Sometimes, it can be difficult to notice just how fast internet speeds and the processing speeds of computers and mobile devices have become. If you stop and think about it, we are now so used to fast mobile broadband, for example, that it is easy to forget that less than a decade ago mobile internet was often so slow it was almost unusable. We are used to things loading rapidly, and being able to save things almost instantaneously, but because increases in speeds of both hardware and networks happened incrementally over time, we don’t often consider just how good we have it now – and this means that we may not have updated our ways of working to reflect the possibilities these faster speeds could afford us.
By taking a look at how you use technology and considering whether you could better leverage things like high speed internet, you may be able to improve your focus in business and gain an edge over people who have not gone through this process.
Trading
Trading can be a great way to make more from your business’ profits, and is also essential to managing certain types of pension plans and similar investment schemes. Business owners who want to engage in any kind of trading, whether it is stocks and shares, foreign currency, commodities or CFDs, can make great use of fast, reliable internet and services that harness this to give real time price information, and make precision transactions at the optimal moment to fit with their trading strategies.
Platforms for trading like Oanda Global allow traders to stay constantly up to date on any assets they are interested in, and take action exactly when they want to. Fast internet has also made forex trading an option for people other than banks, allowing live currency information to be transmitted to anybody with an internet connection and for trades to happen in real time with no calls to brokers. For businesses who deal with multiple currencies as a matter of course – for example those who sell things in different territories – being able to time currency exchanges to get the most money in their home currency from foreign transactions can significantly improve profitability.
Business Intelligence
Gathering information about what your competitors are doing or news affecting your industry or target audience can help you plan and action the most effective marketing, and be as responsive as possible to anything you identify as an opportunity. Having a constant news feed, for example by using Twitter, allows you to access this kind of information as it happens, and you can follow new information in real time wherever you are thanks to mobile apps and 3G and 4G connections. If you are just checking your news feeds at the end of the day or before work in the morning, you are not making the most of this technology. Set up alerts related to certain accounts or tags important to you, and use your mobile devices to stay on top of things during any dead time you have during your day (for instance when waiting for a meeting to start), and you’ll find you feel more tuned in and ready to react.
Analytics
Another way fast technology and real time information speeds can help you is in analysing the effectiveness of your business activities – especially in terms of marketing. You can track in real time how many people your latest YouTube video is bringing in to your website, for example, and use that information to add real precision to your activities. Are social media posts more effective at certain times of day? Are blog posts with certain keywords more effective than others? Using real time analytics tools, you can see these results and use them straight away, rather than waiting for a daily or even weekly report.
Efficiency is, in many ways, all about finding the fastest way to do things, and technology now does a lot of the acceleration for you – you simply need to make sure you are operating with harnessing that speed of information in mind.
