Over the last 25 years, technology has dramatically changed the way we communicate in business. Cast your mind back to the early 1990s and you might remember a heavy reliance on telephones (predominantly fixed to the desk as mobile phones were cumbersome and expensive), fax machines and a mountain of a paperwork. If you wanted to speak to a colleague, you had to get up from your desk, and, if you needed to have a long chat with a client, you were well-advised to just get in the car. But now, technology has changed everything.
With the advent of the internet and its use becoming commonplace in business environments by the early noughties (1997 to 2001 was dubbed the ‘dot.com’ bubble), communication took on a radically different form…
Firstly, email replaced snail-mail business correspondence, facilitating quick responses, reductions on postage costs and the ability to communicate with customers and suppliers all over the world in hugely reduced timeframes.
Theuse of online chat, too, has also changed the way that businesses work. Whether to interact with customers or to sell more products (or both, as ‘live chats’ on retail sites now serves to sell and connect with customers) or to chat internally (using platforms such as Skype), businesses can communicate with anyone and everyone, exchanging conversation in an instant.
And, both of these mediums have facilitated international business dealings in a way that would have seemed like the stuff of sci-fi daydreams only a decade ago. Business meetings are now conducted via video conferences with multiple people ‘dialling in’ to boardrooms. Video links and Google hangouts are commonplace, and what could be almost be considered a face to face exchange is now possible without so much as having to step into the car park. Unsurprisingly, therefore, technological advances have been great for business, allowing interaction on a global scale without having to swallow the costs of international travel or environmental damage.
Another way that technology has changed the way we communicate in business is through the use of management platforms. UpRaise, for example, is helping businesses to meet their objectives, understand and enhance their employee’s productivity and also boost engagement. How? Well, simply by replacing cumbersome and outdated processes. Paper pushing, clogged inboxes and unnecessary meetings have been upgraded by software that keeps everything streamlined and digital, making the office a more efficient place to be than ever before.
So, in what other ways will advances in technology change the way we communicate in future? Well, some people predict that desktop work devices (such as your laptop or MacBook) will have faded away due to the fact that work will become a thing that we do, rather than a place that we attend by 2025. And ‘voice control’ will be so embedded in every form of technology we use in our private and professional lives that business simply won’t be conducted without an audio component. Sound exciting? It’s likely to be…
