Tech is there, learn to use it innovatively

According to a recent report by Goldman Sachs, India is likely to grow at 8% next year, which is amongst the fastest in the world. In fact, it’s not only India, but most Asian countries are likely to see a rapid growth, as compared to other continents.
The question now is, are you ready to leverage this economic growth? Is your organization ready? Just as you can’t fight modern battles with swords, arrow, and spears, you can’t grow your organizational empire with outdated technologies.
There are three things that every organization, small or large needs in order to grow, which can be summarized as the three “ATEs”–Automate, Communicate, and Innovate.

Automation is required to get timely access to information for decision making, without which you can’t identity the right business opportunities in time. This is where new technologies like Cloud Computing and SaaS (Software as a Service) come into play. These technologies take away the complexities of having to house any IT hardware or software in your premise, and completely shift it to a service provider. Your application’s management is your service provider’s
headache. You just have to worry about using it, and paying per month for its usage. Business applications like ERP, CRM, HRM, office suites, etc are available today as a SaaS model. Inside your organization also, there are plenty of technologies to automate various processes. Setting up a local Intranet, by using simple tools like MediaWiki for instance, can help you move all your processes online without having to teach your employees any complex HTML coding, etc. If done right, automation can help improve operational efficiency and productivity, help you identify and
control runaway costs, and get the right alerts at the right time.
This is the age of electronic communication, which has gone far beyond basic email and web (If you don’t even have these, then it’s better to get them immediately from a service provider). Today, social networks like Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter can also be used for business networking, besides being used by the younger generation to be socially active. There’s another communication revolution that’s been brewing at the back-end and gradually taking over our
lives–the mobile revolution. This doesn’t just comprise of the 400 million strong users who use
mobile phones, but also things like notebooks, netbooks, and high-speed data cards. These devices
allow you to be in touch with your business no matter where you are.

Lastly, all the new technologies to automate and communicate become irrelevant if we don’t innovate. The technologies today are easily available, and most of them are very cost effective as well. What we need is a change of mind set to be able to accept them and use them innovatively for our businesses.

So, here’s to an automated, fully connected, and innovative business environment.

Anil Chopra
Editor