The business landscape has changed dramatically over the past several years as technology continues to impact how we work. Today, just about every industry is doing things faster, more efficiently and accurately thanks to the introduction of newer and better innovations that are now not only helping business leaders and their employees to a much greater degree than ever before, but in many cases are even doing the work as well.
According to the website Business Blogs, “We are currently experiencing the most profound technological revolution humanity has ever witnessed. For thousands of years, the introduction of new technologies has been the catalyst for dramatic social changes.”
The good news is that even with all these new wonderful ways of doing things, the technology is always being enhanced and improved upon, so the technology you’re using today might be dramatically different (and better!) by this time next year.
Three of the innovations that are now playing major roles in helping enterprises around the world are:
The cloud.
Cloud technology reduces costs by eliminating the need for expensive hardware to store and process large amounts of data. Today we routinely store lots of data in the cloud. This gets it off our hard drives and company networks, while making it accessible to those who are authorized to download them with the correct passwords.
Canadian technology and venture capitalist G. Scott Paterson is among business leaders who recognized the cloud’s potential early on when the trend was mostly limited to major companies, such as Uber. Today, companies everywhere are following in their footsteps.
Artificial intelligence.
We hear about artificial intelligence, or AI, all the time. Consumers have had some exposure to it via various applications. But what is it really? Well, in general, it’s any type of software that engages in humanlike activities, for example, learning, planning and problem-solving. It can help facilitate tasks of a variety of complexities. It can also process and analyze tremendous amounts of data, then return with synthesized courses of action and present them to the human user.
“Artificial intelligence is kind of the second coming of software,” said Amir Husain, founder and CEO of SparkCognition, a machine learning company. “It’s a form of software that makes decisions on its own, that’s able to act even in situations not foreseen by the programmers. Artificial intelligence has a wider latitude of decision-making ability as opposed to traditional software.”
Wearable technology.
If you’re old enough to remember bag phones and car phones in the years before everyone had a pocket-sized smartphone, you will recall a time when business went mobile and portable and you no longer had to be at your desk to make and receive calls. Today, we’re light years removed from that era, and wearable technology is the latest iteration in allowing us to work from anywhere. Today, you don’t even need to carry a device. You can actually wear one in the form of smart watches, smart glasses and body cameras. And this technology is helping professionals across a number of industries work more efficiently.
“In the retail industry,” writes Jasmine Williams, “wearable tech allows salespeople to have immediate access to information like tech specs or pricing. They can call for help from management or other departments while still keeping their hands free.” She also notes that,
“Customer service reps can show supervisors what is on their screen and get tech support without either having to leave their desks. This allows managers to manage larger teams of people more efficiently, which decreases customer wait time.”
Experts agree that technology will only continue to grow in helping the enterprise environment. In the meantime, many business leaders are quick to praise the benefits they and their companies are enjoyed as a result of using it, and many more are sure to follow.