The Role of Technology in Business
Few businesses operate in a silo or as a monopoly; it’s expected that businesses have competition from other entities that operate within the same space, and that provide a similar service or product. It’s then up to the business to be able to promote and market themselves effectively to their customer base so that people will choose to go to them, and not to their competitors.
This is the basic premise of a business competitiveness model; however, the infiltration of technology into our lifestyle plays a significant role in the way competition is handled.
If companies want to succeed and remain a priority for their customers, they need to be aware of the role of technology in competitive advantage and develop and utilise it to its full potential to increase sales and brand awareness and remain innovative.
How Technology can help Customers
It’s important for a business to build a strategy and implement it if one wants to tackle competitive growth. A customer-first strategy is one where the business recognises the needs and desires of its customers and ensures that these are met at each step of the customer journey experience. From when the customer first contacts the business to the point that they have purchased, and even beyond that, it is the business’ mantra that the customer receives stellar customer experience every step of the way.
It’s common knowledge that customers are essential to any business, so by adopting a customer-first strategy and using technology to implement it properly, a business can promote its customer-centric cultural strategy. By continuously providing customer satisfaction a business can easily beat the competition.
This mindset helps achieve a positive reputation for the business and creates loyal customers. If a business implements this strategy, technology will prove to be very useful to follow up with customers and create consumer personas so that they can be targeted with only promotions that appeal to them and not be part of a mass marketing campaign.
Data Protection and Security Elements
In order to build customer personas, a company has to leverage the data collected. Knowing your buyer persona allows a company to target effectively which leads to the advertising budget being spent more efficiently since you won’t waste money promoting a product or service to someone who will never buy it.
Apart from the financial reward, personalisation shows that you care about your customers which helps to build a positive reputation for your company. By providing a service that is tailored to your customer’s needs you will be offering them better service and in turn, they are more likely to keep buying from you. The investment in technology will be returned if the data is leveraged correctly.
By leveraging the data collected, a company will have more human-centred technology, meaning that the technology that they’re using is useful for their operations to learn more about their customers’ needs.
If a company has an online presence such as an online retail shop, then using human-centred technology will allow it to know more about the user experience when customers try and order from their online shop. Successfully implementing human-centred technology allows for a streamlined user experience.
Offering customers features that allow them flexibility, customisation, and undisrupted access to systems, will make them feel that they are important to your company because your company is paying attention to the elements that they deem important.
Highlighting Cybersecurity
When talking about technology, one can not mention the very important topic of embedded cybersecurity. Embedded systems security is a cybersecurity field that focuses on preventing malicious access to, and the use of, embedded systems. It provides mechanisms that protect the system from malicious behaviour such as hacking.
Embedded cybersecurity has become more prevalent due to the growth of the Internet of Things (IoT) as more items keep being connected to the Internet. While this allows for greater efficiency, it also opens a company’s network to further vulnerabilities, therefore protection is imperative. IoT devices with embedded security are better protected against a wide range of potential cybersecurity threats.
Keeping to the topic of security, digital vaults are also an important security element to consider. A digital vault is a secure online platform where you can collect and maintain your digital assets and logins, such as online banking, cryptocurrency, social media, etc., and share access only with people you trust.
A digital vault allows people to have secure and unlimited access to their documents and any sensitive data, such as bank account details, no matter where they are. Digital vaults offer a very high level of security due to the information that they typically contain. The documents contained within a digital vault are of a sensitive nature, oftentimes related to a person’s identification such as digital birth certificates or passports. Therefore, the security behind a digital vault involves encryption as well as higher-level access rights, such as two-factor authentication.
Advantages of technology to enterprise
Tying in technology and security, enterprise technology streamlines workflows, improves communication, and provides access to data. In a nutshell, it allows a company to operate in a seamless manner when employed successfully. As with most technology, however, if it’s not used in the way that it was designed, then it could actually be counter-effective and lead to confusion and inefficiency.
There are several advantages of technology to enterprise – this has been clear throughout the years with businesses becoming more efficient. Technology allows for easier, faster and more effective communication for customers. It provides better and safer manufacturing techniques that lead to less wastage. From a stock management perspective, it makes the process more user-friendly and reduces the number of mistakes made. Technology provides the ability to develop new and innovative approaches for businesses that can be passed on to their customer base, which will ultimately lead to new sales avenues.
Businesses need to be aware of the technology that is available to them, and how it can influence their sales, costs and marketing. Businesses can scale through technology if the appropriate systems are implemented and used. Information technology can increase a company’s ability to coordinate its business activities to create a competitive advantage.
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