Assignment of Business Environment

BUSINESS ENVIRONMENT

AND

INDIAN ECONOMY

           (MBA-1)

Submitted to- Gurdeepak Sir

           Submitted by- Tania

Ques- How can firms cope up with changing technological environment?

Ans- 

·     Introduction:-

In this global technological environment, many of us can feel overwhelmed keeping up-to-date with new

 technologies, methodologies, governance, standards, policies, frameworks, software development, engineering, et cetera, et cetera! Technology is implemented in almost every part of our lives, impacting us in many different ways. Being a technologist myself, I frequently think of how to cope these changes.

Particularly over these recent years, you may hear of something new, seemingly every day and leaving you feeling out of touch. During casual conversations, social gatherings, and happy hours, those around us excitedly describe a new technology, using buzz words that may as well be in a different language and perhaps leaving you feel left out or left behind. But you needn’t feel that way. It also does not mean that you don’t need to know or learn how to keep up with what is out there. The key is your approach to learning or keeping pace with technology. It can alleviate feeling bogged down or as though you’re in a never-ending competition of knowing the latest and greatest. Knowledge is power and ignorance is bliss, but happiness is all about striking that perfect balance.

Why does it seem like everything was easier to learn as a child? When we’re young, we’re in learning mode: our minds are not bogged down with excessive baggage. There is relatively little knowledge to “unlearn” and everything we do learn is completely novel. In the world of technology, the bigger issue is how to learn (and sometimes unlearn) all the changes rocking our industry every day. Thankfully, there’s hope! We are all capable of improving our lives by managing and integrating changes in technology.

Coping with fast paced technological changes is a challenging task. It requires learning and unlearning and oftentimes requires a great deal of time that many of us simply cannot dedicate. And yet, without committing that time, you are falling behind and becoming less competitive in the marketplace, especially when you are trying to grow or seek a new opportunity. You may wish that you started earlier or learned out how to cope with the constant changes. But always remember: it is never too late to start learning!

Learning can be broken down to hard and soft skills. Soft skills include the ability to work effectively in a team or individually, as a leader or manager, mentoring and coaching, multitasking, etc. And then there are other skills, such as “people skills”, communication, attitude and behavior, and a desire to learn, that are basic foundation skills. If you have a strong foundation towards learning about technology, you can learn pretty much any technology given time, commitment, with right the attitude and desire to learn.

·       Explanation:-

From handling employee concerns to generating actual revenue, innovators have to handle a dozen concerns. While there will always be early adopters and laggards in every organization, making an overall effective strategy involves taking everyone into consideration. The problem of wide-ranging questions and doubts tends to increase dramatically with the size of the organization and so does the challenges in implementation. The question arises how to manage technological changes and how to do it so smartly that there is negligible friction involved. To solve this we have come up with a 8 step approach to managing technological changes in enterprises. Though the focus is more on the large organizations, the principles of management will affect small and mid-size companies alike.

8 steps to Implement Technological Changes in Organizations:

1. Identifying current loopholes:

You don’t go shopping without knowing what to buy. No technology should be implemented before identifying the needs. The first thing you need to do is identify what exactly is not working in your organization. Then you check why it is not working, whether it is because of lack of talent, less resource allocation, obsolete technology etc.  If it is the third then you found your target.

2. Select the right technologies:

The next step to implementing new technology is finding the right one. To select the right technology go through hardcore data. P.S. - I am not talking about sales literature. Select the technology which is relevant to your business, has worked for your competitors(if they used it), and is easy for your employees to catch on.

3. Involve your employees:

Involving employees in selection and implementation of technologies has multifold benefits:

·        They will be more open to the idea of a new IT system.

·        They will be able to provide insights on what will work for them and what won’t.

·        Employees will be more open to providing inputs from their end

·        This will increase their feeling of self-worth

·        Employee involvement increases their feeling of security that they won’t lose their job or lag behind because of new technologies.

To involve them in decision making take inputs via votes, opinions of supervisors and compile the ideas and concerns to make a proper strategy for implementation.

4. Early Acceptance

The work of implementing a new technology is more like marketing than sales. Like in marketing you start igniting demand and position your brand before the arrival of actual product the same is with implementing new technologies. The best way to get around this is to involve a marketing person in your implementation from the beginning. You need to give a good idea of implementing a new technology in the initial stage only, even before actually bringing in it in the organization. This way you will get enough time to handle resistance from employees and analyze reaction.

5. Personal Incentive

The hard fact about implementing new technology is that employees priority is their benefit and not the company's. But you need to grow your company for which you need employees to care for the company. This is a management issue which will never fade away. So how to deal with it? Simple, offer incentives. If you convince your employees that the new tech is going to make their work easy or help them in a specific measurable way then they will automatically start welcoming change. The key point to note here is that many of the incentives which HRs and managers consider a huge incentive are not worthy to most of the employees. A simple career growth in terms of learning will not entice every employee but a straightforward salary incentive will. Identify the important incentives before giving anything away.

6. Focus on Training

Many new implementations fail because people rush through the training. Improper and incomplete training is going to lead to a mess. Train your employees well and give them to work on it and put up questions. Addressing initial concerns and following the best and standard practices is the best way to ensure proper implementation.

7. Pilot Operation

Pilot operation is basically selecting a small segment of a company and implement new technology for that section. This minimizes risk, proves credibility to top management and helps in onboarding other sections on successful demonstration. For choosing your preferred section for the operation to consider choosing the group with the worst performance. The reason it is recommended is that if they are able to do it then anyone will be able to catch up. Also, there will be ease in seeing improvements and building momentum.

8. Expectation vs. Reality

One of the biggest failures while implementing and managing technological innovations is noticed because of the unreasonable expectations. It is important to research about industry’s average ROI and what you might expect based on your resources. Have planned targets and realistic expectations and be ready to face some deviations from expectations. This problem is more evidently seen while implementing technologies for which too much data is not easily available and you might face some issues.

Know how to we can help you get the best from advanced technologies like artificial intelligence, machine learning, VR and AR and cloud computing.

·     Conclusion:-

 With reference to the given content, I conclude that this answer  will help in getting the aim and objectives expected from it . it will be done when the whole department will work with integrity and feel of positive change. We should have to concentrate on practical work more as compare to theoretical analyses.