This year, it doesn’t matter what business you’re in because the reality is that every business today is at least in part a technology company. While you might not think about your business this way, you are increasingly reliant on the intelligent use of technology platforms and services to help improve your growth and profitability. There is a good reason for this, as technologies like Amazon’s AWS service offer even the smallest businesses enterprise-grade systems that they can use to build, optimize, and grow their business.
AWS is just one example of a technology solution that you could incorporate into your business to drive greater growth, and if you want to remain competitive in your industry, then there are new technology trends that you’ll need to begin integrating into your business sooner than later. Here are five of the biggest trends that will matter to your company in 2018.
Big Data for Small Businesses
Big data is a concept that can sound complex to some, but in reality, it’s the application of data analysis techniques on large amounts of information at one time. Think about the work that you may have been doing to analyze your customer base on spreadsheets, but using exponentially larger amounts of data, and leveraging automation to more easily process this information.
Companies like KISSMETRICS make managing (and more importantly, analyzing) large-scale databases a far simpler task, even for those of us without a Ph.D. in applied statistics, and are at the forefront of bringing Big Data analysis to the masses.
SMB’s Utilize Interactive Broadcasting
Getting your message out to new and prospective customers alike has always been a goal for your business, and today’s implementations of interactive broadcasting allow you to do this in a far more scalable manner. Put simply, interactive broadcasting allows you to stream an event or presentation over video, often to a number of viewers, and at the same time they are able to ask questions, and otherwise interact with you during the streaming session.
You can also use interactive broadcasting to sell product, and as CEO of interactive broadcasting firm Agora.io CEO Tony Zhao notes,
“Companies in China have figured out that they can create compelling content by letting their customers drive these live broadcasts, and they’ve developed some interesting economic models through the use of in-app gifts to the performers, among other things.”
A little closer to home, you’ll find live broadcasting of sales from brand ambassadors for companies like LuLaRoe driving a whole new medium of eCommerce today.
Remote Working Goes Mainstream
Remote work has been a benefit that employees in tech companies have enjoyed for a while now, but the move toward remote work today has become a trend that is showing no sign of slowing down anytime soon. Companies today can benefit from hiring remote in a variety of ways, from increasing their pool of available talent to the reduction in overhead from having an entirely virtual workforce.
For employees, the shift toward remote work also goes a long way toward creating a more output-based meritocracy, rather than a culture that is focused on rewarding those who stay at the office the longest, regardless of output.
Augmented Reality is Now Reality
Virtual reality has long been an interesting piece of ‘future-tech’ that always seems to be right on the horizon, but where VR has long disappointed fans of the technology, Augmented Reality (AR) is here today, and here to stay. The idea behind this technology is that you can use a display or other device to ‘augment’ the room or area that you’re standing in, projecting yourself into the room or even playing an entire video game that looks like it’s resting right on the surface of your desk.
Augmented Reality is quickly becoming a trend for many small businesses due to its broader applicability in real life, from the use of ‘Minority Report’ style floating dashboards to interesting uses in meetings and other business-specific cases, where the bulky VR equipment necessary today simply doesn’t work yet.
Taking Advantage of Internet of Things (IoT)
The Internet of Things (IoT) is a great catch-all phrase to describe devices that are connected to each other, most often over the internet. Devices that fit these criteria have actually been around for a long time, most commonly in the form of early smart-home technology, but the technology today is improving by leaps and bounds, and has resulted in the IoT revolution extending into everything from washing machines and refrigerators to smart security cameras and vacuums.
While it can be easy to look at areas like ‘smart’ refrigerators and deride the IoT trend as being more of a fad, there has been real progress made in certain areas solely because of what the Internet of Things is allowing us to do. A prime example can be found in the field of climate control, of which Nest was an early standout. Creating more intelligent climate control systems that can be managed from anywhere allows you to not only closely control the temperature in your home, but also save money and eliminate waste as well, and this type of solution works just as well in businesses as it does in the home.
There are plenty of ways that you can embrace the coming technology trends in 2018, but focusing primarily on the five areas above will help your business continue to utilize technology effectively without getting bogged down in the minutiae of following every one of the latest tech trends. Which trends are most interesting to you? Let us know in the comments.