not harder.
Human Resources
HR manages important company tasks such as tracking salaries and benefits, hiring and firing, or maintaining morale. Without HR efforts, the working environment loses productivity.
Handling all aspects of the workforce can be difficult and time-consuming. It gets easier with effective technologies that keep HR activities organized.
Technology Benefits:
- More Efficient HR Team: In companies with a large and varied workforce, effective HR management can take considerable manpower. Automation in data tasks and communication saves a huge amount of time and permits a smaller staff to work equally or more efficient.
- Access to Employee Records: Technology provides efficient means to share and manipulate central databases that can be installed in any organization. It allows quick and secure access to employee-related records anytime and from anywhere. Easy access to these records saves HR team from going to dusty basements and wasting time on basic things like finding employee records.
- Better Communication: Recruitment, hiring, and onboarding strategies all depend on HR. They can improve each of these segments with proper communication tools. Recruitment can enjoy online job postings that better communicate the job needs but are also more visible to a wider pool of prospects.
Online interviews can help companies screen the talents faster and hire the best candidates. Candidate selection can further be simplified through online testing and the new employees onboard faster if the company sets up a digital educational platform.
Marketing
Marketing is the process of getting consumers interested in the company’s offering. Understanding consumers’ tastes, habits, and buying patterns is essential to communicate product or service benefits to potential buyers.
Marketing can benefit from technologies and take immense advantage of available tools.
Technology Benefits:
- Spotting Consumer Trends: Big data allows the collection and analysis of consumer activities, such as ads clicked, social likes, user behavior, interests and many more. Digital tools and marketing analytics can expose consumer trends which can improve marketing strategies.
- Simplified Networking: Social media is a popular channel where it’s possible to post fresh content and engage visitors. New content formats like blogging and social media posts help brands to be visible to an audience that other formats can’t reach.
- Improved Scalability: Technical resources make scaling up marketing efforts easier with data sets, fast analysis, and automated processes. When companies find out what’s working they can multiply it through various channels. Marketing automation helps businesses easily reach thousands of email subscribers, follow up marketing leads and integrate other ways to drive engagement.
Customer Support
Studies have shown that over 80 percent of consumers will abandon a company due to poor service. Offering quality support during and after purchase is essential to a positive customer experience. It increases value perception, builds consumer confidence, and creates positive emotional connections. Modern tools can drive customer support to the next level.
Technology Benefits:
- Increased Capacity: Email autoresponders let customers know someone has heard them and will get back to them. Automated phone systems can handle excessive call volumes to decrease the wait time and frustration.
Modern technology is now incorporating AI responses that recognize and mimic both human speech and text patterns. Such systems help customer support teams handle a bigger volume of client inquiries. - Empowered Customers: Enabling customers to solve their own problems enhances the functionality of customer support teams. Support tools can direct customers to specific digital resources to learn on their own, such as web pages or videos.
- Greater Access: Callers can connect after hours or on weekends, or reach live digital operators through web links, mobile devices, and social media pages. The ability to help customers wherever and whenever it’s convenient for them provides greater value and better user experience.
Sales
The sales department is an essential part of every business. Without proper sales systems, every company would soon go out of the business.
In a modern time, a lot of sales activities have transferred to a digital world. This has lead to a great expansion of tools and technologies for enabling more accurate and effective sales activities.
This industry is going through a renaissance and the main reason for that is the enormous value technology brings to sales.
Technology Benefits:
- Understanding the Audience: With technology, it’s easier to figure what works with different customers at each stage of the process, so that selling becomes more efficient.
- Qualifying Leads: Although modern sales strategies are more cost-effective than traditional approaches, due to the increase in competition and saturation it also has a higher abandonment rate in a sales funnel.Modern software solutions enriched with sales data use a set of filters and proper criteria to make qualifying bigger volume of leads easier and more effective.
- Following Up: The smart systems that sales teams use can also be set up for following up on leads. Digital solutions can reduce the time spent on engaging leads yet make sure that none are overlooked.
Accounting and Finance
Maintaining positive cash flow is essential, but the optimization of finances requires that every dollar is accounted for. With precise tracking, it’s possible to make accurate forecasts and set budgets to allocate funds.
Another important aspect of accounting and finance is to assure companies follow mandatory financial regulations.
Almost every business has used Excel sheets to document their finances. Modern technology provides powerful finance solutions with a lot of useful features.
Technology Benefits:
- Better Insight into Finances: Being on top of data gives control to business owners and managers to cut costs and allocate funds better. Insights into financial data offer a more transparent overview to the management, which helps them optimize long-term plans.
