These days it sometimes feels as though anyone who is serious about running a business needs to be an IT specialist. Irrespective of youroperation, there is simply so much communication and management that has to be done electronically that it is a wonder any of us actually do anything else – like speak to customers, or make something.
Whether it is you staff payroll, your invoicing, your internal communications of your marketing analysis – there is no getting away from the fact that we are now massively dependant on our digital expertise. And, of course, not everyone relishes such a glaring vulnerability.
After all, most of us are not digital experts at all. We are simply doing our best to keep up with the competitive tide that new technologies provide. Whether we are tech-savvy or tech-wary, we are all involved in a technological space race. For those people who started their working lives in a world without email, this represents a scary way to do business.
Happily, progress comes in many shapes and sizes, and there is a growing industry that specialises in integrating the complexities of digital communication into single manageable interfaces. Everyone likes things to be simple. Increasingly, products and services are being generated to serve this need. By putting the complexity at arms’ length, and allowing decision makers to focus on the content of their message, rather than how to mechanically get it delivered, such packages are finding a ready take up across the full breadth of digital communications.
In social media the advent of sites like Hootsuite, Hubspot and klood.com that co-ordinatemultiple media channels such as Facebook, Twitter and Linked In are an obvious example of this sort of service provision. More commercially oriented packages such as Blackberry’s Mobile Device Management package – aimed specifically at Blackberry’s commercial clientele – provides a way for a business manager to retain control – and to ensure the efficiency – of each of the devices that operate within their organization. Rather than necessitating a range of different tools and devices for the spread of any one person’s professional and personal requirements, such systems are designed to streamline each of our digital experiences to the point where one size really does fit all.
That may be the oldest cliché in the book, but as is so often the way with clichés, it has stood the test of time because it captures a universal truism. Nobody likes things to be any more complex than they have to be.
The fact that hardware providers such as Blackberry are turning towards software solutions in order to make their products more ‘user friendly’ – surely one of the buzz-phrases of the next decade – points to the fact that we might soon be able to put our digital anxieties to one side and simply go back to what it is we are best at. In most cases, that is nothing to do with understanding the minutiae of computer code and is everything to do with running a successful business.
