Technology plays a big part in everything around us, and its role in businesses can not be understated. Nearly all aspects of a company are heavily affected by market trends and changes in technology.

Technology can also be expected to change over time, and as it changes, we need to innovate the way we work and communicate. Something essential today might become obsolete in less than 10 years. Over the past decades, we have seen many critical technological advancements shape businesses significantly, and the future should be no different.

It’s the same case when it comes to business scaling, as emerging trends and changes or technological improvements play a big part in how the field is shaped.

We’ll share 5 emerging trends related to technology that can play a significant role in shaping the future of business scaling. By knowing the growing and emerging trends, businesses can act accordingly and use them to their advantage.

Also Read: The Future of Healthcare: How AI is Changing the Landscape?

What is Business Scaling?

Business scaling is expanding a business in terms of size, reach, and impact. The goal of business scaling is to increase sales by growing the customer base, expanding into new markets, and investing in new technologies.

If a business wants sustainable growth and long-term success, it needs to be scalable. Otherwise, it will bottleneck its growth and there will only be so far it can go.

With effective scaling, businesses can:

• Increase Revenue: With an expanded customer base and accessing new markets, this results in higher revenue and profits.
• Improve Efficiency: More revenue means more ability to invest in new technologies to streamline operations.
• Meet Growing Demand: A growing business has to meet the increasing demand for its goods and services. Production and delivery processes can scale as the company scales.
• Stay Competitive: As a company has more resources and can access more audiences, it can stay ahead of the competition, which can’t yet reach markets in the same way.
• Attract Talent: Companies that are scaling are more likely to attract top talent looking for career growth opportunities.

1. Emerging Business Technology: Artificial Intelligence (AI)

Artificial Intelligence (AI) plays a major role in business scaling by enabling companies to automate manual tasks, improve decision-making, and increase efficiency. Here are some ways AI impacts business scaling:

• Automation of manual tasks: AI-powered technologies can automate repetitive tasks, freeing up employees’ time and allowing them to focus on higher-value work.
• Improved decision-making: AI-powered analytics and predictive models can provide real-time data insights to help businesses make more informed decisions.
• Increased efficiency: AI-powered solutions can help optimize business processes and increase operational efficiency by reducing waste and inefficiencies. An example is using AI-tech like Jasper to help with writing internal documents or researching for content creation
• Enhanced customer experiences: AI-powered chatbots and personalized recommendations can enhance customer experiences by providing immediate support and tailored recommendations.
• Predictive maintenance: AI can be used in predictive maintenance. This means it can actually predict when equipment is likely to fail, helping businesses prevent the risk of  downtime and the costs of unexpected product/equipment failures.

Companies can achieve better scalability and growth by incorporating AI into various business processes. Some will be more accessible to smaller businesses than others, and digital companies will need different solutions to product-based physical business models.

Also Read: How Digital Transformation is Shaping the Future of Customer Experience?

2. Emerging Trend For Business: Remote Work

Remote work has been one of the most significant changes in recent years when it comes to business. From the end of 2019, there was a huge shift in companies shifting to remote working for some departments or the entire company going completely remote due to COVID-19 restrictions. Many of those companies stayed remote as they discovered they could increase productivity and decrease operation costs.

Hiring remote employees can save a huge amount of money for a business, as they can outsource experts from other regions and gain access to better personnel for a cheaper rate. With salaries being one of the highest costs for businesses, this impacts their bottom line significantly. The remote work trend is allowing many businesses to enjoy larger profit, which enables them to scale their operations.

With the increase in the popularity of remote work, cloud-based technology has also seen a rise in popularity. Storing data and sharing information online is extremely efficient, and with that, there is a need for more innovative tools for securing data. Digital tools that help in remote work (like the Zoom meeting tool or Asana project management) have become an integral part of many businesses.

That said, managing remote employees is an entirely different challenge. In many cases, remote workers might decrease productivity because it is harder to oversee remote employees. This is why getting the most effective technologies to manage the remote team is crucial to ensure people stay motivated and self-responsible in their work.

3. Business Growth Trend: Internet of Things (IoT)

The Internet of Things (IoT) is a relatively new innovation that has gained huge traction in the past decade. It refers to the interconnected network of devices, vehicles, home appliances, and other items that automates certain everyday tasks.

IoT objects are all embedded with electronics, software, sensors, and connectivity, which allows them to collect and exchange data.

Smartphone devices are examples of IoT. We can connect our Apple laptops and smartphones together, and share data through airdrop, for example. That’s one way that information exchange is far more efficient through IoT.

