Today’s office is quite different to that of yesteryear. Do you remember using floppy disks? They’re a bit different from today’s array of cloud services. Do you recall sending faxes every day? Now they seem prehistoric compared with email attachments. How about using Tipp-Ex to edit documents? It’s much easier to press the backspace key. Office processes have turned digital. In the 90s it was the dot com bubble and in 2014 we’re still experiencing huge advances in technology. We’ve swapped hard drives for Drop-box, indexes for Google and Blockbuster for Netflix. Does this mean we’re too dependent on a connection with technology?
David Cameron is currently supporting a £73m government investment in the Internet of Things campaign that he claims will facilitate a “new industrial revolution" centred on technology. The initiative is attempting to integrate the internet in to everything; from fridges to cars to televisions and smoke alarms. Will businesses progress with these types of technology? Whether they will or not, smartphones help run our daily lives and every app that we download seems to need our permission to “allow” location data, so we’re always connected in some way.
As we rely more and more on technology and put our trust in its abilities, we shouldn’t lose sight of what’s essential or fail to question its importance within business. For example, online booking tools in the serviced apartment industry are great for finding short stays, but for longer stays they aren’t as well equipped to deal with availability and require the assistance of an account manager to finalise details. As a progressive business, we’ve always aspired to keep up with the latest technology, but never strayed from the importance of having a personal point of contact for all our clients. That’s why we always encourage people to come into our offices, get to know us and see how we operate. Fax may be on its way out, but personality never will be.
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