It's becoming increasingly important for every business to have at least basic technology to run daily operations in the current day society. It makes communication seamless and brings both tangible and intangible results. However, technology is a double-edged sword with a negative implication on business, especially when in the cyber-crime era.
Here's what entrepreneurs had to say about the effects of technology on their businesses.
#1- Seamless communication and collaboration
Cloud and mobile technology has helped our workers communicate and collaborate when they're in the field, working remotely or stationed in different offices or time zones. On the cloud, they can work together on a single document, seeing and discussing each others contributions, which in turn assists in fostering a flexible and stimulating workplace, in which your team is motivated and generate innovations. Team members are able to pickup incomplete work from other members to ensure projects are completed in a timely manner. In addition to improving communication, technology can help you monitor performance metrics. For example, a dashboard can help your team track key performance indicators and compare how you're doing against industry benchmarks. This provides a good starting point for finding places to innovate. The data can then be used to drive growth, improve marketing and design new products
Thanks to Marzuq Patel, LearnersBox!
#2- Has helped provide various product options
Technology has been a large factor in our success of True&Co., as we are an online lingerie company who created the first online Original Fit Quiz. The Original Fit Quiz uses both an algorithm and data from over 7 million women that leads our customers to their top 3 bra recommendations. Using data provided by the community of women who wear our products, our technology provides bra options for over 3,000 unique body types. When a woman comes back and gives us more feedback on a specific bra, she’s creating another variation of a “type” in our system.
Thanks to Michelle Lam, True&Co!
#3- It does the heavy lifting in my business
Technology is so important in that it has leveled the playing field and can help make the little guy look like the big guy. I use technology to do the heavy lifting in my business. I think of it like another employee only while I sleep it keeps working. It was the one thing which took me from struggling and broke in business to doing well and successfully exiting multiple startups. For success, I believe you need to automate as many systems as possible. The four main types of business systems are your marketing, sales, fulfillment and administration systems. You want each to be scalable and replicable.
Thanks to Allan Dib, Sucesswise!
#4-Accounting software to manage finances!
Keeping a close eye on your income and cash flow are an integral part of managing a successful small business, but this process can quickly drain a lot of your valuable time if you don't have the right technology. Blu Skin Care uses Quickbooks to help with finances. It’s quick and easy to use, but most importantly, it free’s up time that would have ordinarily gone towards manually managing the books.
Thanks to Zondra Wilson, Blu Skin Care, LLC!
#5- Streamlines our project goals and daily tasks
Technology helps those who help themselves. As an entrepreneur, I use and manipulate technology to help my businesses grow. My team is working remotely in different time zones which presents a unique set of challenges. Team collaboration apps have been extremely helpful and have streamlined the way project goals and daily tasks are dealt with. It’s a win-win situation to manipulate and tweak an online tool to communicate and collaborate with a coworker who is halfway across the world (hello open source software.) Determine which features are best suited for your business – workflow management, messaging, sharing of files and screenshots, meeting deadlines, etc. And don’t assume the app or program you chose is “the” one. Lose your ego and listen to your employees for feedback if they don’t like the interface or UX.
Thanks to Nicholas Christensen, Lottery Critic!
#5- Created our marketplace
Technology is a vast component of our business, as well as being the disruptive catalyst that created our marketplace. The Internet has caused a steep decline in the print newspaper business. The Internet is also where we thrive. There is a huge demand for news, but the method of consumption has changed. A paradigm shift from print to online, no different than the telegraph to the telephone, is taking place and we are at the pinnacle of this revolution.
Thanks to Sam Anthony, yourNEWS Media Group, Inc.!
#6-It's really a matter of noise vs value
As a former venture capitalist, entrepreneur, and now head of marketing for a venture-backed startup (Brizi), believe me, I'm a big fan of disruptive technology. The problem is that business teams, especially small ones, are bombarded with tech-based solutions to every problem. There are things technology can't solve without a fundamental cultural change. If employees aren't accountable, how do you expect them to use a tool that automates accountability? Moreover, the companies behind each software want to grow too, so features start to bloat until you are spending more time wrangling the software than actually doing any real work. Technology helps us at Brizi, after all, we are a technology company, we have a robotic photo experience that brings joy to people, but we're cognizant that every tool we use must have a place and purpose tied to our work culture.
Thanks to Alex Nossovskoi, Brizi!
#7- Has been a windfall for my life insurance business
Technology has been a windfall for my life insurance business. Unlike typical insurance agents that prospect for business via cold calling I can leverage the power of YouTube and Google using value-driven, educational content like how-to videos and informational articles that help solve my prospects' concerns with getting quality life insurance coverage. Even better, technology facilities this process automatically without on-going intervention, so my team spends more time helping highly-qualified leads.
Thanks to David Duford, Buy Life Insurance For Burial!
#8- Services are now fast and reliable
Murfie was founded in 2010 and found that at the time, network speeds hindered access to stream and download Hi-Fi (uncompressed) audio. Network speeds were the primary driver behind music compression in the first place. However, over the last 10 years, network speeds have improved so drastically that streaming uncompressed (lossless) music direct-to-device is fast and reliable. Our business has found that increased network speeds have driven our growth as customers can enjoy their full fidelity music anywhere, at any time.