For businesses, IoT helps them scale by giving real-time data, automation, and connectivity through all operations. One simple example is predictive maintenance technology, which helps businesses know when certain technology needs upkeep. That innovation can reduce the downtime of important operations by 20-50%, plus, it can save maintenance costs from 5-10%.

4. Emerging Technology For Businesses: Blockchain

You’ve likely heard of Blockchain technology, but what is it? It’s a decentralized, distributed ledger technology that records transactions securely. Through transparent operations, it uses cryptography to ensure that transactions cannot be altered once they are added to the chain. This creates an immutable record of all transactions.

How does this relate to scaling a business?

Blockchain technology can help businesses scale by providing a secure, transparent, decentralized platform for conducting transactions and storing data. With so many cybersecurity risks, valuable data needs to be exchanged and stored intelligently.

Businesses can use the Blockchain to securely share and store records, which can often save costs of data center spaces.

In supply chain management, a blockchain can be used to make payment processing faster, and to show more transparency in how the transactions are recorded and viewed.

Smart contracts are also great for businesses. These are automated contracts where payment is only released after both parties fulfill their agreements.

Benefits of using blockchain technology for business:

• Improves Data Security: There is less chance of hacks and tampering of data with the use of cryptography to secure transactions and storage.
• Enhance Data Transparency: Blockchain allows for a shared and immutable ledger of transactions. That means there is a clear and transparent record of all activities.
• Streamline Processes: Using blockchain tech can help businesses automate and streamline processes, reducing the need for intermediaries.
• Facilitate Cross-border Transactions: Blockchain can reduce the barriers to cross-border transactions by enabling the secure and fast transfer of assets
• Enable Decentralized Systems: Blockchain can support decentralized decision-making in companies. This can lead to faster decisions and more balance in the company hierarchy.

Also Read: The Future of Multi-Cloud Security

5. Virtual and Augmented Reality

Virtual Reality (VR) and Augmented Reality (AR) can help a business scale by providing new and innovative ways to engage customers, streamline operations, and increase efficiency.

• Customer Engagement: VR and AR can provide customers with an immersive and interactive experience, allowing businesses to showcase products and services in new and innovative ways. Example: A company that sells living room furniture creates a VR showroom where customers can walk around the space and get a sense of how the furniture would look and feel.
• Training and Simulation: VR and AR can provide an effective and engaging way for businesses to train employees. As so many businesses are remote nowadays, rather than creating costly in-person training events, they can do remote training with VR simulation.
• Product Design and Testing: VR and AR can help businesses to design, test, and refine products in a virtual environment, reducing the need for physical prototypes and speeding up the design process.
• Remote Collaboration: Teams can work in a virtual environment, regardless of location. We are already doing this in many remote-working companies with project management and communication tools. AR and VR can bring a more physical, realistic experience to remote collaboration that could heighten team-building and increase productivity.
• Data Visualization: VR and AR can provide businesses with new ways to visualize and analyze data, helping to make informed decisions.

The implementation and role of VR and AR in businesses are relatively new and not very widespread.

That being said, there is a lot of potential with it due to how vast it can be and how it can benefit a business. Companies that have the budget to explore this technology should look into it more deeply.

Utilize These Trends To Grow Your Business

As a business in the 21st century, it’s very important to stay up to date with all the latest trends and technological changes as it allows you to compete with other businesses.

For many businesses, it can be very difficult to take full advantage of technology changes and stay up to date with all that happens around them. Scaling a business requires the right strategy, and with most business owners experts at their industry, they might not be experts in growing an actual business.

For companies that are ready to scale their operations, but need a helping hand, it’s valuable to get help from companies that know how to grow a business. For example, one company that does this well is Scaling with Systems. This business is geared towards helping other companies reach fast growth by providing client acquisition systems and operational guidance.

Also Read: FlutterFlow: The Future of Mobile App Development

Final Thoughts On Business Scaling

Having looked at what business scaling is and its role in a business, we can see its importance in the growth and success of a business. The 5 emerging technological trends in business growth should definitely be considered and invested in if a company is serious about scaling.

The internet also makes it easier for businesses to utilize their opportunities as there are plenty of services and tools that can make business scaling a much easier task. As your business grows, so too will your team and your internal processes.

The huge advantage of scaling is that business owners can lean back and focus on high-level goals and development to stay ahead of the competition. You want to get to a point in your business that you are working on your business, not in it. So, keep these tips in mind, and here’s to your business success!