What is Technology Culture?

Positive company culture is not just influenced by technology, it is no longer possible without it. You will find the most successful companies are technologically advanced, automated in almost everything they do, and evolving with tech to gain the highest employee and customer satisfaction. What does your technology culture say about you?

If you’ve been contemplating, strategizing, and scratching your head as to how to compete and grow your business, improving your technology culture should be part of the plan – in fact, it’s not really an option anymore. It’s vital to success.

The Benefits of Positive Technology Culture

Technology culture comes from centering, focusing, and growing your business with a technology-based, efficient foundation that cements your company’s culture around accurate information, a single source of truth, and low-frustration systems that unify teams. 

When you strengthen and unify internal teams in a positive technology culture, team productivity and attitude about how they can function in their positions and with each other carries over to the customer, which improves revenue outcomes. You also reduce business risk and add to your business’s valuation.

“Good technology culture strengthens internal team experiences and relationships through sharing of meaningful data, which then results in a strengthened customer experience and confidence.” 

8 Reasons Why Technology Culture is Critical to the Future of Business

If 2020 taught us nothing else, we learned how critical technology is to our survival. Technology was forced to advance with astonishing speed, and so were we. Now more than ever before, we benefit from more readily accessible information, workers can work from anywhere, mobile is used more frequently than Macs or PCs, apps are the norm, and software is automating most business functions. As a nation, we have progressed with technology – but has your business?  

If not, your company’s technology culture is suffering.

This causes a spiral of inefficiencies, poor attitudes, and a trickle-down effect on your customers and your bottom line. A strong technology culture can improve all of this and more. 

Here’s why technology culture is critical to the future of your business:

1. Reproducible processes are captured, maximizing team efficiencies and accelerating job performance and satisfaction. 
2. The burden of unnecessary manual processes is eased, creating a long-term positive impact on company-wide ethos.
3. Uncomplicated employee collaboration and sharing become the norm.
4. Access to real-time metrics means employees can be more accurate in everything they do.
5. Teams have greater insight into their roles and the business – they become proactive rather than trying to reach goals looking through the rearview mirror. 
6. Sharing true and meaningful data company-wide improves customer communication and strengthens customer experiences, thereby strengthening customer retention. 
7. With greater overall visibility into the business and more efficient operations, your employees help you reduce risk.
8. When technology creates a better environment, employees are happy, which means customers are happy. 

“A solid technology culture provides more insight, less risk, reproducible processes, increased efficiencies, solid tech, and a stable employee and customer base for a bottom line that’s more easily understood and drastically improved.”

How to Improve Your Technology Culture

If your software, coding, or infrastructure needs upgrading to work at full capacity, yet those updates are not implemented, we call this technical debt. This debt bogs down your technological infrastructure, the processes needed to run your business, and negatively affects your culture. 

Additionally, if your team must physically perform tasks that could be automated, they’re in a state of disorganization, there’s a lack of communication, and the general feeling is that they never know which end is up, your people will exude stress, which is felt in one way or another by your customers. 

So what can you do to improve technology culture, especially if you’re not sure where to start?

There are many choices of existing software, apps, and hardware that, with minimal effort and cost, help create a positive technology culture. Start with basic mobile tech tools that integrate and promote maximum efficiency with accessibility from smartphones, tablets, and laptops. Look for those that work with your operating systems and integrate well with each other and into your processes. 

Tech tools that improve technology culture include, but are not limited to:

• A company-wide, easily accessible calendar for accurate and immediate scheduling.
• Company email with the latest updates.
• Texting/messaging apps for easy team communication no matter where each person is physically working (i.e. WFH, in the warehouse, or on the road).
• Online note-taking apps where everyone can contribute and collaborate.
• Production scheduling/task list apps for easily accessible, real-time information.
• Time-tracking apps to let you see where the hours are going for greater efficiencies.
• A strong, password-protected Wi-Fi for added layers of security and reliability.
• An easy-to-use Customer Relationship Management (CRM) tool that provides a central place for all customer data and conversations.

You’ll notice the word “easy” comes up often in this blog; that’s because it’s the key to adopting technology and changing your company’s culture for the better. If it’s too hard, people will not use it. Technology must be efficient to implement and use or it won’t improve things.

Not sure if you need readily-available systems, custom software, mobile apps, or business process automation solutions? To get started improving your technology culture, you can simply begin with a few “off-the-shelf” items.  

With Swip Systems’ expertise, we can help you determine other technology services to decrease your technical debt and improve technology culture for the future.  

“Difficult processes with old technology can turn bad quickly and feel like a perpetual revolution. Using tech to establish a modern culture of open communication, efficiency, innovation, and collaboration leads to happy employees, happy customers, and evolution that strengthens your bottom line.

The Bottom Line … Your “Technology Culture” is Your Company’s Culture 

The bottom line is that your technology culture is now your company’s culture. It isn’t something you can force – it evolves and it’s contagious. It is a direct result of how easily your people can do their jobs. If they feel productive and fulfilled, they can provide a positive customer experience that reduces risk, fortifies the bottom line, and increases the valuation of your business.

If the fear of the unknown or the expense of improving your technology is what stops you from taking action, Swip Systems is here to help you determine what will work for you and how easy it will be to integrate. We’re here to guide you along the way. We take “fear” out of the equation and give you peace of mind knowing you have professional assistance. Contact us and we’ll chat about your goals. 877.377.SWIP