What Should You Do When You Don’t Know What Your IT Needs Are

Three of the focuses of my blog are Financial Literacy/Money, Business/Entrepreneurship and Technology. Most business enterprises today have Information Technology IT needs and its important to know what they are so you can make sure they’re met. The following contributed post is thus entitled; What Should You Do When You Don’t Know What Your IT Needs Are.

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Every business is reliant on IT in some way. IT is what allows us to store, analyze and manipulate information to refine processes and improve results. In other words, IT is the system we use to track the number of sales a business makes and figure out a strategy for improving that number.

But the only problem is, most entrepreneurs aren’t IT specialists. This means that while you probably already know that you need some form of IT system, you may not know which system is best for you, or even if you would be better off designing your own.

Fortunately, there are plenty of ways to work out what you need and make sure that you get it. And, once you have your IT sorted out, computer support and network maintenance will certainly follow naturally.

Define the Problem You Want to Solve

The first step is to define the problem you want your IT system to solve. In many cases, this is simply about figuring out which existing system is the best fit. For example, if you are running a shop, you will want to track your stock, know exactly what is selling and be able to monitor your profits. You won’t need to get a specialist to design this for you as most shops work in pretty much the same way and have the same requirements.

However, if you are a more unique business operating system, your IT needs aren’t likely to be covered by something off the shelf, you may need to design your own. In this case, you should try to write down exactly what you want the software to do. For example, you may require clients to fill out a form which takes them to different pages according to their answers.

The simplest way to approach this kind of design is to start by asking questions. What you do want the person using the system to be able to do and what is the best route for them to take? We all rely on our intuition to guide us through life and technology is no different. Don’t try to be clever or over complicate things; create something that a child could navigate and you won’t go far wrong!

Find the Right Solution For Your Needs

Any designer should be able to work out an intuitive solution based on the problems that you present. When everything is set up and running exactly as you envisioned, you will see a major benefit so it is important that you get the details right early on. However, don’t be afraid to develop your idea as you go along. While Version One might be just fine, Version Two could perfect the system. And, it would be wise to know now that your business is likely to change over the coming years and build in that flexibility from the start!

Finding IT solutions doesn’t require a degree in computer science, you just need to be able to articulate a problem and then get help working towards a good solution. You might feel daunted now, but once you are in the thick of it, you will see just how powerful IT can be.

Taking Care of Your Small Business’ IT

Three of the focuses of my blog are Financial Literacy/Money, Business/Entrepreneurship and Technology. Most businesses today utilize some form of Information Technology (IT) and it’s thus critical to manage that component of your organization. The following contributed post is thus entitled; Taking Care of Your Small Business’ IT.

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As a society we are making more and more use of technology in our day to day lives. We use smartphones, tablets, laptops, and desktop computers to undertake a whole variety of tasks – from conducting research to watching shows and films, shopping, socialising, and more. So, it’s not all too surprising that small businesses are following suit. Technology makes our working lives easier and more convenient in the same way that it does our personal lives. However, when you begin to incorporate more technology into the workplace, you’re going to have to do more in order to maintain it and keep everything up and running. Here are a few steps that you can take to achieve this!

IT Support

Seeing as small businesses are becoming increasingly reliant on the use of technology, having some sort of IT support is now a necessity. IT support provided by reliable companies like Dyrand Systems will ensure that there are plenty of adequately trained individuals at hand who can monitor your small business’ tech (preventing problems from occurring in the first place) and can help to rectify any problems that may manage to develop down the line. This is much better than the reactive approach that many small business owners tend to take towards software issues – you don’t want to wait until something has already gone wrong before finding someone to fix it. Generally speaking, outsourcing is best for small businesses. It’s not until you begin to expand into a much larger company that you should give serious thought to developing an in-house IT department.

Upgrade Your Devices

It’s pretty common for individuals working for small businesses to become frustrated with their devices. Older devices, no matter how well they are maintained, simply succumb to the test of time eventually. Whether this is physically (as they begin to require more regular repairs and part replacements) or in terms of falling behind in comparison to new innovations in the tech world. It’s generally best to upgrade every once in awhile when your tech becomes outdated. This will ensure that you and staff are working with up to date devices and can be as productive as possible.

Upgrade Your Software

A cheaper option than upgrading your devices, and an option that you need to engage with much more regularly, is to upgrade your software. The majority of us tend to click “ignore” or “remind me later” when offered software updates. This is an understandable bad habit – when we log on, we tend to have something to do and will postpone delays. However, it’s important to upgrade your software when you get a spare moment. This will, again, keep everything up to date and current, maximising your potential productivity.

