How much do you think the dynamics of human life have changed in the past 25 years? While since the dawn of human history, innovative advancements by humans have opened ways to unprecedented realities with every passing era, digital technology has really escalated it in recent decades. There’s hardly any walk of life where digital technology hasn’t put its steps. This article will discuss how digital technology has transformed how we carry out commerce activities and its consequences. As a business person, it’s vital to understand what part digital technology plays in its dynamics to use it to enhance your business.
Online payments
One significant change in the commerce ecosystem is how payment methods have changed with the introduction of digital technology. Digital payments have become most popular payment method in recent years, making it easier to process and manage transactions. Be it utility bills or something else, you can pay online without stepping out of your home.
This has eliminated the need to visit banks and make payments. Therefore other than bringing convenience for the clients, it has reduced the burdens on banks' resources.
It’s more environmentally friendly as it eliminates the need to travel.
Recurring payments can be automated using online payments.
Since people don’t need to carry cash, they’re less concerned about running out of money when shopping or traveling.
Transforming how customers interact with businesses
Digital technology has introduced new ways customers interact with businesses and to much extent, replaced traditional tools and ways. This has streamlined both the experience for customers and provided companies with efficiency in their operations; from customers' perspective, this has simplified finding solutions for customers’ needs and problems offered by businesses, and from the business perspective, it has lessened the management load of providing that solution.
Ecommerce stores enable customers to shop from the convenience of their homes. And for businesses, it has reduced the burden on physical stores that utilize more resources.
Food ordering apps have eliminated the need to call, inquire about menus & prices and sometimes even wait to talk to a representative. For businesses, it has helped with cost-cutting and lower order processing times.
Using ride-hailing apps, users can easily book a cab without stepping outside and have it pick them up, making cabs easier to find. From taxi drivers' perspective, they can easily find customers and experience lesser idle time, making more profits.
Scaling up with technology
Scaling up your business is complicated, while the goal is increased profitability, it invites more complications in business management, increasing operational costs; the utilization of new platforms demands an overall harmony between disparate solutions, requires more training, and simply more resources. Therefore, to truly realize your business scalability goals, it’s crucial profit generated surpasses the increased operational cost.
In such scenarios, the role of digital technology is crucial to drive maximum efficiency of business operations. Let’s see how digital technology has made this possible.
Integration solutions link disparate business solutions to ensure transparency and create a connected business management system. Without them, manually syncing the solutions would not only be time & resource intensive but also be subject to errors affecting business accuracy and efficiency.
Business management software automates mundane tasks requiring time & resources. For example, supply chain software can automatically calculate the inventory to be reordered and calculate lead times.
Self-checkouts enable customers to avoid upsetting long lines at the checkout terminals of retail stores. Items are automatically added to customers’ accounts as they put them into their cart, and they’re charged automatically upon leaving the store. Therefore, automatic checkouts allow serving more customers at any given time without putting any extra substantial burden on business resources. Moreover, it improves the customer experience by streamlining the checkout experience.
Conclusion
Technology has significantly changed the world of commerce, providing us with new tools and opportunities to streamline and enhance our way of doing business. This has opened new doors for businesses to scale up with maximum efficiency and provide customers with a better experience.
The x2xecommerce can also help your business by developing an ecommerce store for you and integrating it with other business solutions. Reach out to the x2x team for any questions or free demo.