10 of the Decade’s Important Advancements in Business Technology
There have been many important advancements in technology over the past decade. Here are a few that have had a significant impact on how businesses operate and how businesspeople interact with their prospects and customers.
Virtualization
Virtualization of servers with products such as VMWare and Xen, IT departments have been able to manage multiple servers much more easily and with fewer physical resources. Virtualization has also provided a number of other important benefits such as for product testing.
Computing Power
Moore’s Law may soon be running out of steam, but in the meantime, it has continued to rule the technology landscape. Business users can now get significantly more laptop and mobile device power than they could at the beginning of the decade.
Mobile Email
For better or for worse, most businesspeople now get their corporate email instantly on devices such as BlackBerry and iPhone — and they can respond to prospects and customers more quickly than they ever could.
Browser-Based CRM
The 90’s saw client/server CRM with installs required on every machine and often-unreliable data synchronization. At the end of the 90’s, cloud based CRM applications such as Salesforce.com and on-premises, browser-based applications such as SageCRM were born. These applications have flourished in the past decade and have made it much easier for business users to manage and interact with CRM applications.
Cloud Computing
Salesforce.com popularized the notion of cloud-based business applications. Google stepped in with cloud solutions for business in Google Docs and GMail for Business. Amazon EC2 has given new business (and existing ones) a cloud infrastructure upon which to run their applications without having to worry about setting up a server infrastructure. A whole host of business application categories are now available in the cloud.
Business Intelligence
The options for flat reporting on data grew significantly in the 90’s, but much more analytical approaches to understanding corporate data and trends really took off in the last decade. Business Intelligence also moved down from the enterprise to the mid-market and even to small businesses.
Web Conferencing
The rapid growth of applications such as GoToMeeting and GoToWebinar have provided sales, marketing and customer support users with a way to much more quickly respond to prospects and customers while saving on travel time and expense.
Internet Everywhere
This is another one that’s in the “for better or worse” category. Ubiquitous access to the Internet has allowed businesspeople to be productive no matter where they are.
CMS and Blog Platforms for Corporate Web Sites
Now that companies can build entire corporate Web sites on platforms such as Drupal and WordPress, almost gone are the days of static Web sites that require an HTML expert to modify. Business of all sizes can easily create dynamic sites without having to hire a coder.
Social Media
Social Media has changed the way that many businesses interact with their customers. Enterprises such as Whole Foods and Dell have shifted part of their customer and sales interactions to Twitter. Smaller companies are finding niche ways in which to benefit from Twitter and other social media applications. Many local businesses have discovered their fan base with Facebook pages.
Business use of Internet video, especially YouTube, has grown by leaps and bounds over the last decade. Many companies are making YouTube an essential part of their marketing and training strategies.
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Steve Chipman is the founder and president of Lexnet Consulting Group, based in San Francisco. Lexnet is a leading value added reseller for CRM (customer relationship management) solutions.
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