It’s useful to pay attention to current and upcoming trends in technology and let those trends inform the way that you do business. When technology shifts in a new direction, that change tends to be very dramatic in nature. If you pay close enough attention to what’s going on in the world, you could find yourself on the ground floor of something that will be incredibly beneficial for years to come. If you ignore trends altogether, you could find both you and your business left behind in the blink of an eye. Think about what might have happened to businesses fifteen years ago that completely ignored the burgeoning power of the World Wide Web. Technological advancements have a tendency to quickly become important parts in our daily lives, so you always want to make sure that you’re checking to see what’s on the horizon.
The Cloud
One of the biggest trends to hit technology in recent years comes in the form of the cloud. Cloud-based technologies have a wide variety of different applications for both our personal lives and the ways in which we can successfully run a business.
Implementing cloud-based software in your business, for example, has the potential to save a great deal of money with regards to your operating expenses. Cloud-based enterprise applications aren’t just available at work but are instead available from any computer with an active internet connection. If your employee calls out sick but still needs to get some work done on that big project, they’ll have access to all the files they need right from their home computer. If your business suffers a disaster like a fire, you don’t have to worry about losing years or even decades of hard work. Every customer record and employee file can be backed up to the cloud for safekeeping in an off-site location.
Mobile Payments
Do you want to leave your wallet at home and use only your smartphone for all of your everyday financial transactions? This is now possible with mobile payments, which may actually someday replace most physical payment types like cash and plastic cards.
Mobile payment is a big term that can mean everything from paying at restaurants with your phone to transferring money to family or co-workers without needing to physically hand them the cash.
While payment systems like cash and credit and debit cards still take up a large portion the payment landscape, the ongoing trend among retailers and consumers is mobile payments. A mobile payment app lets you send money from your phone, either to other people or to a payment terminal to buy something in a store.
There are lots of options these days for mobile payments, and more solutions are coming out all the time, both from businesses you’ve heard of and others from start-ups.
HTML5
HTML5 is a computer markup language that has the potential to completely change the way both people and businesses operate on the internet. It features a variety of new features including native support for video, audio and other types of multimedia content and an increased emphasis on support for mobile devices. It also standardizes certain events like syntax errors so that they operate uniformly across all browser, creating a much more seamless user experience. Many features that are a standard fixture of HTML5 are designed specifically to run on the types of low-powered hardware that are hard at work inside devices like smartphones and tablet computers.
Mobile-First Web
Another trend that is making waves in technology today is the concept of the mobile web. Even as recently as five years ago, people still used the internet predominantly from desktop or laptop computers. With the release of the Apple iPhone and other smartphones in years since more and more people are accessing the internet on a device small enough to fit in their pockets. Not only does the mobile web affect the way customers are finding out information about your business, but it also affects the way you conduct business transactions. If you are away from the office but need to take a credit card transaction, for example, you can download an app for your mobile device that will allow you to do just that. You don’t actually need to have access to a physical credit card reader. Those types of advancements allow you to conduct business from nearly any location on the planet so long as you have active cellular service.