These are just a few different steps that you might want to take into consideration when it comes to keeping all of your tech up and running. Following them can really simplify multiple areas of your life!

Why Appointment Reminders Can Be Beneficial Can Be Beneficial For Your Business

Three of the focuses of my blog are Financial Literacy/Money, Business/Entrepreneurship and Technology. When running any business enterprise, keeping appointments and deadlines with staff and partners is key. The following contributed post is thus entitled; Why Appointment Reminders Can Be Beneficial Can Be Beneficial For Your Business.

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With people leading busier lives than ever, it’s really easy for things to fall through the cracks, and for your clients, that might mean a forgotten appointment or two. This not only wastes your time, but it stops other people who might have needed that appointment accessing your services, and will more than likely cost you money that you are unlikely to recuperate. It is beneficial to both you and your clients that you have appointment reminder systems in place.

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1. You can redeploy resources

When you send out confirmations and reminders of appointments and don’t receive a reply, or you receive a response stating that the client will not be coming to the scheduled appointment, you can plan ahead and make the most of the time and resources. Perhaps you have a waiting list and are able to offer the time slot to someone else who needs it? If not, you can direct your staff to other tasks that need doing, or rearrange their working hours for that day. Knowing in advance means less sitting about waiting and more action.

2. You can decrease waiting times

If a client turns up even a few minutes late for an appointment, it can have a knock-on effect for the rest of the day. The next person is delayed, and the next person and so on, and before you know it, that five minutes delay has turned into an hour. No one likes waiting, and it is a sure fire way to annoy your customers. Sending an appointment reminder means they are more likely to turn up on time, and you can even customise them to request that they turn up a few minutes early, if required.

3. People like to be reminded

Studies have shown that people prefer to receive some type of digital reminder regarding their scheduled appointments. A text message is a perfect way of doing this – most of us carry our mobile phones around with us and check them regularly. It means that their day is not disrupted by phone calls from you. They also prefer the ability to reschedule their appointments if they are not able to make them. It is also perfectly safe to send reminders via text, as long as they do not contain any confidential or sensitive information.

4. You can understand your customers better

If you have a customer who repeatedly misses appointments or cancels them at the very last minute, you can keep a record of this. With this information, you can begin to build a picture and try to understand why this happens, and what you can do to prevent it. Are you booking appointments too far in advance? Are you reminding them at the right time?

Digital reminders are an excellent resource for businesses who are focused on customer service. By making the most of your time, documenting appointment habits and building a relationship with your clients, you and your staff will be able to focus on growing your business and maximizing profit.

It’s Time You Got Familiar With The Digital World

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“A lot of the time, the challenges that come with running a business are going to specifically involve trying to succeed in the context of a digital world.”

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Three of the focuses of my blog are Financial Literacy/Money, Business/Entrepreneurship and Technology. Running a business venture today requires some usage of technology as many sales and transactions take place on our computers and also our cell phones. Not understanding how to use these technologies and their various associated applications can be very, very costly. The following contributed post is thus entitled, It’s Time You Got Familiar With The Digital World.

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Running any kind of business is always going to be a challenge. Anyone who tries to set up their own business assuming that it’s going to be easy is in for a seriously nasty shock, Sure, many of the challenges that come with running a business are much the same as they’ve always been. Figuring out your key demographics takes time and effort, there never seem to be enough hours in the day, it’s a constant struggle to figure out exactly where to focus your energies at any given time. However, as time moves forward, more and more often the challenges that come with running any business become more specific. A lot of the time, the challenges that come with running a business are going to specifically involve trying to succeed in the context of a digital world. The modern world moves at such a fast pace that trying to keep up, especially if your business has generally existed offline, can feel like a serious uphill battle. However, that doesn’t mean that there aren’t things that you can do in order to bring your business up to date with the modern world. With that in mind, here are some ways to get yourself and your business familiar with the modern world.

Learn to code

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Coding is one of those things that seems like a total mystery to the vast majority of people. After all, if you’re confronted with a huge amount of code representing any given program or website, it’s going to look like utter gibberish. However, coding is actually one of the most valuable skills that anyone in the workforce can have in the modern world. In fact, there’s a good chance that coding is going to become just as much of an essential skill as basic reading and math going into the future. After all, as more and more businesses move into the digital realm, it only makes sense that we should all try and become more fluent in its native language. Whether it’s through places like this company that allow you to easily create PDFs using C#, or through the huge amount of tutorials and instructional content online, learning to code is a whole lot easier than you might expect. From CEOs to the most entry-level employees, this is something your business really cannot do without.

