Technology can and is a catalyst for cutting costs, but it is time to stop looking at technology as merely an operational expense and see it as a competitive advantage.
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A common trend we find with our customers is their need to cut costs to remain competitive. Technology can and is a catalyst for cutting costs, but it is time to stop looking at technology as merely an operational expense and see it as a competitive advantage.
With the advances in technology and the evolution of IT, many large corporations are fundamentally shifting their view of IT as a way to gain market share, launch competitive products and enhance their services. For small businesses, these advancements are great news as they can often realize the same benefits of IT as their large business counterparts.
At the center of this fundamental shift in IT are mobile and cloud-based technologies. Mobile devices already play a significant role in our everyday lives, but they should be playing a stronger role in your business. Businesses are looking to have a mobile strategy that could give employees secure access to their business data, apps and productivity suites, regardless of where they are located.
The ability of an employee to respond to an email from a lead, or access a file and deliver a proposal in a timely fashion, can be the difference between winning the business or not. Thus, the business with a mobile strategy is at a significant advantage for landing that new account or retaining an existing one.
This advantage is fueled by the emergence of cloud technologies. More and more customers are beginning to see the value of cloud services and how they can not only support an effective mobile/digital strategy but modernize operational technology.
Some of the biggest, recent success stories of where mobile and cloud-based technologies provided a significant competitive advantage and created a new marketplace include car services like Uber and Lyft. These companies leveraged technology to enhance and revolutionize the outdated concept of taxi services. The result is an efficient business model that meets the needs of today's mobile and connected consumer.
Michael Porter from the Harvard Business Review says “new technology changes the nature of competition,” by: changing industry structure and, in so doing, altering the rules of competition; creating competitive advantage by giving companies new ways to outperform their rivals; and spawning whole new businesses, often from within a company's existing operations.
These are only a few reasons why any business owner should use technology to their advantage. If you're looking for that competitive edge, here are a few tips to get you started: Identify areas of your business that could potentially benefit from these strategies; insist on having a mobile and cloud strategy; apply these strategies to employee's day-to-day workflow.
Carlos Perez is a principal at Hartford-based Perez Technology Group.
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