All business strategies we used to know and love are now being transformed by the rapidly changing technology landscape. This is true for almost all the industries and geographies and in order to succeed in what you do you simply need to adjust. Technology and business are now very intertwined, and without it don’t expect to be notices.
The confluence of business, technology and science is being evident across all markets and industries and it doesn’t limit itself on any field.
We are witnesses to technology’s birth (in the way we know it today) and its growth and development and it’s safe to say that technology evolves faster than ever before. Such rapid development is critical to the success of enterprises.
The technology trends you’ll be hearing a lot about include:
- The Internet of Things/Ambient computing
‘Ambient computing’ is the backdrop of devices, sensors, intelligence and agents that can put the concept to work. The Internet of Things (‘IoT’) is evidently maturing from its adolescent phase and taking over the world of business.
Practical applications in most big European cities include those within life sciences and healthcare (remote monitoring patient care in the community), within energy (smart metering in homes) and transport (accident response sensors on the roadside).
- CIO as chief integration officer
CIOs should be at the centre of this change in the reality we work in, that is – the reality that is being reconfigured by technology.
With integration at the core of its responsibility, the role of the CIO is evolving rapidly. We cannot deny technology transforming existing business models and giving rise to new ones.
Good CIOs must have the capacity to objectively view their responsibilities and make a plan that will ensure critical domains like the cloud, digital and analytics don’t negatively affect other departments.
- Dimensional marketing
Even marketing isn’t what we know it to be.
In the last half-decade, marketing has evolved significantly and took direction towards technology.
This dramatic change (with technology advancement in its core) in the dynamic between relationships and transactions is best reflected through the evolution of digitally-connected customers.
The forming trends in marketing now are Chief Marketing Officers (‘CMOs’) and CIOs invest in technology for marketing automation, content development, commerce initiatives, customer analytics and next-generation omnichannel approaches.
For everyone in marketing, expect the technology changes to bring new challenges in the dimensions of connectivity, customer engagement, data and insight.
Of course, technology development is somehow unimaginable without reflecting on a section dedicated to six exponential technologies whose impact may be profound. Truth is, these innovative disciplines are evolving faster than the pace of Moore’s Law – and it’s going to show.
These include: robotics, artificial intelligence, quantum computing, additive manufacturing, industrial biology, and cybersecurity.
- IT expectations change
You know how in the ‘60s it was all about having a good looking secretary who can talk seductive and type fast? Oh boy, oh boy how times have changed! With the technology development even secretaries have to keep up in order to qualify for good staff.
A good secretary (or any worker of that matter) needs to have technical talent on multiple fronts so it can be of use to a company that’s aware of technological changes and is keeping up. We bet the troubles you used to have with gadgets in your office don’t seem as much of a problem now when there’s bigger technology to master at stake. Even printing companies in Melbourne and other establishments we used to rely on whenever there’s a break in our companies are working on stepping up their game!
Business leaders will be required to access a new type of employee, those who can cope with the very latest innovations while maintaining legacy systems.
We are familiar with a certain set of skills an IT worker of today needs to own. Yet, the future seems to be holding a bit of a different view on things. The IT of 2015 will need to have incentives, habits and skills that are inherently different from those in play today. Since design lies at the heart of this new generation, new skill sets will be needed, such as graphic designers, behavioral psychologists and user experience engineers.
Basically, the new business world is all about technology and a company’s reaction and response to it. You may not have a successful entrepreneurship without an awareness and, most importantly, the reaction to that awareness, that will take you straight into the future of business – a technological equip and empowered world.
