6 Business Technologies to Thrive in the Post-Pandemic
By: Emma White
Tags: Business, Bairesdev, Pandemic, Technology

6 Business Technologies to Thrive in the Post-Pandemic

With just a bit of planning, creativity, and extra work, you can keep your business running smoothly in 2021.

Image by iStock

The pandemic rages on and shows no signs of slowing down. We’re currently in the ninth month under the heavy sway of COVID-19 and businesses have had to make serious changes to the way they function. Without those modifications, many businesses would have already closed.

Some changes that have been made were rather analog approaches to the situation, while others required a decidedly high-tech approach. In most situations, it has been a combination of the two that has made it possible for businesses, both small and large, to remain afloat.

But the big question you’re probably asking yourself is, “What technology can my business employ to ensure we come out of this pandemic relatively unscathed?”

The truth of the matter is, there’s no magic 8-ball to answer those questions. Why? Because who knows how long this situation will continue on. It might be months, it could be years. And no solution is right for every company. So your best bet is to be agile and willing to try and learn quickly from any mistakes you make (because you will make them).

That being said, what types of technologies should you be looking for to keep things moving forward for your business? Let’s take a look.

#1 Hybrid Cloud

This one is tricky (which is why I kicked off with it). More than likely, your business depends on the cloud. You’re either using it for employee/company file storage and sharing or maybe you use it to deploy apps and services, via containers.

Either way, you should seriously consider adopting a hybrid cloud. First off, a hybrid cloud is one that combines both public and private clouds, using integration, management, and orchestration tools, into a system that gains the benefits of the public cloud (such as scalability and reliability) while retaining a level of privacy you would not otherwise achieve.

These types of clouds tend to fuse the likes of Google Cloud and private cloud solutions (such as Nextcloud) into a seamless whole.

With regards to the pandemic, a hybrid cloud is the way to go because it offers better support for remote workers. With a hybrid cloud, you can give those remote workers on-demand access to private, sensitive files from any location in the world — locations that are also decentralized. So you get power, flexibility, and security.

#2 VPN

This one is important because so many of your remote staff, from accountants to offshore programmers, will be working from home networks that are probably not nearly as secure as your in-house LAN.

But don’t think of this as your father’s VPN. We’re not talking about the traditional Virtual Private Network that makes it possible for your staff to connect to your internal network from the WAN side of your company. This type of VPN (such as ExpressVPN or NordVPN), makes it possible for your staff to gain an added layer of security when using their insecure networks.

These VPNs are capable of encrypting network traffic and (with some clients) even anonymizing their packets. With a strong VPN in place, it’s less likely that company secrets and client information could be stolen by a hacker listening in on those remote workers’ network traffic.

#3 Video Conferencing

At this stage in the game, you can’t succeed without some form of video conferencing. It doesn’t really matter what platform you are using (such as Zoom or Google Meet), but you must choose one. Such a tool will make it possible for you to hold pseudo-face-to-face meetings, which will go a long way to help your staff find some semblance of togetherness.

But don’t limit your video conferencing to in-house employees. You could also use such a tool to assist customers. When a customer has a problem with one of your products, a video conference call with a staff member (such as a support technician), could actually help them solve the problem at hand. Get creative and use a video platform in ways other companies might not have tried.

#4 eCommerce platforms

Due to the pandemic, your business isn’t enjoying the foot traffic it once had. That means sales are down. To bolster that, you should turn to an eCommerce platform. There are plenty of solutions out there (such as WooCommerce and PrestaShop), most of which will seamlessly integrate into your company website.

Many eCommerce solutions even offer the ability to sell regular products, digital downloads, subscriptions, and even services. If you’ve not already adopted eCommerce for your business, you’re already behind the curve. Get this in place as soon as possible.

#5 Occupancy monitoring

If you have a brick and mortar shop and you still need to have customers enter your building, you probably should have already employed some form of occupancy monitoring. You could certainly make do with someone standing at the door counting people and preventing shoppers from entering until occupancy levels allow. Or you could go with a tech-based approach.

Tools like Density and Estimote are geared specifically for the monitoring of occupancy and distance. With Density, you get anonymous, real-time occupancy monitoring that uses a combination of sensors and machine learning to keep track of the number of people in a workspace. Estimote, on the other hand, uses wearables to alert staff if they’ve exceeded the recommended safe distance necessary for a pandemic.

#6 Contactless payment

If you really want to keep your staff and your clients/customers safe, you should employ some form of contactless payment. Instead of continuing on with the exchange of currency or customers handing cards to staff, get your business set up to use Apple Pay and Google Pay. With this in place, customers only need to place their phones near the NFC terminal and the transaction will complete.

The one caveat to this is that your customers and clients must have their phones configured to work with one of the major forms of payment. If those customers can’t (or don’t want to) set up their phones, some credit and debit cards are contactless. If all else fails, get a wireless card terminal, place it at a distance from your staff, and allow the customers to use it for transactions. If you go that route, just make sure you have supplied the means for customers to sanitize their hands after using the terminal.

Conclusion

You might feel like this pandemic is destined to take down your business. With just a bit of planning, creativity, and extra work, you can keep your business running (relatively) smoothly. It’s happening all over the world. Businesses are employing new types of technology to make sure they’re not only retaining their current customers but gaining new ones. Let that be your goal.