Why Is Technology Important In Business

By Philip Yiga | January 12, 2017

Today, technology is very essential to any type of business whether it’s a franchise or large-corporation. In fact, technology plays a big role when it comes to business-operations whereby it actually offers both tangible and intangible benefits that enable companies to produce great services and products for customers while making more profits. On the other hand, different companies and industries rely on technology in different ways but some of the main benefits of technology include business-communication, inventory-management, optimized-production and digital financial record-keeping. However, with several technological-advancements in the past few decades, competition in the business-sector has increased globally and this mainly because most companies are using technology to transform their businesses from local-markets to global-markets which have a lot of competition.

The importance of technology in business today:

1. Improved communication in business: with the integration of technology in businesses today, both internal and external business-communication has greatly improved whereby employees can easily communicate with each other while at the workplace and also companies can easily communicate with their clients without even meeting physically. for example, these days sales-representatives and technicians of certain businesses no-longer have to return to offices to make a report or receive an assignment but instead make calls or send messages to their bosses inorder to know what should be done next. Additionally, business-representatives travelling for work-related programs can also stay connected to their offices and even friends or family by simply using social-media platforms or making calls.

 

2. Optimized production within businesses: no-matter the size of your business or industry, technology will actually enable you to optimize on production and even beyond what you could have produced without it. In fact, with technological-advancements in business, small-companies can easily compete with larger-companies in terms of operational-efficiency due to the availability and access to high-tech technological tools and equipment. On top of that, technology allows manufacturers to integrate upgraded equipment in order to compete with industry-leaders in the terms of production and efficiency while in small or retail-businesses technology helps to make the process of selling and servicing customers more efficient and effective than never before. For example, using scanning barcodes at the checkout-point makes transactions faster than recording numbers in a manual cash-register.

 

3. Improved inventory management: most people in business like manufacturers, raw-material suppliers, wholesalers, retailers and business-to-business providers use inventory management systems. So, technology helps to improve on inventory-management by enabling businesses to organize their products more systematically in the warehouse. In fact, matching computer-information to inventory-storage helps the company to know what stock is available in the warehouse. Additionally, today most inventory-processes are automated whereby some companies use vendor-managed inventory systems which enable suppliers to automatically send products when alerted that stock has reduced in the warehouse/store. In fact, an inventory management system helps to minimize inventory-costs while meeting customer demands within the company.

 

4. Improved financial record-keeping: with integration of technology into business, companies can easily manage accounting and financial tasks without experiencing any human-errors. In fact, some companies even use programs that sync accounting with point-of-sale and bookkeeping systems inorder to ensure that each sale or transaction made is automatically captured and stored into the accounting-system. All in all, using technological-advancements to manage financial record-keeping helps to minimize manual-processing of data, reduces on operational-costs and even helps to eliminate human-error.

 

5. Improved security in business: today, most businesses are actually prone to security threats and vandalism. So, technology can be used to protect financial-data, clients-information and other proprietary-information that may greatly affect the company if lost or stolen. In fact, technology helps companies to keep ideas away from their competitors so that they don’t achieve a competitive advantage over them. Additionally, technology enables companies to guard sensitive information away from unauthorized people by simply implementing passwords and usernames inorder gain access to such sensitive information.

 

6. Technology enables businesses to make extensive research in their industry: businesses that have technological capacity to make research on new opportunities will actually have a competitive-advantage over other businesses that are not well facilitated with technological-advancements. In fact, researching and acquiring new-opportunities helps companies to survive and grow within the competitive business-world of today. Additionally, the internet will allow businesses to virtually reach into new-markets globally without applying any travel-costs or creating offices abroad.

 

7. Technology improves on the efficiency of operations within a business: technology actually helps businesses to operate more efficiently by simply saving them more resources like time, money and physical-space. In fact, today warehouse inventory-management systems enable business-owners to understand how best they can manage storage-costs of holding products. On the other hand, with technological-advancements in business, company-executives can save a lot of time and money by simply holding meetings over the internet instead of travelling or going to company headquarters.

 

8. Technology provides companies with a competitive-advantage in the market: technological-resources actually allow companies to innovate or create new-products, expand their product market and even build-up a strong customer-base. With all these factors, companies will be able to gain a competitive advantage over others in the same industry hence leading to company growth and survival than never before.

 

9. Technology enables businesses to reduce on production-costs: with the integration of technology into business, companies no longer have to hire a lot of employees to carry out certain tasks in the accounting and marketing department. For example, the demand for cashiers has gradually decreased in companies due to the use of self-checkout registers, demand for bank-tellers has decreased due to the introduction of Automated-teller-machines (ATMs) and even the demand for telemarketers has decreased due to the introduction of online-marketing. With such technological-advancements, companies have been able to reduce on operational costs while increasing on their production-levels and profitability thus leading to high-growth-rate of most businesses today.

