5 Reasons to Continuously Invest in New Technologies

Since the 1970s, the momentum with which technology is making advances is increasing manifolds every next decade. About a decade ago we were hearing about digital adoption and how the companies that would not digitize their businesses soon would be left behind their competition. Now there is hardly any business left that has not adopted digital solutions to at least some degree. Digital adoption is not a topic we hear about a lot now. In the world of IT and Technology, people are now really talking about the subjects of artificial intelligence, machine learning, and Quantum computing and what impact they will have on businesses in the near future. However, even now, there are still many businesses that are only in the early stages of adopting a digital business model. While there are also those businesses that initially made a significant investment in digitizing their businesses, but are not making the level of investment in adopting newer technologies as is necessary for their businesses to compete effectively in the market in the near future.

As many breakthrough technologies are disrupting markets at a breakneck speed, in this article, I am going to discuss the reasons why businesses need to continuously invest in new technologies, what impact these new technologies are having on the businesses and how they would affect companies that would fail to make the necessary investments in this field.

Interaction with customers

Customers are always the most crucial stakeholders for any business. Without customers, there is no business to generate profits. That is why every successful business strives to adopt a customer-centric business model. For this, many new products and technologies have recently emerged that are taking the quality of interaction between a business and its customers to a new level. These include tools and software programmes leveraging AI and ML for marketing automation, automated customer service and data curation and management tools. The latest data curation tools help companies get a 360-degree view of their customers using first, second and third party data. The accuracy with which these tools can now predict the likelihood of a customer making a purchase has increased manifolds as a result.

Automation

Automation is another field currently seeing rapid growth. From software development to sales and marketing to manufacturing operations, there are solutions available to automate most of the repetitive and Manual tasks in every department of a business. This is impacting businesses in three major ways. First, the most highly skilled employees of a company can now automate mundane and repetitive tasks and are able to focus more time on tasks that have strategic implications. Second, as more and more tasks are being automated, the number of employees a company needs to run their operations has decreased significantly. In addition, as repetitive tasks are taken over by computers, human errors are greatly reduced, resulting in greater efficiency.

Data

According to Clive Humby, a British mathematician and marketing expert, ‘Data is the new oil.’ With machine learning and big data, it’s now possible to store and process an unprecedented amount of data and gain insights that would not have been possible to gain before. Businesses that lag behind in this area will have a very hard time competing in the market against firms that are investing in collecting and retaining data and developing capabilities in technologies such as data warehousing and machine learning.

Security

Cyber security is another field that is becoming essential for any business to survive. Every machine within a company is now connected to a network, and companies are gathering and storing more and more data about their customers and their own businesses. The value of information a malicious hacker can now access by breaking into a company’s network has increased significantly. Therefore, we are witnessing an exponential increase in cyber security attacks every year, and the sophistication of these attacks has also increased due to the new technologies and more incentives to steal corporate data. People are also storing more crucial information in their digital devices, like their credit card details, and a major data breach that can compromise people’s personal information or security credentials has now become a mistake that can potentially shut down a business immediately.

Employee Retention

Keeping and retaining key employees is a critical issue for any business. Many studies have shown that once an employee leaves a company, depending on their skills and position, it could cost a company somewhere between two to four years’ worth of that employee’s wages after they leave. With big data and machine learning, new technologies are helping managers and organizations predict the level of employee satisfaction and burnout within their companies. Allowing them to make critical decisions before the employee churn rate can cause significant damage. In addition, automation reduces the amount of workload on employees allowing them to concentrate on their personal development and increasing their job satisfaction. Therefore, companies are able to maintain a healthy retention rate by managing the well-being of their employees.

Conclusion

As new technologies emerge at a rapid pace, organizations can accomplish their goals much more efficiently, which enables them to expand their business and grow rapidly. Organizations that do not adequately invest in these new technologies and the related capabilities will be left behind so far that they will not be able to compete in the market in the near future.