business essay

business essay

The Impact of Technological Advancements on Modern Business Practices

1. Introduction

These alterations have also had an impact on investment decision-making by corporations. Efficient financial markets deliver the inputs needed for proper investment analysis that leads to the maximization of firm value. However, uncertainty, incomplete information, transaction costs, and other real-world attributes of the corporate environment lead to a lack of confidence in the efficiency of the market. Due to internal and external resources, including transaction costs, firms have to make the trade-off between information generation and investment decision control. As there are several web-based information sources available, the internet has emerged as a cost-effective channel for both enriching the input and lowering the cost of the process of investment analysis for internal and external investors.

The rapid advancement of digital technologies has greatly influenced modern business practices. The widespread usage of the internet has provided several unique platforms for businesses to market themselves through. Alongside innovations in digital technology, advancements in financial applications have brought about new and sophisticated products. Developments in communication, trading, and financial software have altered the nature and structure of financial markets and institutions.

2. Technological Innovations in Business

Some of the technologies that have greatly impacted businesses in modern days include the proliferation of smartphones, mapping businesses, Apple Inc.’s app store, Google’s search engine, and others. In this paper, we shall present a few examples of businesses that leverage these technologies, and success stories relying on these technological innovations in business. An example is the case of Pizza Hut, one of the biggest players in the fast food industry. Google pioneered fast and accurate city maps by sending cars throughout the cities and collecting a large number of data points from which a very detailed digital map can be created.

Nowadays, when you think about modern business, you think of data-first practices, regardless of your industry. This heavy reliance on data has been a major transformation compared to how businesses operated two decades ago. The level of technological innovation has to be a number one facilitator of this, as businesses are able to leverage on newer ways of capturing data to grow in new markets, or outmaneuver the competition. In this piece, we are going to look at some of the technological innovations that have been witnessed in recent history and the impact that they have had on modern businesses. Later on, we will have a brief look at some of the business practices that have been born from each of these technological innovations.

3. Challenges and Opportunities

The core challenge is how to accelerate technological innovation (in parallel with other economic/industrial and social forces) to level up small and medium-sized enterprises to cope with accelerating globalization. The World Bank believes that rapid technological progress, as has been achieved in the telecommunications, transportation, and defense sectors, will soon carry over to industrial and services sectors. Unfortunately, evidence from the OECD countries suggests that not all sectors or firms are benefiting from rapid technological progress. Technological catch up is neither automatic nor easy. Moreover, as progress at the technological frontier accelerates, the gap between leaders and followers has also widened. A few more advanced economies in the OECD are doing well and have become richer than ever before. Small and medium-sized firms, especially in the traditional industries, the real fabric of Europe, are lagging behind. To meet the challenge of globalization, we have to level up the European economy.

4. Future Trends and Implications

Another implication of the IOS concept is the requirement of standardized systems. To date, most business systems have been designed for use within individual organizations and, as such, have been custom-built. As more organizations communicate directly with each other and deal harshly with time- and resource-constrained projects, the need for systems with varying levels of openness will grow. Finally, the broad trend is toward associated costs. The main effect of these costs is that they force corporations to recognize the necessity of creating and maintaining a network infrastructure that can support advanced BIS applications. As organizations come to rely more on business foundations supplied by integrated systems of people, procedures, and technologies, they may change from first-hand builders of BIS applications to long-term proprietary users.

A number of future trends can be derived from the impact that today’s technological advancements are having on organizations. Real-time, fault-tolerant systems will enable businesses to deploy advanced manufacturing technologies. These technologies could take the form of flexible manufacturing capabilities, just-in-time logistics, or total quality management and business re-engineering process. Next, businesses are recognizing their interdependency and interacting through inter-organizational systems (IOSs). Future trends will probably lead to a shift from internal to more open, dynamic, and extended business processes by management. This could take the form of a management by contracts arrangement or the use of trading partners as operational unit of the firm.

5. Conclusion

What we need to understand are the changes that have been brought about by technology and to what extent it is beneficial to organizations. We also need to understand the bottlenecks created because of the increased dependence of organizations on technology. When we are able to understand this, we will also find solutions to the problem areas, thus leveling out any difficulty. After all, organizations are interested in profitability, as well as survival. And here lies the fine line of balance that needs to be addressed carefully.

Technology has made its significant place in every area of life, be it personal, social, or professional. Every day, something new is coming up, making the lives of individuals and businesses more predictable and easier. The age-old methods of businesses have been replaced by modern techniques. Business today is carried out in virtual space, thanks to different technologies. It is not possible for any growing organization to remain static, as the business world is constantly changing. Organizations are therefore investing heavily in technology to infuse more efficiency into the business processes. We have seen how technology is used in business operations management. The back-end operations inside the organization become faster and more cost-effective by the use of technology, thus saving time and money. There is a revolution in customer relationship management through the use of technology.