There’s no doubt whatsoever that, in the modern era, technology is an indispensable part of any business. Technology is an inherent part of every single person’s life now. We use it to communicate, to find love, to shop, to read the news; the list really does go on and on. So it goes without saying that there is no chance that the business world wouldn’t find itself completely revolutionized thanks to technology. Far too often, businesses, particularly ones that have been around for some years, assume that technology isn’t really that important. That perhaps it’s just a fad or a phase. They assume that, since their business has survived just fine up until this point, they can continue as they have been without having to embrace modern technological advances. Sadly, businesses that do this is setting themselves up for a pretty serious wake-up call. If you’re not embracing technology, you’re simply not running a business with any relevance to the twenty-first century. Technology isn’t going anywhere, and it’s only going to become a more and more important part of everyday life. The time has come to either embrace it or fall behind. Of course, that doesn’t mean that the key is to simply start throwing technology at your business to see what sticks. Obviously, not every piece of technology is going to be the right fit for every single business. The key is to figure out how your business can be improved through the introduction of technology. If you go overboard with it, then your business could end up getting buried in tech, and you could lose sight of what it was always supposed to represent in the first place. With that in mind, here are a few pieces of simple advice to help you safely and sensibly introduce new technology into your business.
Make sure that it’s something the entire business will benefit from
It’s important that you remain as objective as possible when deciding what kinds of technology to introduce into your business. It might be tempting to bring in something simply because you became incredibly excited about the potential that you could see for your business, but remember that you’re just one person with a single perspective. You can’t simply introduce something to the entire business because it’s going to benefit you. You need to make sure that it’s something that every single person in the business is going to feel the benefit of. Ask yourself, does this technology really meet the needs of everyone in the organization? Or does it just meet your personal, immediate needs at that moment? Do your research as much as possible. Figure out how any given piece of technology is going to impact each and every member of staff. Speak to your employees and partners, find out if they support your decision to bring in new technology. If anyone has problems with it, communicate with them and try to understand what those issues are. It might be that the particular piece of tech that you want to introduce isn’t the right fit for your business or it could be because of certain fears that individuals within the business have. Either way, it’s your duty to either find a piece of tech that does fit better with your business or to help put those fears to rest so that you can all get onto the same page.
Take precautions
It can be all too tempting when your business adopts a new piece of technology to take a “guns blazing” approach and try to roll it out across the board from minute one. There are a fair few issues with this method, and one of the most significant is that it ignores the need to take precautions when introducing anything to your business at all. You need to make sure that the existing infrastructure of your business isn’t put at risk by introducing this new technology. Something like a software escrow will help to keep both your business and the software provider as safe as possible. The last thing that you want is to bring some new software into your business and then for the vendor to go out of business. By taking the correct safety precautions, you’re able to ensure that your business is protected and isn’t going to end up disadvantaged down the line by adopting a new piece of software or technology. There will always be certain problems when you first introduce any given piece of technology into your business. If you make sure to take all of the necessary precautions, you can minimize the risks and make sure that teething problems remain just that, and don’t spiral out of control to the point where they end up posing a genuine risk to the wellbeing of your business as a whole.
Become an expert
There’s no way that you can possibly expect other people in your business to full embrace and use a piece of technology if they don’t have someone there to show them the potential that it truly has. One of the biggest mistakes that business owners make is that they forget to make sure that they are as well versed in a piece of technology before rolling it out across their business. Unless you know all of the ins and outs of any given piece of tech, there’s no way that you can effectively bring it into your business. Having to learn how it works at the same time as your employees is going to halt productivity, create an environment of frustration, and cause people to lose any faith that they might have had in the potential of this new technology. If you’re an expert on it by the time it’s introduced into the company; you’ll be able to handle any issues and questions that your staff will inevitably have. When a piece of technology is implemented there are always going to be teething problems, but if you’re there to guide then through it, then your employees are far more likely to give it a chance and work through those issues.
Provide training
The worst thing that you can do is to assume that your employees will be able to figure out this new piece of technology on their own. If you do that then at best they’re going to end up figuring it out as they go, making mistakes and picking up bad habits. At worst they’re going to end up doing things that actually run counter to the way the technology is supposed to work, and the productivity of your business is going to grind to a screeching halt. The most important part of implementing any technology into your business is to provide thorough training for each and every one of your employees. Make sure that you understand who it is that’s going to be using the technology the most and what their specific needs are going to be. Not everyone is going to need the same level of training, so it’s a good idea to provide group training on the most basic level, and then those who need further instruction should receive more specific one-on-one training as well. This not only gives you the opportunity to help non-tech employees understand how the technology works, but it allows you to really hammer home just how much of a benefit it can be for them. Many employees who aren’t especially technologically minded might not fully understand why it’s necessary. By providing them with detailed training, you’re able to show them each and every one of the benefits that introducing that piece of technology can have for not only the business as a whole but for each of them as individual employees.
It’s undeniable that technology really can improve your business in extraordinary ways. It can make it more productive and efficient; it can make communication between employees easier; it can even improve your ability to connect with your customers. You just need to be sure that any piece of technology is being introduced for the good of the business as a whole, rather than because it’s new, exciting or many other businesses have started to adopt it. Just like anything else, it’s about figuring out how it fits within the existing framework of your business. If you find that you’re going to have to make a lot of adjustments to the business as a whole to accommodate this piece of tech, then there might be a chance that it simply isn’t the right fit. It’s always a matter of weighing up the benefits that it can brings, with any potential issues that it might introduce into your business as a whole. As long as you’re making the right decision for your business and not just yourself, you’ll be able to use new technology to take your business to new heights that you could never have previously achieved.
