If you think IT’s ability to improve businesses is running out of steam, then think again. Providers continue to make progress – and their offerings are growing all the time. The cloud is by no means the end of the story. Computing technologies are continuing to get better, seemingly without end. 

In this post, we’re going to take a look at some new IT insights that are turning businesses across the country upside down. The results of implementing these practices are higher efficiency, better compliance, and overall improvements in morale. 

Use IT To Observe Consumers

Companies are starting to recognize that old economic paradigms don’t explain why consumers make their decisions. Almost always, standard theory is wrong. 

IT, however, is helping to correct this. Companies are engaging in what they call “in the field” observations of customers – not just survey or review responses. They’re collecting website heatmap and purchase frequency data and then sharing this with colleagues. Often firms are finding that there are substantial differences between consumers in different countries. And these insights are proving to be very important in marketing decisions. 

Managing IT Networks In-House Is No Longer A Viable Option

A couple of years ago, managed IT services were seen primarily for startups and companies that didn’t rely too heavily on data. Ideally, firms were supposed to manage their IT operations in-house and outsource only if they were only a small part of their activities. 

Today, though, things are very different. Many professionals see third-party management as the only viable option, given the expenses of performing IT updates and administration in-house. It just isn’t feasible to internalize all the necessary work, especially given the level of competition. Paying somebody a monthly fee to take over the task is a much better use of resources. 

Use IT To Do Social Listening

Here’s another way IT is changing – companies are using it to do “social listening.” The idea here is pretty simple: you track what people are saying online to get a sense of how they view your company overall.

While this task might sound trivial, it is actually more complicated than you imagine to pull off in practice. You can’t just sit down with your social media accounts and continually eye-ball user responses to your posts. What you really need is a way to collect data systematically. And that’s precisely what social listening tools do. They collect sentiment information and flag problems. 

Remember That Digitization Is About More Than Going Paperless

We hear a lot about digitization and digital transformation. But mostly, these efforts just scratch the surface. Firms pay a huge amount of attention to things like going paperless and, while there’s no denying that this helped our workflow as businesses, people still aren’t really asking themselves what the underlying technology could do.

Transformation is all about centering the enterprise on the capabilities of IT. Organizations should constellate around the practical benefits of IT and use it to build entirely different and better business models. 

IT, therefore, is turning business upside down. New insights are arriving all the time, and it is having a profound impact on the ground.