Last Updated on September 13, 2024
The rate of change over the past few years has been rapid; the decline of the PC and the “post-PC” era is now looming closer with PC shipments hitting a 5-year low and analysts predicting 50% of PC shipments shall be coming from tablet sales. The voice of social media has driven businesses to become more efficient and effective at dealing with customers, they’ve now got to be either onboard with social media or losing out.
Legacy systems have been thrown out and replaced with cloud based SaaS products. Enterprise data is no longer on-premise but instead handed over to the Salesforce data center administrators. Quickly companies are finding themselves having to adopt new policies, from IT systems to methods of marketing. Search now dominates how people find information with Google executing over fifty nine thousand search queries a second, utilizing this and as well as all the technological channels is becoming more and more of an issue.
Technology is continuing to rise, how exactly is anyone meant to keep up with the rate of change?
1. Be aware of trends
The net has given birth an astronomical amount of places to gather information from, all industries, sectors and markets are covered, and it’s a cornucopia of information. However dealing with the huge amount of data can often lead to an information overload so finding a decent high quality source should be key, Reddit does an excellent job of filtering the newsworthy from the noise and is usually a good starting point to keeping up-to-date.
2. Make the most of social media
Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Pinterest are a few of the big names, however as with all things, usage depends. If your target audience resides mostly on Twitter, make that the channel of choice; use it to both keep up-to-date as well as interacting with your audience. However this depends on industry, sector and audience quite wildly.
3. Listen to analysts, though not too much
Analysts such as Gartner or IDC keep their finger on the pulse so you don’t have to, they make predictions based upon industry activity and can be a great resource of future and current news. While critics may say a lot of the headlines by analysts are made to deliver traffic, they’re still a noteworthy resource to utilize.
4. Hire graduates to bring fresh ideas
Employing graduates can bring some lifeblood into a firm, fresh thinking and fresh ideas can breathe life into an old legacy. Recent graduates are digital natives and understand the landscape far easier, they can see changes and how the digital landscape is moving as they, and the people younger than them utilize the differing services, whether it’s Snapchat, Vine or Instagram.
5. Embrace and use technology
Sometimes the best way of finding out if a technology is going to take off or not is to use it, having an opinion on technology and whether you think it is going to take off can give a far greater insight than any analyst or news source can offer. Embracing technology for all of its pros and cons can give a good overall view of technology as it moves forward.
6. Use a different technology for each project
Depending on the job you do, if you have the opportunity, use a different technology or platform for each project. You may find unexpected benefits or results from using and trying out new technology platforms.
7. Don’t be too concerned about being the first
Being the first with the latest can often be a disappointment, it breaks, it’s got bugs and it only works on certain systems. There are times when it’s good to just let the early adopters take on the risks and let the bugs get fixed before jumping in with technology.
