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As 2019 draws to a close it is not just the end of a year, but the end of a decade stuffed to bursting with technological innovation. From inside the home, to the way we integrate it into our businesses, almost every facet of the way computers influence our lives has changed in some way. With 2020 right around the corner, the next decade promises even more change, and new ways for our lives to be impacted by the ways that PCs and other digital devices interface with our lives and our jobs.
For business owners, ensuring that you are aware of these changes can provide new opportunities to improve your business strategy and grow your company. Whether you’ve just started or are looking for ways to keep your business growing and on the cutting edge, new innovations are always being created to be utilized. Below, a few of these innovations are highlighted alongside ways they might be able to help you run a more efficient, growing company.
Chances are if you’ve used any kind of social media in the past few years, you’ve seen ads and branded content posts somewhere in your feed. Whether its an athlete, streaming personality, or other kind of celebrity, the strategy of using a big name to sell something is a time-honored tradition within marketing.
Social media allows for an easier penetration to appear on screen, and often can feel more natural in appearance compared to a celebrity spotlight in a television ad. This is important as unlike on TV, where ads appear without any user input, consumers choose who they follow on social media. This means that there is a sense of deeper trust when this celebrity promotes a product.
Of course for many small or medium sized businesses, affording a celebrity to market their product is a cost that might be out of reach, but that doesn’t mean that using influencer marketing should be out of their plan. Working with smaller influencers with more dedicated followings and ensuring an active social media presence both can have dramatic benefits to expanding your business.
Efficiency is always a factor and concern of many businesses. Being able to keep focus on the important aspects that help grow and maintain productivity. By setting up automation within your IT infrastructure, both you, and your IT provider can free up time and resources for more critical issues, and important business concerns.
These advances in automation can help with a variety of things. Just a few of those things are:
That said, when making these adjustments, growing pains are bound to happen, and troubleshooting is going to be needed to ensure that these tools are being best utilized for your needs. Working with your managed service provider can help this process happen smoothly and will be there to assist in any problems that occur to ensure that your business is taken care of.
In today’s business world, a website is a necessary component for running any enterprise. Ensuring that it is up to date, easy to access, and simple to navigate is a pillar of any business regardless of size. However in this era of mobile phones and people working increasingly on the go, mobile apps have become an increasingly valuable prospect for some businesses.
Seen at first as a kind of service reserved for larger businesses, or an extravagant addition, mobile app development has become more accessible, and the process democratized than it ever has been. Building the resource and option to provide a mobile app to consumers can provide a new arrow in the quiver of your business, allowing for new ways to expand your market.
Mobile apps are not for all businesses however, and taking the time to research their benefit, compare that with your needs, and factoring the costs of developing and maintaining this new arm of your company are all important for ensuring that you are maximizing their benefit.
If you’re familiar with Bitcoin or other crypto-currencies, then you’ve no doubt heart the term blockchain tossed around. What seemed to be a passing has seen growth and change over the past few years, with huge growth over the past few years. With the number of users growing more an more as time goes on, business owners have started looking at the possibilities of what blockchain technology can do for them.
For some, the possibility of using this emerging technology can help them save on payment processors, while retaining a secure record for transactions. Coupled with the built-in verification systems, business owners can account for financial contracts and data without having to go through a middleman.
With how new blockchain technology is though, there are factors of security to consider. There are many opportunities for flexibility and customizing how it is utilized, but with that come risks and concerns. Security is a major factor to take into account when examining the use of blockchain technology. Use of encryption and other measures to minimize vulnerabilities must be discussed to prevent any kind of data breach. Ensuring that you, your employees, and your IT specialists all are familiar and can properly secure the blockchain is a must before utilizing any of its benefits and introducing it into your workflow.
The more time that passes, the more it is becoming apparent that cloud computing is something that is here to stay. With the cloud technology always evolving, new interfaces, choices, and tweaks for efficiencies are changing how people interact with cloud services.
Many companies in some form or another already use cloud computing. Whether it is in a hybrid format with traditional data centers, or full utilization of it for every facet of their business, they are an important factor for software deployment and data recovery.
While 2020 isn’t bringing sweeping, dramatic changes to cloud networks, improvements to existing services will ensure that they’ll become more efficient and allow for easier use when first working to integrate them. This means that both for you, and your IT managed service provider will have tools available to ensure smooth utilization and transition when establishing your cloud network.
Whatever your enterprise needs are, cloud computing is evolving to meet those needs. Especially with the efforts being made by cloud computing companies to provide a competitive marketplace for businesses, the options are only going to get better. As the power and technology continues to advance, it seems like more a matter of when, not if their services should be utilized.
This is just a small part of the wide world of technology. Depending on the specific field, 2020 looks like a landmark year for innovation. As these things change, it is important to make sure you are informed and up-to-date to better position yourself and your business for the years to come. We may not have flying cars yet, but in many ways, we are now living in the future.