- Efficient Finance Processes: Finance is one of those areas that can benefit the most from automation. Automated workflows enable financial departments to manage and process a huge amount of financial data, have accurate and on time reporting and stay compliant with the accounting regulations.
- Higher Security: Handling finances by machine involves less risk of theft or misapplied funds. By enforcing and updating the cybersecurity measures such as encryption and redundant authentication, accounts are better protected.
Operations
Efficiency in production and cost control requires streamlined operations. When employees don’t understand their duties and responsibilities, it leads to mistakes and conflicts that waste time and resources.
Technology can make sure business activities take place in the proper order and as smoothly as possible. It’s in the best interests of every company to use various advantages that technology offers.
Technology Benefits:
- Coordination: Tools such as ERP (enterprise resource planning) software can allow multiple departments to coordinate their efforts. When companies manage departments separately, various coordination issues can arise. An ERP solution integrates different departments into a single system and allows them to communicate effectively with each other.
- Performance Tracking: Software and modern solutions provide managers visibility into what’s taking place and who’s doing the work. Logins, time stamps, biometrics, and other techniques make sure meeting quotas, tracking errors, and eliminates cheating on timecards or performance.
- Transparency: Technology solutions and modern software enable transparency and easy communication within teams which helps to achieve more organized processes.
These are just some of the functional business areas that could benefit from having the right technologies in place. Next, we’ll look at how to apply modern technology solutions to business processes.
Applying Technology Solutions to Business Processes
Technology can do wonders for any company looking to get organized. However, it needs to be implemented correctly to bring a maximum amount of benefits without becoming disruptive.
Implementing new technology solutions requires assessment and proper planning. This will help make sure that the chosen tools are adequate for the company’s needs.
Here are some steps a company can take when seeking to deploy new technology:
Do a Status Assessment
This involves identifying current loopholes. With technology, it’s very important to know what to buy before shopping. Decision makers will have to find what isn’t working in their organization and why.
Select the Right Technologies
Choosing the right technologies involves more than going through sales materials. The technology needs to align with the company’s business strategy and help it achieve its strategic goals.
Plan the Implementation and Deployment
Any solution needs to be implemented the right way to work properly. It’s important to consider how the new solution will fit in with a company’s current business tools, IT architecture and processes.
Set Up Proper Learning and Training Programs
One of the most common reasons implementing new technology fails is because of improper training provided to those that will use it. A comprehensive training program will teach employees how a new solution works and offer advice on how to use it in the most efficient way.
Manage Adoption
Unreasonable expectations can lead to failure when adopting a new solution. Creating targets with realistic expectations and being ready to face deviations is a good way to make sure that the new technology will be successfully adopted.
Top Solutions for Functional Business Areas
Marketing – Social Media Management
Most of today’s businesses keep an active presence on various social media sites. Social media management solutions give them tools to manage their accounts and interact better with their followers.
Tools:
- HubSpot – A popular inbound marketing platform that includes many social media management functions. Users can create blog posts or landing pages with basic knowledge and watch their social engagement. Their Content Strategy Tool helps overcome writing blocks as it branches the topics into subtopics. Hubspot covers inbound marketing from end to end, from attracting to closing new leads.
- Hootsuite – A comprehensive cross-platform management tool that allows managing multiple streams, post scheduling, and analytics. Hootsuite has 8 million users and offers different plans. Pro plans are great for companies that have teams working on social media. Managers can delegate tasks like replies and members can send internal messages.
- Buffer – Content publishing platform that includes 3 to 10 social accounts depending on the plan. Buffer offers flexible automation and cross-posting, but it’s limited to fresh content only. Posting content from different sites can be done through its feed feature. IFTTT connects rules with Buffer lists and allows automation like posting new reviews from Fiverr or sharing a new WordPress post.
- Sprout Social – Social media management, engagement monitoring and analytics platform used by some of the world’s top brands.
Email Marketing
Email marketing solutions allow the creation and management of email marketing campaigns used by businesses around the world to promote their products and services to prospective and current customers.
Tools:
- Constant Contact – One of the leading and fastest growing email marketing services in the world today. It helps users engage customers with easy to make coupons, surveys or promote content to subscribers by pulling it straight from the website.
- Drip – Powerful email marketing platform, suited for e-commerce website operators. Gathers customer details and behavior to create personal, tailored email campaigns.