Understand how customers use the internet

If the internet wasn’t a place where your customers spend a huge amount of their time, there would be little point in putting nearly so much effort into understanding it. However, the modern era has essentially been defined by the amount of time that the average person spends online. But that doesn’t mean that you can take your customer’s use of the internet for granted. You need to understand exactly how they’re using it in order to most effectively connect with them. This means understanding which sites they are using so that you can advertise as effectively as possible or being away of which social media sites are most popular with your demographic so that you can increase your presence on them. If you don’t understand how your customers are using the internet, you’re never going to be able to connect with them online as effectively as you could.

Bring your SEO up to standard

When it comes to offline marketing, one of the primary things that you have to focus on is how to get your marketing in front of customers. This usually takes the form of trying to bring your marketing to them through TV adverts or even direct mail marketing. However, digital marketing is often pretty different in that it generally involves trying to bring your customers to you. The most effective way of doing that is to ensure that, when your customers search for the service or product they need, your business is the very first result that they see. The only way to do that is through effective search engine optimization or SEO. Now, the full ins and outs of SEO are a little too complicated to go into here but there are plenty of resources online available to you that can get you started bringing your search engine ranking as high as possible.

You’ll want to focus on getting a good website and web design up and running. That way traffic will come to your website more frequently as a result. A website like Timothy Stocksdale is a good example of how to get your site out there for the world to see.

Embrace remote working

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The office has consistently been the central hub of any given business but a lot of that has changed since the rise of the internet. Now, it has never been more possible for employees and contractors to work for you without ever actually being in the same room. The idea of remote working through remote desktops as well as communication apps like Skype and Slack might seem pretty scary. However, it’s one of the most valuable tools in your arsenal if you know how to use it effectively.

Stay up to date

One of the most challenging things about working online is that the world around you often moves at such as fast pace that it can be a struggle to keep up. Often the moment that you feel as though you’re able to settle into a comfortable groove, things move forward suddenly and without warning. Because of that, it’s essential that you try and stay up to date wherever possible. The very best way to do that is to make sure that you’re constantly checking business websites and blogs for all of the latest digital developments and new techniques that your business should be embracing.

Now, one thing that you do need to remember is that focusing all of your energy onto taking your business digital isn’t necessarily going to be the right choice. Sure, if your business is built from the ground up to exist online then that’s a good idea, but it’s likely that there are plenty of offline aspects to your business that you simply cannot afford to ignore. Make sure that you’re maintaining the best possible balance in your business and that you’re not falling into the habit of assuming that new technology and software is going to solve all of your problems right away.

How to Encourage Your Kid’s Computer Interest

Two of the focuses of my blog are General Education and Technology. The current younger generations and those that will follow them will all come of age in a digital world. With all of the distractions available online, it will also be important encourage their constructive use of the computers around them. The following contributed post is thus entitled, How to Encourage Your Kid’s Computer Interest.

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Sure, most teenagers wouldn’t need much encouragement when it comes to sitting around in front of the computer all day. Yet, browsing for cat memes and watching funny videos on YouTube isn’t quite what you have in mind for your kids’ career in terms of computer science – and there is a lot more to computers than just popular culture, after all.

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If you’d like to help your teenager out with understanding complex computer issues and building up under their interest, you have definitely come to the right place.

Here is a handful of ways to encourage your teenager’s or child’s computer interest and make sure that they stay up to date on everything that is going on in the world of computer science.

First: Make it a social activity

A lot of children who grew up in the ‘80s and ‘90s didn’t have many people who help them out with understanding computers. Perhaps you had it the same way – and building your own computer or learning to code was something you had to do on your own.

This doesn’t mean that your kid has to have it the same way, though, and just because you had to learn it this way doesn’t mean that it’s necessarily the best way to learn a new skill. When learning how to code is a social activity rather than something they have to do alone in their room, it’s suddenly a lot more fun – and definitely a lot easier to learn.

These days, there are a ton of people who know a lot about the subject and you can easily find someone to help your kid out in case you’re not a computer nerd yourself. Find a mentor, for example, who can guide your kid – or see if there are any courses around in case one of their friends would like to join them.

It’s going to be a lot easier for them to stick to it when they’re learning together with a friend, after all, and they will learn it a lot faster as well.

