The Use Of Wireless Technology In Business

Published Date: 02 Nov 2017

Wireless technology has changed the way the business work for these past few years by connecting people in real time across city or across the globe. Wireless technology is not connected by any cable or wire. Wireless technology is generally implemented and run using radio communication. There are many different applications of wireless technology such as wireless networking and radio frequency identification (RFID) technology. Installing these two different wireless technologies into the business will benefit the business in many ways.

Wireless networking increased business efficiency by enabling employees to access shared business information from different places. With wireless, employees don’t have to wait for other people to finish using the information that they need. They can access the same data at the same time. Another advantage of wireless networking is that it allows the user to work from any locations within the wireless range. There are 2 different wireless networking, wireless wide area network (WWAN) and wireless local area network (WLAN). They have similar feature the only difference is the wireless range. WWAN connects computer from different city and continent. On the other hand, WLAN connects workstations within a building ("Mobile and Wireless", 2006). Wireless networking saves business a substantial amount of money on installation cost. Companies are no longer needed to install expensive cabling and wiring throughout the office building or store’s walls and ceilings. Moreover, wireless also connects all computing devices, such as monitors, desktops, printers, and scanners and enables them to be equipped from different computers. Wireless networking is fast and easy to install.

Radio frequency identification (RFID) technology helps business to keep track the inventories. RFID is a tiny computer chip that is attached to a product. RFID can automatically transmit all of the information about individual products to a special scanner (Levy, Weitz, Beattie, and Watson, 2011, p. 288). RFID can track misplace products, loss prevention, and helps control the expiration dates of foods or any other products. RFID allows business to trace the merchandise when it is being delivered, finding its current location at any time. RFID makes it possible to know when a shipment leaves the manufactures warehouse and when it is going to arrive in the store. With RFID, manual stocking is not necessary anymore because stocks are counted automatically. RFID also reduces labour costs and save time because labour intensive manual stocking is not needed. It gives real time information about how much merchandise stocks are available and which merchandise that already have been sold. Warehouse facility can be use more effectively because RFID can reduce over ordering stock and it can help buyer to focus on ordering the most profitable products. Moreover, RFID increased customer satisfaction because customers can rely on that the merchandise that they want will always be in stock. By always having the merchandise in the right quantities it will generate higher sales. (Brown, 2011)

In conclusion, installing wireless technology such as wireless network and RFID in the business can make business gain multiple benefits , such as increase in business efficiency, reduce in business costs, higher customer satisfaction, and the most important one it can increase productivity which lead to generate more sales.

The Role of Customers Relationship Management in Digital Companies

Customers are the most valuable and important asset for a business. Without a customer a business will not generate any profits and it will force the business to close down. The main purpose of a business is to make customers purchase their products or services. To make customers purchase our products, we need to make sure that we provide products that customers want and willing to buy and by using customer relation management, we will be able to get all the information that we need to make sure that the customers will like and buy the products that we are selling.

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) is a software applications that helps businesses to provide services and products that customer’s want. In addition, CRM also helps business to be better understanding of who our customers are, what are the type of products that they like to buy, and to see how loyal the customer is. According to Manfred and Murali (2011) from Retail Success and Key Drives, "CRM is a business philosophy and set of strategies, programs, and systems that focuses on identifying and building loyalty with a retailer’s most valued customers" (p. 27).CRM helps business to maintain a longer term of customer relationship and ensure the long term success of profit maximization of the company.

Loyalty programs are part of an overall customer relationship management. Customer loyalty programs works hand in hand with CRM. Members of loyalty programs are identified when they purchase because they use some type of loyalty card. The purchase information is stored in a huge database called data warehouse (Cunningham, Song, and Chan, n.d.). From data warehouse, business can determine what types of products and services certain groups of customers are buying. All data and information that are gathered from customers’ loyalty card can be used to build store loyalty. Moreover, business can also use the information that they get about their customers to target their best customers by sending them a catalogue or e-promotions about products or special promotions that will appear to best suits the customer preferences. CRM helps business to communicate better with the customers through all kinds of communication channels. By doing so, business can increase cross-selling and up-selling opportunities which can leads to higher sales ("Customer Relationship Management", n.d.) Information about customers can also be found from customers’ credit card history. Marketing research is expensive and time consuming. CRM helps business reduce its marketing research costs because CRM helps business concentrates its marketing efforts on certain needs and wants of a specific group of their target market. By targeting the promotional activities to a specific target market, providing a more focused merchandise mix and efficiently targeting advertising efforts it will lead to a much higher profits.

In other word, customer relationship management help business to get insight information about their customers product preferences, provide better customer service, to keep in touch and communicate with customers, to find and attract new customers, increase sales, simplified and focused the marketing efforts, maintain long term customer loyalty and increase profits.

E-commerce in the Digital Marketplace

In this day and age, selling products from brick and mortar is not enough. Business needs to become a multichannel business in order to survive and compete with their competitors. Electronic commerce or e-commerce is a "type of business model that enables a firm or individuals to conduct business over an electronic network" ("Electronic Commerce", n.d.) such as internet. E-commerce offer business various benefits that a brick and mortar stores could never give.

Adding e-commerce to business systems will give business an opportunity to attract and reach new markets. There are no global boundaries in e-commerce. Everyone from different cities or continent is able to purchase the products that are offered in e-commerce business. Without an e-commerce business, only customers that are located near the shop are likely to shop there. Access to an e-commerce site only limited to customers with access to the Internet. Unlike most brick and mortar store that are only open during business hours, e-commerce allows access to customer who may not be able to place orders during business hours. E-commerce business is open for 24 hours a day and in 7 days a week. An e-commerce business can overcomes some limitations of brick and mortar stores. By adding e-commerce option to business channels, business can expand the assortment and variety products offered to the customers ("Advantages and Disadvantages", n.d). E-commerce can increase the speed of getting the information on customer demand through its supply chain which can lead to increase to more accurate forecasts. These improved forecasts and the more accurate view of customer demand leads to a better match between supply and demand. E-commerce can reduce business operation costs such as rent, insurance, utilities and labour costs. Unlike the brick and mortar store, e-commerce doesn’t need a physical store space or other infrastructure investment. Another advantage that e-commerce give is the savings generated from not having to pay to print advertisement. Communicating electronically costs a lot less than communicating on paper, for instance through mail. Moreover, online promotions offer a greater flexibility, allowing the business to make ongoing adjustment to its offers if necessary.

E-commerce enables business to gain valuable insights into customer’s buying behaviour. E-commerce offers the opportunity to collect detailed customer information and recommend personalized preferences for brand, size, colour or price. An e-commerce site can be used to get both positive and negative feedback from customers. All of the information about the customers is collected electronically. Not only information, all the transactions are also done electronically. Business can use e-commerce to introduce new products much more quickly rather than brick and mortar store. E-commerce can easily change their prices according to the market conditions. This ability allows an e-commerce business to maximize revenues by setting prices based on current inventories and demand

In conclusion, e-commerce can conquer brick and mortar store problems and also give business benefits that brick and mortar could not offer such as open the store for 24 hours a day, access in any time and place, reach new customers, and information from supply chain. Adding e-commerce to business channels will reduce business costs and increase revenues.