- MailChimp – Provides simple management of email marketing lists for businesses. This intuitive platform works great with e-commerce and integrates with the most popular platforms, but its features work for all business types. 12 million users confirm that. MailChimp does everything, from building a newsletter list to sending reminders about “back in stock” products, abandoned shopping carts and other. If a feature is missing, their integrations can make it up.
- AWeber – Simple tool used for creating opt-in forms for growing subscribers. It also allows list management and performing split testing the forms that are necessary for improvement.
Customer Support
All-in-one customer support management platforms include functions allowing businesses to manage all aspects of their customer service activities. This can include various channels of customer interactions such as online live chat, by phone, email and more.
Besides communication, these solutions often feature ticketing systems and a knowledge base.
Tools:
- Zendesk – Versatile customer support platform used by businesses from all over the world. It creates a channel funnel and keeps questions organized in one place. Its features include a ticketing system, IT help desk, self-service portal and other. Zendesk allows team collaboration and monitors agent performances. The variety in its offering makes it one of the top tools on the market.
- Helpscout – This customer support tool has integrated public and private knowledge base that users can fill with their own documentation. The platform looks like an email inbox and allows users to get organized with tagging, folder assignment or using workflows to automate repetitive tasks.
- Zoho Desk – Features a ticketing system, call center, and social support. Customer service prioritizes tickets based on their due date and creates a straightforward workflow for users. When joint with Zoho CRM it gives more context to every ticket and provides customer data for better service. Includes snippets and suggests answers based on FAQ to speed up the process.
- Freshdesk – Provides a useful and powerful ticketing system to keep track of support requests. Like other popular software, Freshdesk offers automation, customization and clear workflows for customer support agents. Its competitive edge is in vigorous reporting and security.
Sales – CRM and Contact Management Systems
CRM systems are designed to make it easy for businesses to manage their contacts and follow up on leads.
Tools:
- Pipedrive – Powerful online CRM with sales pipeline functionality. It is the first software built around the pipeline view, which makes it intuitive and flexible in daily work. Pipedrive provides enough information at a glance without cluttering the interface.
It’s great for small teams and doesn’t need complicated setups like Salesforce which has a longer learning curve. It’s the second most popular CRM tool with a lot of integrations, although not as much as Salesforce. - Salesforce – An industry standard and the most popular CRM platform. Salesforce was one of the first CRMs in the cloud. It has a huge network of partners and tools integrated.
- Copper – Former ProsperWorks, this CRM is a Google-based platform. It‘s a great solution for companies used to working in Gsuite that don’t want to disrupt their processes. It has a seamless integration with Gmail and helps users track, follow up, or move contacts to opportunities with less manual work. Users praise it for the UX and UI.
- SalesLoft – Sales engagement tool for effective selling. Its features include an integrated call pane, email tracking, task management, sales cadence overview, success buttons and more. It can track all sales activities from one platform and helps sales representatives increase productivity.
- Outreach.io – The industry leader for sales engagement that helps optimize the customer lifecycle for more revenue. Used for outbound communication, it’s created based on the new outbound sales trend that one book started – Predictable Revenue by Aaron Ross.
Outreach.io combines multi-touch sequences that fuse cold calling, cold emailing, and social selling. It has a deep integration with LinkedIn and other industry tools. Some of their famous users include Microsoft, Glassdoor, and Adobe.
Sales and Market Intelligence
With sales and market intelligence software, businesses can get information what competitors are doing and compare to their own activities.
Tools:
- ZoomInfo – Used by professionals in all fields, including sales, marketing, finance and recruiting to get actionable data. Delivers contact and business information and enriches the existing data. ZoomInfo can connect with leading CRM platforms.
- Hoovers – One of the top sales software that helps B2B companies find more leads from their huge database. Hoovers can show financial reports from companies and offer users the contact information of decision makers.
- DiscoverOrg – Another popular sales and marketing intelligence tool. Enables users to access data about their prospects, firmographic data and even which software they use. DiscoverOrg shows job titles, responsibilities, executive ranks, and their respective LinkedIn profiles.
- Lead411 – Helps sales representatives find prospects based on pre-set triggers. Its data is accurate and up to date, and enables directory browsing based on various inputs from keywords, job description, employee number, vertical market and more. Lead411 is a cloud-based solution with a solid interface.
- Clearbit – Sales and marketing solution with different features such as Enrichment, Prospector, Reveal, or Forms. Enriches existing data with more information, sends alerts about website traffic and turns it into inbound leads, and easily integrates with other platforms like G Suite, Salesforce, Outlook, Zapier and more.
