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Owning and operating a business makes you your own boss. This can be a dream come true, but it’s also a wakeup call. As it turns out, while your bosses could sometimes do with an attitude adjustment, being the head of a company can be incredibly stressful. There are countless logistical problems that need to be solved for a business to stay afloat, let alone become a success. One such logistical problem is implementing the latest and greatest technology that will allow you to stay competitive in an increasingly technocentric commercial landscape. Here’s what you need to know.
Cybersecurity
Since the dawn of the internet, bad actors have ensured that any interaction with the world wide web puts users at a small degree of risk, if not more. For that reason, kitting your business out with cutting-edge technology is a double-edged sword. While these implementations have plenty of straightforward benefits that have made them mainstays in the modern business world, they also entail their own risks for you and your company. For example, using newly released software carries with it the risk of falling victim to a zero day exploit. This kind of cyberattack uses malware to take advantage of bugs in a given piece of software that aren’t yet publicly known.
It’s also important to note that this extends to your own website and, if applicable, your e-commerce app. When purchasing a domain name for your company website, one thing that’s not included is encryption. This vital cybersecurity feature seems like it would be part of the internet by default, but it’s technically optional and requires a small investment on your part. Likewise, developing an e-commerce app has been distilled to filling in a template via an application programming interface (API), but relying on an API leaves with any potential vulnerabilities present within it. Both of these moves are all but mandatory in today’s increasingly online economy, but opting in without these considerations will leave you with a case of buyer’s remorse.
The Internet of Things
The internet of things (IoT) design philosophy is a deceptively simple one. It seeks to give our everyday devices more functionality by implementing wi-fi connectivity. This is an accurate assessment of the most foundational aspects of IoT techm but it’s ultimately an incomplete picture. The greatest strength of IoT technology is that it allows users to create a veritable network of devices and apps with the goal of creating a smart home or office, giving them total control over their space. It’s easy to see why this has taken its place among the business essentials.
For example, it’s not uncommon to use IoT tech to automate much of the administrative labor for a given company. Payroll and accounting, for example, can be automated by taking input from a payroll app or a cash register and then filing that away. Meanwhile, your staff’s hours worked can automatically be calculated to determine their wages, updating in real time. Simultaneously, transactions logged on your store’s registers can be stored alongside input from your bank account so that income and spending are being recorded automatically.
Cloud Computing
Cloud computing has similarly emerged on the scene and found a permanent home in every industry under the sun. Cloud computing is a form of networking, but it far exceeds that meager title. In addition to doing everything you would expect of a network, it also overhauls what computing can be. Simply put, it allows every computer on a cloud network to pool their assets together to leverage the total processing power of the network to minimize the time and burden it takes to process data. This makes it an indispensable part of any business model in the age of big data. It also synergizes well with IoT to further expedite the data pipeline, allowing you to cut down on the time and human effort that would otherwise go into arming yourself with information you need to plan your next move.