COVID is Rapidly Accelerating Technology, But Is Your Business Ready?
Tired of discussing COVID-19? Us too, but it’s with us for a few more months. But for all of the destruction in its path it has spawned some silver linings, namely the rapid acceleration of technology – especially as it pertains to the corporate sector. That said, this unparalleled proliferation of technology has caused problems for some unprepared organizations. Today we’re going to take a look at the practical ways the health crisis has moved the needle on tech and how your company is faring in the process.
3 Ways COVID-19 Lockdowns Have Resulted in Rapid Growth of Technology in the Corporate Environment and How Your Business Must Adapt
I. Has Greatly Improved Team Collaboration Tools
Remote work has become a mainstay for many companies throughout COVID-19 and even after the vaccine you can expect the virtual workplace trend to persist. The reason being, is that technology quickly adapted to make it far more feasible than before.
Take Microsoft Teams for instance. It was already a superior team communications and collaboration tool prior to the health crisis, but in 2020 it was forced to evolve even further. Just last month (September) MS announced a massive wave of new capabilities to help staff and contractors stay connected, collaborate, and build solutions in Teams. We’re talking top-to-bottom updates, with one especially exciting addition – breakout rooms.
MS Teams’ breakout rooms will allow meeting organizers to split up participants into smaller groups to facilitate brainstorming sessions and workgroup discussions. Presenters can hop between breakout rooms, make announcements to all breakout rooms, and/or close the breakout rooms that then bring everybody back into the primary meeting. View more about this and all recent Teams updates on the MS Telecommunity page here.
Is your organization leveraging MS Teams or other advanced collaboration platform? If not, you haven’t caught up with this rapid advance in business communications technology. SAV Technology can help – contact us to get started.
II. Has Advanced Cybersecurity
Cybercrime has been evolving along with the economic impact of COVID-19. In fact, there are approximately 350,000 new malware strains being generated every single day through 2020. That is some seriously concerning rapid growth in the wrong kind of technology. Thankfully cybersecurity has grown proportionately. This was made possible due to the integration of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning, which is the only pathway towards keeping up with the hundreds of thousands of malware strains being introduced every 24 hours.
That said, only businesses that have invested in AI-driven cybersecurity tools can keep up. Those who do not, remain vulnerable. Receive an audit of your IT systems today and ensure that you have access to evolving cybersecurity tools to keep your data and operations secure. Contact us to get started.
III. Has Enhanced Customer/Client Management Tools
Workers and contractors across the world have had to “go virtual” but so has a customer-client relationship management. Pre-purchase, purchase, and post-purchase processes have adopted new technologies to better reach, engage, service, and follow-up with consumers in both the B2B and B2C sectors.
While there are a large number of CRM solutions to help businesses streamline administrative processes in sales, marketing, and service divisions while promoting the focus on building and maintaining the customer relationships, Microsoft once again serves as a prime example. MS Dynamics CRM (Microsoft’s customer relationship management software package) has undergone a series of updates throughout COVID-19, but perhaps the most notable was one announcement that spurred the very penning of this particular article. Today (October 26th) it was announced that C3.ai, Microsoft, and Adobe are combining forces to re-invent CRM with AI, effectively throwing down the gauntlet to Salesforce and other leading CRMs. Of course, competing CRMs will inevitably respond by evolving and developing new partnerships to remain competitive, which will only serve to enhance the CRM industry even further for companies who are in desperate need of better customer management.
In the end, it is YOU (SMB, enterprise, etc.) who will benefit from this growth BUT only if you update your IT infrastructure to make it possible. Where do you turn to make that happen? You guessed it – we are here to help. All you need to do is ask by picking up the phone to call 1-855-SAV-TECH.