Clearbit can put internet scraping in the past and make lead generation faster and easier. Clearbit Connect is a free Chrome extension that integrates with Gmail and provides data enrichment for 100 prospects a month. - LinkedIn Sales Navigator – Based on the 500 million user network, it brings the best of LinkedIn for business professionals and makes understanding prospects easy. There is no search limit, it has useful search filters that reflect on user results, such as geography filter, years in the position or recent activity.
Its nature makes the tool relevant with actionable, fresh insights for users to leverage in their sales process.
Accounting and Finance – Accounting and Budgeting Software
Accounting and budgeting software allows users to keep track of their finances and create budgets either for the entire company or specific departments or projects.
Tools:
- FreshBooks – Top software used for invoicing and accounting. It has a straightforward interface that saves a lot of time for users. It has an easy integration with PayPal and other software. Users can grant access to their accountants for faster communication and secure problem-solving.
- QuickBooks – World’s most popular accounting solution for small to medium businesses, used by millions around the world. Connects with a bank account to keep transactions up to date, and includes everything from payroll to streamlined receivables through invoice integrated payments. Quickbooks mobile lets users take photos of their receipts and store them.
- Xero – Powerful accounting platform that can integrate and share data with many other business systems.
- Zoho Books – Simple tool for companies that want to keep track of their cash flow. It’s praised for its user experience and variety of functions that don’t distract the user. It resonates well with small and mid-size companies and helps them visualize their balances and import bank feed.
Payroll Management
Payroll management software enables businesses to manage all activities related to paying their employees.
Tools:
- Gusto – Complete management platform combining payroll, benefits administration and compliance functions. Designed for small businesses in the US, this software is today used by over 40,000 companies. Gusto offers a free trial, thus giving the potential users an opportunity to try out the software’s key features first and decide on the purchase later.
- BambooHR – Online HR platform aimed at small and mid-sized business that offers many payroll management features. Its Applicant Tracking System (ATS) can handle employees’ life circle, and gain insights into key areas, such as retention and turnover. BambooHR is a great choice for managing dispersed and remote teams.
- Wave – Online payroll management platform that combines multiple features, such as accounting, receipt scanning and invoicing. Wave was designed for small businesses and self-employed professionals and freelancers. Its key features include yearly record keeping, direct credit card payments and deposits, payroll management, tax calculations, and other.
Operations – Enterprise Resource Planning
Companies use Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) to manage their core business processes in real time. It applies to all modern companies regardless of their size. ERP software keeps business owners in the know about available resources or production levels of a certain department.
ERP systems offer a complete overview of a business, from human resources to accounting, and supply chain.
Tools:
- SAP ERP – Used by almost 50,000 business in different industries, this software serves both big and small companies. Access control keeps important data visible only for those with clearance and automated data recording keeps information error-free. This robust tool has its learning curve, but it is irreplaceable for multinational companies.
- NetSuite ERP from Oracle – A scalable cloud-based platform that makes reporting a breeze. It helps back office duties become streamlined and automated, and covers all company areas. The software adapts its accounting rules to each country and benefits businesses around the world.
- Sage Intacct – Another cloud-based gem, Sage tool combines automation, compliance, and control to optimize costs and provide operational efficiency. Includes accounting, purchasing, contract management, subscription billing and more.
- Microsoft Dynamics 365 – A global platform allowing businesses to drive sales, track leads and automate field service, all in the cloud. The new 365 tool combines the former AX and CRM tools all in one ERP system. This software comprises different apps that users can select, such as Sales, Field Service, Marketing, Financials, Operations and other.
- Skubana – Online ERP platform for small to medium size e-commerce operations. It automates and easily controls order management, inventory, accounting, and other departments. Skubana makes it easy to ship items from different warehouses to decrease shipment times.
Supply Chain Management
Supply chain management solutions can automate physical work, enable company leaders to make small adjustments to operational processes and increase productivity. Innovation drives growth and sets unknown companies side by side to the renowned giants.
SCM tools help companies realize and reduce bottlenecks, manage their business partnerships with vendors, and often include tools for inventory tracking.
Tools:
- Powerhouse Logistics – Warehouse management solution for businesses in all industries. This global logistics tool handles freight solutions, cargo, transportation, distribution, and customs brokerage. It has the abilities to take care of heat sensitive or oversized goods.
- GoCodes – Asset and inventory tracking software that takes advantage of barcodes and QR code labels. Offers total asset management, with smartphone apps for barcode scanning and QR code customization.
