Across the business sector, the innovation of the past two decades has been profound. More than ever, the old, lumbering megaliths that have constituted the largest companies in the world have been struggling to keep pace with new upstart disruptors – many of which become Unicorns within a couple of years. With the pace of change, and the profits of changing, so pronounced, it’s time to look seriously at the skills every modern business needs to maintain a profitable future. Below, we outline what you’ll need to invest in for your business to ride the wave of innovation in the modern world.
A Great IT Firm
When it comes to running a smooth business you need to use and IT Firm that is going to fix the problems fast and efficiently. A great IT firm will have first hand experience in solving the problems that your organization may face.
Tech-Savvy Workers
What this guide will keep emphasizing throughout is that you need to hire in the image that you want your business to take. There’s a reason why Google, Amazon, Apple, and Facebook rose from complete obscurity to dominate global markets in the space of fewer than two decades: they were modern, they hired young, and they maintained their startup culture as they grew. They know that new minds, young hearts, and skilled workers were needed to drive their success.
As such, when you’re hiring for new roles in your business – whether these roles will be in your media team, in your data analytics group, or even in HR – you need to be looking for tech-savvy young people. These are the disruptors writ large, and they’ll help you to see the opportunities that you might otherwise miss across the business world.
Data Analysis
Speaking above of data analysis, this is one of the leading positions in the digital world that companies are struggling to understand. For large businesses, data analysis rarely goes beyond the financial data that they’ve analyzed for years, and some other bits and pieces of data that they are collecting to audit their firm and take account of the changes they’re making in their industry. You can do much better than this: in fact, you can let data lead your decision-making across the board.
To do this, you need data analysis professionals who know how to find, process, clean and present data so that you can understand all areas of your business clearly and succinctly, without having to understand how your analysis team waved their magic wands. These magic wands are developed and learned in universities across the country. If you’re interested in gaining these invaluable skills, a computer science masters degree, taken online, can help you to deal with data and computer skills in the corporate environment.
Communication
Skills in communication are regarded as some of the most highly sought-after in the private sector. While traditional communication skills – like social skills, verbal skills, telephone manner, and email manner – remain relevant, there are now dozens of other communication skills that are imperative to modern business.
For instance, managing social media platforms takes a specific set of skills in communicating with a responsive base of your customers. The same can be said of the press releases, blog posts, and email marketing newsletters that you publish each month. All of these digital communication skills are now regarded as fundamental in marketing your company in the internet age – skills you should invest in so that your company can grow its base of customers.
Web and Websites
Having mentioned digital communication, let’s now take a look at your home on the internet: your website. Here, you’re going to find that consumers judge your company based on a slim number of criteria each time they land on your URL. Some may only stay for a matter of seconds, while others will use your website to learn information, to find contact details for your company, or to directly trade with your business online.
The better the website, the more people will stay to learn more, the more users will explore your pages, and the easier it will be to encourage these users to trade with you. In light of this, your web design should be regarded as incredibly crucial in helping you generate sales and leads – and to help your business propel itself into the market as a challenger to incumbents across the board. Hire skilled web developers and designers to help you build this most essential resource.
Digital Strategy
Business strategy has changed over the past couple of decades. As we’ve seen with the rise of digital companies operating at the very top of the financial markets, it’s now easier than ever to create a business that can rival for the top spot as one of the most profitable companies in the world. All you need to do is to build a strategy that helps you to grow, conquer, and build a market share that sees you expand your profits each quarter. You’ll do this in many ways:
- Through concerted digital marketing efforts
- By buying up those smaller competitors – and their skills – that might challenge your rise
- By using private equity to boost your investment
- By continually researching and developing new lines and strategies
Ultimately, strategy comes down to knowledge and wisdom – and your most valuable employees will be the ones who can sit in strategic meetings to offer their insights into the developing business world. Hire these big thinkers to leverage these key skills for your firm in 2020 and beyond.
Environmental
Finally, whether or not your company feels that it has a significant stake in the environmental movement, one thing is certain: as the climate emergency becomes more pronounced, it’s going to place more and more pressure on businesses to change and to become more green, This won’t just come in the form of lobbying and boycotts – it’ll be regulatory, with fines, carbon budgets, and other incentives to force companies to clean their supply chains and make their firms greener.
If you can onboard consultants with the skillset to help you make these changes ahead of time, you’re more likely to be rewarded for your efforts down the line, avoiding penalization from the government on issues related to energy consumption and waste.
Use the tips outlined above to bolster your core team with individuals who can help your business grow, modernize, and make the most of the opportunities presented by the digital age.
