Digitalization has had a strong influence on the way that most industries operate. The advances in technology over the last decade has meant that companies can operate from places they never thought was possible, and can save significant costs by a wide range of digital processes.
Of course, the set up of technology systems to enable this has installation and maintenance costs, but the long term cost savings that can be achieved will usually more than pay for the technology infrastructure.
A number of years ago, some companies that had customer contact centers based in the UK explored the idea of outsourcing the work to countries that offered cost savings on pay. This lead to a pattern of banks, insurance companies and other types of businesses paying for workers based in India and other countries to answer their customer queries. At the time, this concept seemed crazy to many, but the significant cost savings appealed to many businesses. You will find that many contact centre calls are now outsourced to teams all over the world.
The manufacturing industry is another field that has been able to reduce costs by utilising cheaper work forces. For example, NAPS aerospace manufacturing in Mexico offers a highly skilled yet cheaper workforce than if it was set up in other areas of America. Without some of these cost savings, companies might not be able to afford to carry on manufacturing, so this type of approach is vital to the industry.
Of course, one of the main ways that technology has helped these industries to be able to operate in this way is through improved communication channels. Being able to share files such as CAD drawings, and web conferencing facilities has made a virtual working environment a reality. Without this, it would be very difficult for them to achieve the same amount of success. So you can have a group of designers sat in an office in Texas having an online meeting with the production team in Mexico to discuss the details of the product. Technology has made all of this possible.
The use of email has also enabled this kind of set up. Before emails were available, they would have had to rely on postal services that could take days to deliver. Today, you can have content sent to the required destination in a second. It really is impressive how far we have come in the last few decades.
Processes of every nature have been able to speed up due to technology. Where it could take a day to travel to another office for a meeting, you can have that meeting in your very own office whilst the other parties sit in theirs. This reduces the travel costs as well as speeding up the time it takes to come to an agreement.
Every industry across the world has benefited from technology improvements and it is exciting to wonder what we can expect next. Who knows what improvements multinational businesses will be able to introduce in a few years time!