Next: Tap into you kid’s passion

Coding is, as we know, applied to a lot of different things and you should try to help and guide your kid in the right direction if they don’t know what their passion is quite yet.

Your kid might enjoy game design more than building and operating a small robot, for example, or perhaps it’s the other way around. They might enjoy building a website instead – or just read up on everything around cyber security.

No matter what they prefer, there are vast resources that you can use to help them explore their way to their talents. Here are some excellent hacker movies you can watch together, by the way, so that you get to be involved in their interest even if you’re not that into computer science yourself.

Another excellent way to encourage your child’s interests can be through introducing educational resources and working on personal development with the help of Principal David Krakoff. Looking into new concepts and content can be just what is needed to spark your child’s passion!

Being young is all about finding your path in life and becoming better at what you enjoy. Help your kid out with finding his or her way and you’ll have built a great foundation for them and their future careers.

Things To Consider When Starting Your Online Business

Three of the focuses of my blog are Financial Literacy/Money and Business/Entrepreneurship and Technology. Today most business/enterprises have to establish and maintain an online presence. There a few things to consider when starting an online business. The following contributed post is thus entitled; Things To Consider When Starting Your Online Business.

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Starting a business has become easier than ever before thanks to the internet. The accessibility afforded to you by being online is unique to this era and should encourage you to put your idea into action. So bearing that in mind, let’s take a look at some of the important things that you must make sure that you don’t overlook as well as the useful tools available to anyone at the beginnings of their company.

Website

One of the first things you will want to do is get your company up and running with a website. To do this you will have to make some decisions. For starters, do you want to host a web page on your own domain or use a third party hosting platform? This is a personal decision but the pros and cons of what you want to do must be carefully considered. Security, which we will discuss further later, is supposed to be improved by using a third party host as it separates your website from the rest of your company’s IT infrastructure – this may be more important as you grow rather than first starting out. There are also different costs associated with hosting internally and externally. If you are going to host your website on personal servers, then you will have to purchase the hardware required, whereas a third party host will charge you a monthly fee.

That said, you might prefer to start off by buying a domain name and starting the basics of your website online using some of the many web building tools available to you.

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Security

Security plays a major role across every aspect of your business, especially when you are setting one up online. You will need to make sure that the computer you are using is secured via antivirus and firewalls and likewise your network is also protected. You should look into more about internet security as a matter of urgency when starting your business. Think of it like this; if you were running a shop you would have; security alarms for when you’re not available, CCTV to watch over your store and a safe to keep all of your belongings secure. You should treat your computer and the internet as you would a shop, making sure that it is protected at all cost from cybercriminals.

Security is not just about others attempting to steal from you but also protecting yourself against loss. Making sure you are regularly backing up your hard drive and keeping important documents in more than one place. Consider using cloud storage as a way to secure data online rather than just on your hard drive. Problems do happen, and it is best that you have solutions before they occur.

These are just two example of things you must consider when starting your online business. Remember, there is a whole internet of things (IOC) out there for you to be using, so get learning and turn your plans into something big.

Learning To Solve Computer Problems Before They Happen

Three focuses of my blog are Financial Literacy/Money, Business/Entrepreneurship and Technology. Whichever business or enterprise you’re in, management of your Information Technology (IT) systems is critical, and it’s also critical to figure out how to solve computer-related problems before they happen. The following contributed post is thus entitled, Learning To Solve Computer Problems Before They Happen.

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It’s practically impossible for a modern business to get away with not using computers, nowadays. These machines have truly taken over this field, and this means that people simply have to learn to get used to them, even if they don’t find them very easy to use. Of course, though, their popularity doesn’t make it any easier to deal with problems with them. Instead, when you have an issue with a machine you need, you have to pay someone to fix it for you. To get around this and help you out, this post will be exploring some of the work which is going into solving problems like this before they even happen.

Machine Learning

One of the keys to achieving a goal like this is being able to spot the common factors between various computer faults. If a CPU is generally killed very quickly by excessive heat, for example, knowing which temperatures they can safely operate at is very important. This has lead to a lot of companies dedicating their time to this sort of learning, running near constant tests to figure out the connections between various hardware and software flaws, drastically improving the chances of spotting them before they cause problems.

Remote Monitoring

As a more direct approach to the work above, remote monitoring is often used to help with viruses and other attempts to damage the integrity of a system. Device and system monitoring can be a great way to solve this, with services available which can stop malicious software in its tracks without your users ever noticing a thing. This gives you the power to keep an eye on all of your machines without having to lift a finger.