 

10. Improved employee productivity in companies: companies that have integrated technological-equipment into their offices have actually experienced a gradual improvement or increase in employee-productivity. This is because employees can work more efficiently with the help of automated-systems that provide them with data-entry functions, auto-generated reports and a lot more. Additionally, some companies have even automated several traditional manufacturing-processes whereby its machines/robots that now assemble goods instead of using manpower. This actually helps companies to reduce on consistent labor-expenses and even fewer employees are required to monitor the machines/robots inorder to ensure that they operate properly. On the other hand, in areas like accounting, administrative-support and customer-service, there has also been a great improvement in employee productivity since employees can easily collect data, review and even make reports using computers thus providing companies with accurate-data and within time compared to manual methods of gathering information.

 

11. Improved reporting-function in companies with different branches: companies that have multiple branches either locally or globally have actually used technology to implement better communication-services and send information to their headquarters via the use of internet. This has actually allowed such big-companies to penetrate new markets globally without sacrificing communication and operational-reporting. Additionally, the information captured from different branches using management-information-systems helps such companies to make proper decisions and to know where to apply more effort. On the other hand, companies that have implemented a centralized accounting-system to record and report financial transactions have greatly improved on their financial-reporting and this even helps to reduce on the costs related to external-audits.

 

12. Improved business-mobility: technological-advancements have actually led to an improvement in sales and service departments in companies by simply allowing employees to manage orders, provide customers with information and even create sales displays using electronic-devices. This has actually helped to save-up time that companies would have spent receiving and delivering goods and services thus creating an instant competitive-advantage in the global-market. In fact, some companies today can allow their employees to work from home using a company network and internet-connection whereby this helps to reduce on the operational costs of the company.

 

13. Improved marketing: with the integration of technology into business, companies have been able to gradually improve on their marketing strategies within the global-market. In fact, use of technology through the internet enables companies to access to global-markets easily and effectively without spending a lot of money. For example, today there are many online-advertisement platforms like social-media platforms, Google-adsense and a lot more that enable companies to market their products globally without spending a lot of money. This has actually helped to improve on the customer-base and increase on sales of most companies thus leading to gradual development of the business-industry worldwide. All in all, digital-marketing has been proven to be more efficient and cost-effective than traditional marketing-methods of using television, newspapers and radio-advertisement.

 

14. Technology leads to improved product-analysis: integration of technology into business can actually help in product-analysis most especially for companies under the production-line. For example, factories today use advanced technological equipment to analyze or determine the quality of products being manufactured and this has actually helped to eliminate the production of poor-quality products. In fact, this also implies that customers will be able to receive quality-products and this is actually a great thing.

 

15. Easy storage and access to company data: today most businesses have actually integrated management information systems into their offices inorder to ensure easy storage and analysis of data. In fact, these information-systems even enable companies or employees to access all the information they need easily thus eliminating the need for manual bookkeeping. Additionally, using information-systems in companies is the best way of keeping information safely because it can’t be easily accessed by unauthorized individuals.

 

16. Technology enables businesses to plan more accurately: with use of technology in business, companies can easily plan for their future since they can predict the performance of their business using the integrated information-systems. Additionally, technology will even enable companies to know which areas need to be improved inorder to achieve a competitive-advantage in the competitive global-market.

 

17. Technology facilitates for real-time monitoring in businesses: with technology, companies can easily monitor the performance of their employees when in office, monitor the production-process and transaction-process whereby this can be simply achieved by integrating a surveillance-system into the company. So, the monitoring team in the company will be able to check and ensure that everything is moving smoothly within the company. On top of that, the monitoring system will help to protect the company from cruel people like; thieves and bad-employees that may try to steal or destroy company property and information.

 

18. Improved customer support by companies: the integration of technology into business enables companies to easily and instantly provide customer-service than never before. In fact, today some companies have incorporated software that helps to take care of customers. However, some companies are still using customer-teams which also use advanced technologies like chatting-platforms and telephones to work on customers.

 

19. Technology provides companies with different tools of solving complex-problems: today, there are many technological-advancements that enable companies to solve complex problems during operation or production processes. In fact, due to technological-advancements it’s very easy for companies to make research and collect useful-data, analyze that data and even make strategic planning using that data. All in all, there are many tools that can be used to solve complex-problems in the production-process, accounting-section, customer-care section and even in the transaction-process.

 

20. Technology improves on resource management in business: with the integration of technology in business, companies can easily manage their resources by simply reducing on the operational-costs while maximizing on their profits. For example, today some companies are using cloud-computing technology which helps to store all company data safely and at an affordable price and this technology even allows employees to access company data and software using any device no matter their location around the world. This has actually helped to make businesses operate more conveniently but with reduced operational costs.

NOTE: if you are planning to improve on the performance of your business locally or globally, then integrating technology into it is the only way to achieve this. In fact, the main purpose of doing business is to make profits and this implies that technological-innovation is only you will be able to make more profits and faster within your company. So, it’s highly recommended to incorporate cutting-edge technologies in your business if you really want to achieve a competitive-advantage over other businesses in the global-market.