Standing still is going backwards. An insightful phrase that is now commonplace. Research shows that innovative companies are, on average, twice as profitable as other companies. Entrepreneurs who fail to innovate (sufficiently) risk declining productivity and efficiency, a rise in costs and a drop in employee and customer motivation. 

Stay away from comfort

To keep your current position in the market or improve it for the future, innovation is vital. A business demands something different from you at every stage and the market is constantly changing.
You must, therefore, offer added value to your customers or, sooner or later, your product or service will no longer be current and your customers will walk away.  As your customer’s needs change, it is important that you change with their requirements over time. Of course, that starts with understanding your customer’s needs and requirements. There is a very good reason for the phrase ‘measuring is knowing’ being applied to business. Innovation can always be applied to improve what you already have or do today. 

Sometimes practice shows that the your current working methods do not align with your customer’s needs. At that point, it is useful to consider whether you should focus on breadth or height, i.e. expanding your services and products or perhaps innovating in something new. Have you felt quite comfortable for some time and things are running smoothly? Then it might be time to think about whether innovation could benefit your business and how you could make the most of your opportunities.

Standing out makes you attractive

Innovation usually relates to performing activities faster, better and cheaper, such as future-proofing technology to ensure the most efficient services or products. Customer needs and expectations are also always changing and increasing. To remain attractive to your customer, you must continue to stand out. As a company, it is therefore very important to be flexible in terms of implementing developments. Your customer expects your products and services to meet those recent developments. 

Impactful innovation with IT

Innovation can be seen as introducing something new. For example, transforming the market using new ideas, processes or technologies that ensure progress within a company. It appears from research by Acus and HP that more than 91% of organisations say they consider innovation important. Only a small proportion of those organisations, however, report successful innovation and yet this topic is always high on the agenda. Companies vary widely in the degree of success they experience in implementing innovations, and different departments in a company also differ in the extent to which they encourage innovation in their organisation. 

A very important field for driving innovation, and its success within an organisation, is IT. In fact, IT has the second-highest impact on innovation. A good foundation for this is aligning your processes and systems and ensuring privacy issues are in order. Process optimisation mainly benefits your customers’ experience. By implementing smart IT technologies, however, you also make your digital working environment user-friendly which, in turn, benefits your company employees. All in all, technology allows excellent connections with your customers, employees and processes.

This is the future

Cherishing traditions is important and valuable, but stubbornness can be dangerous in a business context. No matter how many arguments you come up with, the facts remain the same. The world around you will continue to change, whether you keep up or not. Examples of this type of change include robotics, home automation, cloud computing, automation, virtual reality, and the internet of things. For many businesses, a fast and reliable internal data connection is key.

However, traditional UTP cables are still usually chosen for an internal network. With Polymer Optical Fibre as the basis for your indoor network, you are prepared for the future. Data throughput is only limited to the speed of light and is lightning fast. Current UTP cables can no longer handle the growth of our data traffic and can only dream of this speed. Users are now able to use POF to perfectly combine the various technologies available today. Just what you need as an entrepreneur. Will you keep pace with the future?