Human Resource (HR) – Cloud-Based HR Management and Automation Software
This software category enables businesses to manage various aspects of their HR operations, and automate certain tasks. It runs in the cloud and doesn’t require the deployment of software to local servers or workstations.
Tools:
- HR Cloud – This software lets companies manage all aspects of hiring and managing from anywhere in the world. Paperless onboarding, access to employee records, instant reports, data security, easy integration with other applicant tracking and performance management systems are just some of the features of HR Cloud.
- ADP Workforce Now – HR management solution for medium-sized companies. ADP Workforce Now combines and automates all HR processes into a single dashboard. Its key features include talent management, time and attendance management, benefits and payroll management, and creating HR reports.
- Kronos Workforce Ready – Combines workforce management with human capital management (HCM) and helps companies track their employees, from hiring to retirement. Kronos Workforce Ready is designed for small and medium-sized businesses. It includes analytics, payroll management, applicant tracking system, performance management, hiring and onboarding system, and other features.
Talent Acquisition Tools
Growing businesses recruit new employees regularly. Talent acquisition software helps them keep prospect information organized.
Tools:
- Zoho Recruit – Simple talent acquisition platform from the famous business tools brand Zoho. This tool helps companies find and hire the right candidates. Zoho Recruit offers automated tools that allow HR staff to create and publish job openings, handle resumes with ease, communicate with potential candidates, and simplify other workflow processes.
- Workday HCM – A human capital management solution aimed at modern organizations. The suite comprises five important HR modules: Workforce Lifecycle Management, Organization Management, Compensation Management, Absence Management, and Employee Benefits. Workday Recruiting provides a complete overview of talent acquisition functions.
- UltiPro – Simplifies and automates many tasks related to employee recruitment. UltiPro offers functionality for recruiting and onboarding new employees and can improve the overall performance. Its features include payroll management, time and labor management, employee performance management, employee analysis, and other.
The Future of Business Processes and Technology Trends
Using the latest technology is a trend already established in all major industries – from manufacturers to marketers, everybody is using or adopting new technology to improve their internal processes.
New technology solutions enable efficiency on a massive scale, grant access to novel platforms, systems, capabilities and security solutions. This propels business processes in a new direction, where a data-driven approach is the basis of every business decision.
Technologies are driving five new trends that are bound to substantially change the business operations:
1. Internet of Things (IoT)
IoT is becoming the driving force behind business data analytics. Thanks to IoT devices, companies can get deeper insights into their products, customer behavior and inner processes which helps them work on areas that need improvement.
Combined with AI, IoT provides access to more data, allowing businesses to improve employee experiences, restructure their departments and speed up their decision-making processes. By incorporating these technologies to gain live insight into internal processes, a business can eliminate bottlenecks in their operations and become more efficient.
Businesses are becoming more aware that investing in IoT can propel their overall success, and a lot them find that IoT will bring forth substantial changes in the next five years when compared to the current processes.
Photo by Bence ▲ Boros on Unsplash
Big Data has become the bread and butter of many businesses, and the bulk of them are investing in data analytics. A data-driven approach is the new golden standard for modern companies.
Having access to data eliminates guesswork and shifts focus on advancements in areas that need to improve, be it their business operations, pipelines, services, products, or user experience.
How IoT Affects Internal Business Processes:
While the shifts will be obvious in the way companies handle their customers, the way they organize internal processes will also change. Even today, smart devices can give businesses valuable insight into how well organized their processes are.
Even a smart thermostat, which many would label as an irrelevant addition, will save money and energy. By having access and connecting to a central hub it can contribute to productivity levels through room temperature optimization.
Deploying other IoT devices into their systems, companies get access to heaps of information, like energy consumption of various departments, highest efficiency times, pipeline organization issues and more. Controlling workspaces from a central place transforms the whole company into an intelligent, interconnected ecosystem.
Such extended infrastructures will become the backbone of upcoming IoT trends.
2. Cashless Society
Cashless transactions and digital currencies are becoming more prevalent in various markets each day. Smaller businesses are adopting alternative, more convenient payment methods to increase conversions and simplify their finances.
Thanks to innovations in the financial market, payments are faster, simpler and smarter. The trend shows that a growing number of suppliers and consumers opt for simple, quick and easy payment methods.
One of the most convenient novelties present on the market is a PayID that businesses can create for themselves – the ID is often an email address, mobile number or another easy identifier, so there is no need to remember account numbers.