Automated Protection

People can make mistakes, though, and this makes it worth having a second line of defense when it comes to protecting your computers. In the case of a hot computer, having the right settings in place to power off the machine before the CPU gets damaged is a good idea. While this may seem simply, a lot of people fail to take advantage of protection methods like this, making it far harder to keep their machines safe.

Simple Methods

Most of the work above will require the help of another company to get set up. There are jobs which you can do for yourself which will make this even better, though, like refreshing your hardware once in awhile to make sure that it is up to the right standards. A lot of people struggle with this, finding it hard to know what they need to do to keep their computers alive, even though they are like any other machines, and simply need to be treated correctly to keep running for a long time.

Hopefully, this post will inspire you to start working harder on the time which goes into your company’s computer problems. A lot of people find this sort of work very challenging, but it will be worth putting some time towards it, even if is hard.

Managing Your Small Business’ IT Effectively

Three focuses of my blog are Financial Literacy/Money, Business/Entrepreneurship, and Technology. Effectively managing your small business’ Information Technology (IT) operations is a key aspect of its overall health and success. What are some keys to doing this? This contributed post is entitled; Managing Your Small Business’ IT Effectively.

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Nowadays, people will check their smartphone every twelve minutes, and the average person will spend more than one entire day of their whole week online. There are various reasons for this. A lot of checking will be for personal pleasure – people will be checking their social media feeds, looking up information that is useful for them, or reading up on the news. However, an increasing number of people are seeing their time spent on tech devices clock up, as they are needing to engage with them on a professional basis. Seeing as the public are turning to the web more, it’s not all too surprising that businesses are as well! Many companies are creating social media accounts and using the web to carry out correspondence to clients, partners, and customers over email or instant messaging chat. So, you need to keep your IT up and running in order to run your business effectively. Here’s a little more on the subject!

The Importance of Keeping IT Running

You don’t really realise how central IT is to your business’ functioning until it happens to go down. Without functioning IT, many of your staff will be unable to do their jobs and you will find yourself paying out days worth of wages to individuals who aren’t actually doing anything for your company’s progression. IT flaws can also breach security, which could pose major problems down the line. Dealing with IT effectively will ensure that all of your systems remain problem free.

Outsourcing

Perhaps the easiest and most convenient way to take care of Technology Support for business is to outsource the work to a reliable company. This means that you don’t have to take on the responsibility of becoming a full time employer of an IT specialist, but you do gain the same benefits in the long run. You will always have someone or a team overseeing your company’s IT needs, preventing problems that may arise, and tackling problems that do manage to arise quickly and effectively.

Building an In-House Team

Your alternative is to build an in-house team of IT specialists. Generally speaking, this is something to consider when your business begins to expand and you have the time to draw up contracts and fit an in-house IT team into your commercial property. One of the benefits on having an in-house team, should you need one, is that everyone working for you will eventually become extremely familiar with your unique system, being able to detect and resolve problems a little more quickly than people who may not have encountered your system before.

As you can see, maintaining fully functioning IT is absolutely essential for any small business owner who wants to keep their company up and running. Hopefully, the above advice will help you to achieve this!

Business Information: Backup Data Solutions

Three of the focuses of my blog are Financial Literacy/Money, Business/Entrepreneurship and Technology. In today’s digital and information-based world a critical component of any organization is a data backup strategy, and there are tremendous potential dangers from not having one. The following contributed post is thus entitled; Business Information: Backup Data Solutions.

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Picture by Christina Morillo

Data backup in America appears to be rare in the US, as according to Nationwide Insurance 68% of small to medium businesses don’t have a disaster recovery plan in place, even though Small Business Trends highlights that 140,000 hard drives fail each week. This is a surprising fact to behold, in a world where information is power, a business without its customer credentials, tax and account details, sales and so forth, is a business that would cease to exist should it’s data become eradicated or lost in a disaster.

For businesses that rarely survive the mess caused by losing data, by the time they’ve clawed back any customers and credibility they once had, they have most likely lost unnecessary time and money in the process. This post identifies the importance of backing up your data to prevent issues within your organization. Because whether you’re a startup business, medium business or large company, data matters to you and your company for continued growth.

Potential Disasters
Business information could fall victim to a number of threats such as:

Fire or flood
Thiefs
Lost Files
IT Breakdown
Hackers

In response to the above scenarios what do you have in place currently to protect your data from a devastating fire, a hard drive failing or hackers accessing your online resources? Beyond protecting your information, by use of burglar alarms for thieves, fireproof cabinets for paper documents, and cybersecurity software, if these plans failed to keep your data intact, how would you regain vital information?

