Running a business isn’t like it once used to be, and we can definitely be thankful for that. It isn’t about keeping everything on paper, filing it, and then spending hours trying to find where said paper was filed. It’s more about relying on technology, and that is one of the main reasons why technology and business has changed so much over the years. As soon as a business got a taste for technology, it got a lust for me. It was this desire to have bigger and better from businesses that gave the company's designing the technology the motivation to create bigger and better. So, think about when technology all began with business. The humble computer would take 10 years to load, and about 5 to change screens. It would have basic technology, but it was the start of something amazing. Now think about what your average office has. It’s full to the brim with, hopefully, the latest technology money can buy, because a business does need new technology! But, is technology all it’s cracked up to be? In some ways yes, and in others it definitely isn’t. So, we want to explore whether a business should rely on technology as much as it does, and possibilities of why it shouldn’t. Have a read on, and see what you think your business should do!
It’s SOOO Expensive
We want to start with a negative rather than a positive, because this article is not about convincing you why you should rely on technology so heavily, it’s about making you think whether your company in particular should. So, the first thing we want to comment on is the price. The price of technology is just going up and up as the years go on. If you want the latest and the best, you’re going to be paying well in the hundreds just for something simple. If you’re a small startup that doesn't have much funding for the items that should be put in an office, then this isn’t going to suit you. So what would you be faced with? Well, you’d be faced with the probability of having to buy old technology which is much cheaper. But the older and cheaper you go, the slower and less reliable it’s going to be. So, you hit a crossroads with this. Some people really don’t mind compromising quality over price, but for some of you, you just can’t afford for something to go wrong if the technology breaks. The impact a broke computer could have for an online sales company would be huge! But of course, there are options that would allow you to finance technology, meaning you pay it off as you go. This might sound great to some of you, but you need to be aware that interest rates will be added, and you might face hefty fines if you find you can’t pay it back. So, our recommendation would be to always have the latest and best if you can, but find a way to finance it that isn’t going to get you into debt!
It’s Moving At A Fast Pace
This can’t be denied. We want to use the humble mobile phone as an example here. You’ll use your mobile phone on a daily basis, and when you first take it out of the box it looks like the best thing to grace your hand. It’s shiny and new, it looks so fresh, and when the screen is switched on you swear you have never seen such vivid colours and a crisp display. It just simply looks magical. Fast forward a few months, and you’ll start to notice that all of that fades away, and the phone depreciates with every day that passes by. It’s a harsh reality that many of us face. Technology is just moving so fast that we can barely keep up with it. Every single week you’ll see a new advert for a phone that’s coming out in a few weeks time. All of the big tech giants are in a battle to be the absolute greatest, and that goes with any piece of technology. Just because we have used a phone as an example, it doesn’t mean it isn’t happening in every single other area that you could possibly think of! So, you’re then left with a bit of a conundrum. Because you could buy 20 computers for your office, and a year down the line they’ll be so slow compared to something new that you could have. So this paragraph really does tie in with the first expensive one. Because the world of technology is moving at such a fast pace, you have to pay the price if you want to be able to keep up with them!
It Makes Like So Much Easier
So, we want to move onto a real positive for a business. It does make life more easier than you could ever have imagined. You don’t have to worry about paper filing systems, things going missing, or the working day being slow. There is technology in the form of softwares and online platforms out there being designed for companies that just makes the working day so much easier. For example, think about the rota that long ago you would have had to figure out on your own, write out, and then hang it up on the wall.
Now you can get employee scheduling with multiple work locations, all done with a few clicks of a button on the computer. This is just the starting block as well. Pretty much anything you need to manage within your company, you can do it from the click of a button, and you won’t run into that many problems whilst doing it. You can analyse business data better than you would have ever been able to do it before, and things are just generally so much more precise. As the years go on, the technology that’s enabling a business to do all of this is progressing, meaning that now a company could be run via software and internet programs, without barely a hitch. But, it’s the hitch that we want to talk to you about. Sometimes things do go wrong with technology, and we want to show you the repercussions of what could happen!
It Can Also Make It So Much Harder
If there’s one thing that knows how to make life harder, it’s definitely technology. Sometimes it just knows how to press your buttons by breaking at the complete worst time. If your business is run online, and you rely solely on people flowing through your website, or checking out your services, then you’re going to rely heavily on technology. Somewhere in the world will be a server room where your server is kept for your website, and maintained. If this server goes down, which it no doubt will over the course of your time running a business, your website and everything else alongside it will go down. Now, this server going down is out of your hands. You don’t manage it afterall, you pay someone else to do it for you. So, what are you going to do? The answer is nothing, you can do absolutely nothing to try and make this right, you just have to wait for the people managing the server to get it back up and running, which could even take hours to sort. So you see, even though technology is the best thing in the world for a business, we won’t lie, it can also cause the biggest nightmare and severely disrupt sales. We’ve already spoke about other technology that you might have in the office, and how that breaking could also really disrupt the running of your business. So, where possible, make sure you always have warranty on everything that you buy, and that you’re keeping up to date with the latest technology.
Helps To Grow A Business
It really does help to grow a business more than you would think. There are so many pieces of software that you can rely on to help this happen. For example, one of the best ways of growing a business is to notice every little thing that happens with profit and losses, and adjust the way that the business is ran accordingly. Well, you can now get software that will grow your business by monitoring your sales for you. It will generate real time information that will allow you to analyse the statistics, and act on them quicker than ever before! Simple little things like this can really impact your business. You can also get software that helps to monitor your employees to make sure they’re working at an optimal level, which definitely doesn’t happen in a lot of company's. If you want your employees to work hard, you have to make them work hard, and knowing that they’re being watched will definitely spur them on!
So, on a whole, a business should rely on technology so heavily, it’s just a way of life now. But it should definitely be mindful of the technology it’s using!