What Are the Advantages of Modern Office Technology?
Modern office technology makes the premise of the office itself less relevant as Internet access coverage and performance improves. The modern office environment is more about what you can do as opposed to where you do it. New technology is changing the scope of what's considered an office. Offices inevitably adopt newer technologies that get more work done with fewer people, and there's pressure to keep a modern, professional image by staying on top of the latest tech trends.
Using modern office technology, workers spend less time on routine tasks, which frees them for additional projects. Computer savvy workers explore computer automation practices, reducing time spent on frequent, repetitive tasks. For example, employees save time formatting documents using templates. Someone can exponentially improve efficiency by sharing a template with other workers through remote server access, cloud storage and email from anywhere there's cellular coverage. Services like Google Drive, iCloud and Microsoft Azure are practical solutions for organizing and sharing frequently used templates, shared spreadsheets and work-related documentation. Organized cloud sharing eliminates the need for a data-sharing intermediary person.
Jobs involving a worker sitting at a computer terminal all day typically don't need to be done in a specific location. New communication technologies not only make working from home and the road possible, but seamless. If you do your job on a laptop, you can do it the same from your office cubicle or the table in a hotel room. A remote workforce contributes perks for employer and employee. According to Business Week, businesses save upward of $8,000 a year for each telecommuting employee. Telecommuting opportunities widen the business's candidate pool because location isn't a big deal. Telecommuting employees can substantially save on transportation costs, save time each day by not commuting and have an easier time juggling family life.
Lagging, pixelated online video chats in the conference room are a thing of the past: broadband and mobile Internet connections are fast enough to handle simultaneous video streams without tethering people to physical locations. Videoconferencing services like Skype work great for holding meetings without having participants in the same building. Social media is an alternative avenue for customer communication: a strong social media presence can go a long way toward bolstering the bottom line. Additionally, technology like VoIP cuts costs by getting rid of the need for landlines. Clinging to old technology for too long can cause problems. For example, food-ordering service GrubHub hit a snag with its restaurants that were still receiving orders on fax machines.
Office fires, earthquakes and hard drive failures can wreak havoc on an office's records. Data redundancy through cloud services and remote storage can save a business a lot of heartache and money. Storing data on a remote server also makes it practical for workers to share massive amounts of information regardless of location. For example, medical professionals can use massive databases of patient history to study ailments and develop new treatments. Cloud and server databases can also save a business money by consolidating products and services.