What Should You Back Up?
If you’re unsure about what information you should be attempting to back-up, it should include everything that is vital to the business’s survival. Such as customer details, business accounts and taxes, sales information and any data stored on behalf of customers. For example, for a law firm, this would include client case files, both ongoing and archived files. Archived files must be retained on behalf of the customer in case the information needs to be reviewed in the future.

If keeping a copy of physical files appears impossible to store due to a lack of space. an alternative option to this would be to transfer your paper files to digital form.

Backup Location
There are two routes to consider utilizing for backing up your files. Business owners should aim to keep a local on-site backup, easily accessible day today and an off-site backup, in the event the business premises is invaded by a disaster rendering all information useless. The backup source you use depends on the type and size of your business.

For instance, a freelance website designer could keep an external hard drive in the office with a backup of all of their tax files, website projects, and customer details, while also maintaining an external hard drive replica at home or even a disc.

In contrast, a private hospital would have a more significant amount of data, which is exceptionally confidential requiring sturdier backup than an external hard drive. In this scenario, a manager may instruct for all paper files to be copied and scanned, and transferred to companies offsite data server.

Large data servers can store masses of data which is housed explicitly in a secure environment to keep data safe. Preview info about iConnect Montana for a comprehensive, detailed explanation on what offsite data servers inhabit to help gain knowledge on how to best backup your business information.

How Technology Is Freeing Up Entrepreneurs’ Cognitive Resources

Three of the focuses of my blog are Financial Literacy/Money, Business/Entrepreneurship, and Technology. Like every other facet of life, technology has changed the entire landscape of business. Many of our new technological innovations have freed up the minds of entrepreneurs from the simpler tasks and are now allowing them to focus on the more critical aspects of their enterprises. The following contributed post is thus entitled; How Technology Is Freeing Up Entrepreneurs’ Cognitive Resources.

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Entrepreneurs have to think about a lot of things on any given day. Some of those things are profound and uniquely human, but a big chunk of it is formulaic and not particularly exciting. What’s interesting, however, is that technology is increasingly taking over much of the grunt work, freeing up entrepreneur’s cognitive resources.

Over the last couple of decades, technology – especially digital technology – has improved enormously. But not, with the advent of artificial intelligence, we see the emergence of machines which can perform cognitive tasks. For a while, smart software has been able to do things like reading handwriting – helpful for keeping a record of expenses – but today’s AI is moving far beyond that to do more sophisticated things, giving business leaders more time to focus on the things that matter.

Distributed Computing

Take the cloud, for instance. Managed IT services mean that businesses no longer have to worry about providing their own IT solutions. All that’s required for most companies today is an internet connection and a few notebooks connected to the network. In many cases, it’s no more sophisticated than a setup you might find at home. All the servers, admin, security and updates get done automatically, off-site by professionals who have a deep understanding of what they’re doing.

The role of the cloud shouldn’t be underestimated. It means that entrepreneurs don’t have to wrestle with IT issues in the same way as they did before. There’s no need to troubleshoot networking problems or do anything of these non-business critical activities. Founders are free to pursue the ideas which matter most to their business – they can deal more directly with their customer’s needs.

Artificial Intelligence

Artificial intelligence helps too. Although powerful applications of the technology are still relatively new, they’re helping those at the top of business automate much more of the dull, day-to-day stuff that needs to get done to run a business. Accounting apps, for instance, have made it so that small businesses no longer need to spend hours filing away receipts or calculating VAT. Instead, it’s all done automatically by the app with minimal user input using AI technologies. AI is also helping businesses with their customer service, with things like chatbots on their websites. Chatbots can provide customers with timely information on a range of issues without ever having to use the resources of real people in the business. These automated, website-based programmes can answer most questions.

Other technologies, like RSS feeds, are also reducing the difficulty of doing research. Articles posted straight to one’s feed reduces search time and conveniently provides updates.

The Long-Term Trends

This trend of freeing up entrepreneurial time for the most creative and high-value-added activities is set to continue. Economists at the University of Oxford suggest that the majority of formulaic work – stuff that can be broken down into a series of tasks – will be automated by smart software over the next twenty years. Thus, technology, in their opinion, will reduce the value of doing rote work and increase the earning potential of entrepreneurs with creative flair.