Thanks to Rex Mangat, Murfie!
#9- It's everything in my business
My business would not exist without technology – it is entirely run online. Furthermore, as an entrepreneur, technology has enabled me to rapidly scale the scope of my small business and it's reach. When I decided to monetize my blog I was able to use the skills I had learned from my background in eCommerce to take advantage of technology and the self service platforms. These platforms allowed me to create and integrate a physical product offering into my existing platform within a week. In addition to this, as I look to increase the reach of my business to identify and convert more Customers I am able to take advantage of Ad services from companies such as Facebook and Google. The advantage of these services is that your are able to target relevant customer segments and use the algorithms developed by the ad service providers to automatically optimize my campaigns for ROI. This significantly reduces the time investment required to run campaigns and allows me to spend more time on content creation and strategizing new business growth opportunities.
Thanks to Claire Whittaker, Artificially Intelligent Claire!
#10- Helps maintain the same work relationship
As an entrepreneur, I can't live without Skype. Skype is my go-to app for improving productivity and efficiency for our business. With Skype, all the workers in our company are constantly connected, no matter where they may be. One worker may be overseas, another in the office, I personally may be on vacation. However, productivity and efficiency will not fall because Skype allows all of us to stay in touch, thereby allowing us to continue working as if we were all in the same office. It's easy to maintain the same relationship with each other; if I'm in the office, I communicate with my staff via Skype anyway, and if I'm away on a business meeting, I still use Skype to communicate with them.
Thanks to Ian Aronovich, GovernmentAuctions.org!
#11- Supports our guests
Technology is drastically changing the landscape of the vacation rental industry for property management companies willing to embrace it. A potential guest views properties online and books using a credit card rather than making a phone call and writing a check. Guests no longer have to check-in at an office during inconvenient hours to get a key for their vacation home. Rather, they check-in using a wifi connected keypad right at the property. Plus, an app on their phone gives them directions, offers additional concierge services to purchase, shows them fun things to do locally, and allows them to check-out when they leave. Our guests are fully supported 24/7 by technology and can relax knowing that everything they need is at their fingertips.
Thanks to Wendy Schultz, The Simple Life Hospitality!
#12- Helped in various ways
As a traditional brick and mortar business owner, using technology has completely changed the way we do business and helped us to stay ahead of our competition. We do regular audits of our processes, and almost any time we identify an area that maybe isn’t working as well as it could, there’s an app for that! Technology has helped us to streamline operations, cut costs, and find ways to communicate more efficiently with our customers through the use of booking software that allows customers to make reservations online, virtual phone systems that allow booking agents to work from home, and apps that allow us to send SMS messages to direct customers to our locations or send updates about scheduled tours. I believe that in this age of digital information, businesses that don't seek out technological solutions to improve the customer experience will be left behind.
Thanks to Heather Thomas, Destin Vacation Boat Rentals!
#13- Has helped and also hurt
Technology has helped my business by automating many mundane tasks within my company. It has freed up my time to focus on sales, marketing and long-term goals of the business. I was able to create a tool which automatically pulls in data and leads with a central communication point with mostly free technology tools like Slack, IFTTT, Glitch, Google, RSS, to name a few. However, on the negative side I think email, if not managed properly can hurt a business. Constantly responding to emails wastes a lot of time and we're currently looking into means to better manage this time consuming but important task.
Thanks to Hans Desjarlais, Flightlist!
#14- Lessened the human element but helped in marketing
Technologies such as Augmented, Virtual and Mixed Reality are helping our team promote our client partners businesses to provide true experiential marketing to their prospective clients. Mixed and Augmented Reality provides an opportunity to try before you buy making the buyers journey easier and more engaging. One area where technology may be hurting our business is relying too much on technology, when we should always people first before the technology as to not remove or lessen the human element.
Thanks to Tom La Vecchia, X Factor Media!
#15- Streamlines multiple processes
Technology in today's workplace has a huge advantage over years past. With the introduction of AI and other automation software, manual tasks that used to eat up our day can now be simplified with the use of technology. Our hiring process used to be slow and cumbersome. Now, using advancements in technology, we can streamline multiple aspects automatically to weed out less qualified candidates. Be careful what you wish for though. If there's a glitch in your technology, make sure you know the true process of your automation. Otherwise, it could stop you dead in your tracks.
Thanks to Brent Mitchell, Keller Williams Realty!
#16-Helping in the Digital Marketing World
I think technology creates a tremendous amount of opportunity. It can be draining sometimes because things change so often and trying to stay aware of the all the changes in things like SEO but I think it creates opportunity and some of the technology that has been created arguably improves lives. Because I’m in the digital marketing world, technology has made it easier to connect with your target market in a way that has never been possible. I think it’s also forced the industry to be focused on actual production/results rather than supposed results.
Thanks to Gresham Harkless Jr., Blue 16 Media!