Jeremy Wanamaker | Jun 17, 2024
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Technology is a driving force that propels businesses forward. It streamlines processes, fosters collaboration, and empowers employees to achieve more.
With a bit of skill and finesse, forward-thinking companies can easily adopt new technologies to build more productive, innovative, and competitive workplaces.
As Jeremy Wanamaker, CEO of Complete Network, says, “Technology is the essential thread that weaves productivity and connectivity into the fabric of the workplace.”
This article offers a deeper look into the role that technology plays in the modern workplace. Here, we explore the major forces and trends that are fundamentally disrupting and reshaping how and where work gets done.
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Imagine walking into the office one morning to find a typewriter sitting on your desk. There’s no email and no collaboration tools like Slack or Microsoft Teams. If you need to contact Kevin in accounting, that means writing a memo and hand delivering it to his inbox tray.
Need to find an old bill of sale from a few years back? That means digging through old, dusty file cabinets in the hope of discovering it buried somewhere inside.
The picture we painted here was the typical workplace just a few decades ago. Now fast-forward to today, and for many people, it would be torture to go back to this previous era.
We’ve become too spoiled by the ease of use, efficiency, and connectivity of modern-day technology to ever return to a time when communication was slow, information was hard to access, and most workplace tasks were manual.
Technology is important because it makes life and work more convenient. This is why forward-looking organizations see IT as the key to unlocking their full potential and achieving sustainable growth as it affords the following:
In this section, we explore the core advantages technology brings to the workplace. Instead of recounting benefits you likely already know, we’ll focus on the less obvious aspects we’ve discovered from years of assisting clients with difficult technology decisions.
A company’s culture is akin to a person’s personality. It’s the values, beliefs, and behaviors that shape us. It influences how others perceive and interact with us.
The decisions a company makes regarding its workplace technology have a direct and major influence on defining its culture. Rigid, outdated IT that stunts productivity and hinders collaboration creates a demotivating environment and negatively influences the culture.
On the flip side, adopting modern, user-friendly technologies that empower teams to work smarter can cultivate a culture of efficiency, hard work, and confidence.
Workplace technologies profoundly shape employees’ day-to-day experiences. Investing in a cutting-edge workplace must be a top priority for companies hoping to attract and retain the market’s most brilliant talent.
Skilled workers who drive outsized impact expect modern tools. If an organization provides clunky, inefficient solutions that are painful to use, it signals systematic under-investment in the workforce.
This is a red flag for high-value individuals. Elite talent recognizes that being saddled with archaic technology is a soul-crushing handicap that constrains their abilities.
Striking a healthy work-life balance has become one of the greatest challenges facing the modern workforce. Smart leaders focus on making the valuable time spent working as frictionless as possible through wise technology choices.
Indeed, this is precisely why many have doubled down on tech-enabled work flexibility – equipping staff with the tools to work from anywhere while remaining collaborative and aligned.
When employees can mould their professional responsibilities around personal lives instead of the other way around, they’re liberated to achieve more. The most desirable companies master the art and science of protecting work-life balance through judicious tech integration.
Companies live or die by their ability to intimately understand their customers. Superficial customer data and basic metrics are table stakes in today’s age.
Winning organizations realize they must achieve a deeper, more nuanced comprehension of what truly drives thoughts, feelings, and actions across the customer journey. This psychological intelligence separates the market leaders from those who flounder at the bottom.
Each digital interaction leaves rich behavioural fingerprints about how customers think, operate, and consume. These metadata trails encode deep insights into the fundamental drivers of customer affinity.
| Department | Technology Benefit | Example Technology |
| Human Resources | Streamlined recruitment and onboarding processes | Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS) |
| Finance | Enhanced accuracy in financial reporting and analysis | Financial Management Software |
| Sales | Improved lead tracking and customer relationship management | Customer Relationship Management (CRM) |
| Marketing | Data-driven campaign strategies | Marketing Automation Tools |
| Operations | Optimized supply chain and logistics management | Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) |
| Customer Service | Faster response times and improved customer interactions | Customer Service Chatbots |
| IT | Better infrastructure management and security | Network Monitoring Tools |
| Legal | Efficient contract management and compliance tracking | Contract Lifecycle Management (CLM) |
The pace of technological advancement can feel simultaneously invigorating and daunting.
As an IT stakeholder, your job is to ensure your organization maintains a forward perspective and is adaptable enough to capitalize on emerging technologies that create strategic advantages for your workplace.
The consequences of falling behind the curve are severe. Organizations that lag in adopting new technologies risk obsolescence as more agile competitors leverage innovations to operate with greater efficiency, deliver superior customer experiences, and unlock new business models.
Shockingly, industries have been upended by startups deploying disruptive technologies that incumbent leaders overlooked or dismissed as fads. Complacency is choosing irrelevance.
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In the months and years ahead, we forecast that machine learning innovations, the proliferation of hybrid work, and the rise of new-age cyber threats as highlighted by CloudSecureTech, will be pivotal considerations influencing decisions related to workplace technology adoption and implementation. Let’s take a look:
Of all the forces reshaping the modern workplace, none will prove more consequential than the continued development of artificial intelligence and machine learning. While still limited in many respects, AI capabilities are rapidly evolving and stand poised to augment and automate a multitude of workplace tasks and processes.
We’ve already seen examples like customer service chatbots, predictive maintenance for equipment, personalized recommendations, and fraud detection systems. As these models become more advanced, we’ll see broader adoption across enterprises to optimize operations, predict demand, and enhance decision-making.
As flexible work technologies like cloud-based communication tools and video conferencing continue to mature and become easier to implement at scale, they’ll further erode the historical frictions of remote work. We believe companies should start now to adopt hybrid policies and associated IT solutions to attract top talent and remain competitive for the foreseeable future.
In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, there is a greater focus on providing a more harmonious work-life balance. As a result, many companies are adjusting to hybrid work models, where employees can split their time between working from home and the office.
Funnily, or perhaps not so much so, bad actors will also use the aforementioned tech trends to carry out their malicious deeds in novel ways.
The rise of bring-your-own-device (BYOD) and hybrid policies creates new vulnerability vectors outside the traditional corporate perimeter. Savvy threat actors are already devising innovative malware, data breaches, and social engineering schemes aimed directly at remote employees.
Perhaps more concerning, state-of-the-art AI and machine learning capabilities will become democratized and weaponized. Just as enterprises deploy AI for threat detection and behavioral analytics, sophisticated adversaries will use the same tools for automating reconnaissance, identifying vulnerabilities at scale, and generating highly targeted spear-phishing content.
In this era of unprecedented digital acceleration, the right technology partner provides your organization with the forward-thinking vision, depth of expertise, and agile solutions needed to thrive.
Our team of seasoned IT professionals at Complete Network have been helping clients in Albany, New York, Charlotte, North Carolina, Savannah, Georgia, and Bluffton, South Carolina help maximize the impact and investment of their workplace technology for over two decades.
Contact our friendly team at 877 877 1840 and [email protected]. We look forward to speaking with you!
In an ideal world, technology would be a consistent source of competitive advantage and benefit for small and midsized businesses. The reality is that many fail to realize that confidence.
Without the right resources and support, even a highly skilled technology team can become overwhelmed by the growing list of technology management duties. When important tasks get neglected, it creates ripple effects throughout an organization that damage productivity and efficiency.
The co-managed IT services model solves these problems by providing your existing IT team with all the support and resources they need to successfully plan, manage, and defend your network technology.
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