Think Mobile
I spend a healthy amount of time thinking, thinking about modern day tech and how businesses should apply them, then one day it dawned on me:
Businesses use the latest tech when getting started, the challenge then for most businesses has been how to keep up with ever changing tech.
And so, businesses keep doing these same things year after year until they get disrupted by a new startup using modern tech. This new startup also grows big, slows down, fails to keep innovating and as such they also die when a new startup comes along. To get a clear understanding of this cycle, look no further than the “sinking” duo of BlackBerry and Nokia.
For the new Entrepreneur venturing out in business then, I have a priceless piece of advice for you; try not to do anything the way it is been done, review every single process and settle to use them only if you have prove that tech has not made that task cheaper or irrelevant.
Think Mobile
Your business needs to be setup to be less rigid and more mobile. Mobile in this context means been prepared for change, able and willing to accept changes as they come along and refuse to hang on the way things are.
The greatest boost to the modern business is the irrelevance of location to conducting business, you can now have a physical shop in Onitsha, eastern Nigeria and have loyal customers in Lagos, western Nigeria, or even on the other side of the planet. Your customers can easily access your store from anywhere in the world, through the internet, make their purchases and pay online without having to interact in person. The eCommerce industry is big and booming – just ask Amazon, the global leader in eCommerce operations.
So, then more and more businesses must start thinking of how they can expand their business beyond their current locations. Schools have started doing that by offering their courses online, a lecturer who uploaded his course online remarked that he taught more people in a single online session than he would have taught in his whole lifetime if he stuck to only teaching in physical class.
Indeed, tech has had an amazing effect on education, every major aspect of education and learning has evolved over the past 10 years. The first step was prolly when major examination bodies in Nigeria; West Africa Examination Council (WAEC), Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) required that people who wanted to take their exams now had to do the registrations online, abolishing paper forms! JAMB has also started experimenting with Computer based exam. I can easily predict that in the near future, all exams will be taken online, inside your own house! You are now wondering how we will be able to curb examination malpractices that way and I will respond by saying; tech will solve that problem also. Using advanced algorithms and surveillance, candidates can be monitored remotely to determine if they had illegal help during the exam itself or not. Besides, we all know exams in their current form is broken and in need of an overhaul. Tech will provide that overhaul; tech has overhauled education and it is only natural for tests and examination to get completely overhauled too.
Similarly, every professional should sit down and take a long hard look at how tech can expand his reach beyond his physical location. Tools like Skype, UberConference, Kowope, GTPay, Mobile Money, Prowork and others could hold a clue for you.
In this post, I have merely scratched the surface of these ideas, in future posts, I will expound much more with deeper insights, you should keep an eye on my blog for this updates, you can subscribe below:
