The Technology Trickle Down Affect!
By Steven J. Krisfalusy, Business & Technology Architect at SJK Beringer Group, Inc.

I recently attended an all day symposium for CIOs with over 100 attendees, along with global companies like Sprint, Oracle and IBM. My objectives in attending were to learn about new technologies and their applications; understand the technology visions of local CIOs; learn about the innovative ways large corporations are using technology; and to translate what I learned into proactive, applicable solutions for small- to medium-sized businesses.

Most of my thoughts were confirmed. As far as new technologies are concerned, the next thing we can expect is that the speed and velocity of services and products will increase dramatically over the next year or two. Mobile broadband services will grow by 266 percent and uplink speeds will increase 600 percent and will “change the way we do business.” Incorporating video in a multitude of applications is currently one of the top three initiatives for many CIOs, including the educational industry with 4G technology leading the way. For example: Universities are video taping lectures, posting them on their Intranet and allowing the students to not only access and review but also search out only the section of the lecture they want to recap. This has already had a tremendous positive impact on those students that are not used to large lecture classes (300 people) but also for those that need a little more time to understand what is being said or taught. Great application opportunities for small business training!

Focusing on improving how we communicate is another one of the top objectives for ALL the CIOs and global software developers. The expansion of creative ways to use technology is being applied in a variety of areas and industries by “thinking out of the box.” For example, a hospital is using RFID technology to keep track of medical life saving equipment in their ER department. This allows the staff to immediately locate a potential life saving device to help a patient in their ER saving critical seconds.

What I discovered and was most surprising was the mindset of these technology leaders. Change is not easy for anyone, especially large corporations. I found the CIOs to be very excited and focused on embracing change and developing that mindset in their culture, even though large scale change can be painful. Many have developed “think tank” groups to attempt to look at ways to “think out of the box” in regards to how they could take their business to the next level. Some have incorporated outside advisors to their groups to overcome the “can’t see the forest for the trees” way of thinking.

Even the global software companies are collaborating and promoting “out of the box thinking,” in order to find new uses and applications for their software and to ultimately maximize the ROI.

In summary, the speed and velocity of technology will drive the need for businesses to think ahead and keep up with this rapidly advancing new frontier of business. Developing your strategy to be flexible, open to change and continuously looking for additional uses of technology will become the norm. Falling behind or thinking you can catch up may be one of the most critical mistakes in regards to how to do business in the 21st Century.