How Cashless Transactions Affect Internal Business Processes:
With preferences shifting towards cashless transactions and insights into live orders, businesses will have a better understanding of their finances and will predict, organize and distribute them easier.
Thanks to better insight into their order list, they can move towards “just in time” production methods and lean manufacturing processes – as soon as the software notifies them someone has made an order, they can start production.
This helps them cut lead time and overproduction, enabling them to supply the ordered products quickly. By using live data, their production cycles become more agile, faster, optimized and their production costs drop.
3. Online Commerce and Automation
With user experience being one pillar of success for today’s businesses, trends are shifting towards providing a seamless and unified experience across multiple platforms – web, mobile, and brick-and-mortar.
Businesses know that their consumers are not only interested in their product, but also the overall experience with them as a business entity.
A growing number of companies is using smart tech solutions and automation to gather and analyze data which gives them insight into new trends and changes. For example, increased usage of mobile platforms is one major trend.
Thanks to automation tools and smart technology a business can focus on improving the e-commerce experience of their mobile users and improve conversion rates.
How Online Commerce Trends Affect Internal Business Processes:
Besides improving online commerce conversions, the adoption of smart technology also helps through automating manual work and repetitive tasks, which frees valuable time to spend on strategic planning, innovating or reorganization.
Leading enterprises do not have exclusive rights to automation technology anymore – they are accessible to small and mid-size businesses, giving them the needed platforms to compete on a higher level.
With the use of smart technology and automation, online businesses can focus on providing their prospects and customers a more personal approach and engage with them through channels their customers prefer.
4. Artificial Intelligence
Artificial Intelligence is being embraced by many businesses but it’s still seen as a serious threat to jobs by others. AI encompasses machine learning, deep learning, neural networks, task, and robotics automation, and while it’s already widely used, certain organizations are still avoiding it.
Business leaders slowly realize that AI is a valuable partner that helps them detect trends, patterns, and anomalies and offers valuable advice on what to do next – for inner operations and processes, and customer preferences too.
How AI Affects Internal Business Processes:
Artificial intelligence already has a profound impact on businesses and industries, so capitalizing on its potential requires acknowledging its capabilities and reach. AI isn’t programmed to do tasks – it learns how to achieve the desired results by examining the available data and then creates new algorithms to reach the goal.
AI is an independent software that can learn on its own and evolve without human intervention. Citizen AI is a new paradigm that aims not only to teach AI to perform tasks but raise them into a representative of a company able to communicate on its own and make unbiased decisions. It requires an approach different from the way other software is treated.
The AI’s independence, while being unnerving to some, helps make independent decisions in the same way a human would, improving inner processes according to business goals and adhering to company policy.
The aim of every business using AI-based solutions will be to groom their AI into a representative that will follow their values, improve their processes, and propagate their message.
5. Blockchain and Cybersecurity
The most profound shift in the financial sector is the acceptance of blockchain technology to secure digital ledger transactions. Although most known for its use with cryptocurrency transactions, blockchain is also being used for securing information and real-time sharing.
With security threats on the rise and an increasing number of companies being victims of cyber-attacks, innovation is key to ensuring data remains secure. Companies that refuse to innovate and embrace change are falling behind and are vulnerable to malware attacks and hacking attempts.
Their lack of innovation and adoption of new technologies means they are still using legacy and outdated systems that have well-known vulnerabilities used as a point of entry by hackers.
With the rise of the blockchain technology, the decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) system arose too. It is considered to be one of the most complex smart contracts in existence.
The idea is to have a business that functions according to digital rules, while shareholders make all decisions that are not hardcoded. Each shareholder controls a certain number of tokens (smart contracts) and casts a vote.
How Blockchain Affects Internal Business Processes:
Modern cybersecurity enjoys blockchain technology thanks to its main premise of eliminating fraudulent activities.
Built on intelligent consensus mechanisms embedded in the code, it detects data tampering with ease and eliminates any attempt. Blockchain enables safekeeping with no passwords, only granting access to trusted users or devices.
Considering the latest privacy requirements like the GDPR, it is more important than ever to close gaps in systems and make sure data is treated carefully so consumers have insight into how their data is being used.
Companies collecting data from prospects and customers need to ensure it’s safe from breaches and they can do that by handling their operations safely through blockchain technology.
Wrapping it Up
The main premise of technology is to help people and ease their day to day routine. We already saw multiple benefits of implementing technology solutions through time.
The business world is fast changing and all industries can thrive from new solutions on the market.
After analyzing what their key business processes need to get to the next level, company leaders can find the suitable tools that will help them do that.
