May 9, 2022 • 28 mins
The last couple of years have been hard, but they've also pushed businesses to adapt quickly and innovate. We look at the technologies that power work.
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from I Heart Radio.
Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host,
Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with iHeart Radio. And
how the tech are you today? I want to talk
about how small businesses are leveraging tech and how the
(00:26):
intersection of small business and tech is shaping the future
of work. But before we jump into that, let's talk
a bit about the recent past. And we all know
that COVID nineteen caused a level of disruption that your
typical Silicon Valley startup founder would only dream of. We
(00:48):
use that word in tech a lot, disruption, and and
typically it's shorthand for we're doing this thing that's been
done by other companies for ages, only we're doing it
different and better. But COVID nineteen wasn't entirely different level
of disruption. By the summer of twenty twenty, of small
(01:11):
businesses had closed due to the pandemic, and some of
them would never reopen. More would close over the following months,
and a lot of small businesses happen to be ones
that are disproportionately affected by requirements like social distancing. I'm
talking about your restaurants, your nail salons, your barbershops, your
tattoo parlors, and what have you. But we also saw
(01:34):
communities rally around local small businesses that we saw an
outpouring of support that buoyed businesses that otherwise would have
been struggling to remain open. And we saw innovation. In fact,
we saw tons of innovation. And I'm sure you have
all heard the saying that necessity is the mother of invention.
(01:58):
And if you need any proof that that saying is
absolutely true, just look at the massive trends we saw
over the last two years. Companies embraced digitization. Even companies
that happened so much as dipped their corporate toe into
the digital landscape found ways to pivot and to adapt.
(02:18):
I can't even tell you how many stories I heard
about how companies found ways to keep doing business and
what I would call beyond difficult circumstances. But let me
share my own experience, and I realized anecdotal evidence isn't
really evidence, but I think like it's a it's a
use case kind of. So obviously I podcast for I
(02:41):
Heart Radio well before the pandemic. The way that worked
is I would go into our office in Atlanta. I
would book one of our studios we have four of
them in the office, and I would record one or
more episodes sitting in a sound booth while my producer
Tari sat outside the sound booth monitoring the recording in
real time, marking down all the little moments where I
(03:03):
made a flub so that she could edit them out later.
Some episodes had a lot of those markups in them.
And then March twenty happened. That was a Friday, the thirteenth.
Fittingly enough, that was the last day our office was
open before we went into lockdown. Now, I know that
(03:23):
because for the longest time, all the desk calendars in
our office, the ones that require someone to you know,
physically change them. Anyone who had a desk calendar, it
was stuck on March thirteenth. I know that because on
rare occasions, I had to go to the office pretty infrequently.
But it did happen, so our whole operation had to
(03:48):
shift to remote work. Now my show publishes daily, so
there was no real gap in publication. We secured microphones
for all the hosts. We established cloud storage solutions to
upload all the audio files because you know, we're no
longer recording them directly to studio computers. Our producers adapted
(04:09):
to edit and publish shows offsite while they were working remotely.
The whole operation changed from this centralized arrangement to a
distributed one. March thirteenth, we're in the office. March six
we're recording from home. And here's the amazing thing. Nearly
every show on the network did this without an interruption
(04:33):
in production. Now, there were kinks that had to be
ironed out. Of course, not everything worked perfectly out of
the box, but we adapted. To this day, our office
tends to be pretty quiet. Even as things have opened up.
People have adapted their work styles. We use digital collaborative
project management solutions to work together. We use online video
(04:54):
conferencing services in order to have meetings. We even have
web based studio solutions to record episodes with multiple hosts.
You know, when we first started, everyone was recording natively
on their own devices, and a producer had to mix
it all together. Now we're actually using tools that allow
us to do like a studio recording, but it's a
(05:14):
virtual one. Uh Me. I don't have to worry about
that very often because I'm a solo host, but you know,
I've got it. I do use it whenever I do
interviews and things like that. Now, the way we do
work in our office has fundamentally changed, and I believe
at least some of that change is permanent. I think
I'll see people in the office more regularly in the future.
(05:37):
But I really do believe that a hybrid approach is
how will work from here on out for most of us.
And that's true for tons of other businesses as well,
even for those businesses that cannot adopt a hybrid approach.
We've seen some massive moves toward digitizing work processes, whether
(05:58):
it's adopting online payment strategies or instituting digitized payroll services.
Small businesses have evolved more in the past two years
than they had in the previous decade. Now there is
a lot of technology that has made all of this possible.
I've been in the workforce for a long time, so
I've seen some big changes in tech. When I first
(06:20):
started in the workforce, which was not at how Stuff
Works or Stuff Media or I Heart Radio, it was
in a consulting firm. Well, when I first started, your
average employee workstation was a desktop computer, typically a tower
that was connected to a big old monitor. I'm talking
about the CRT monitors, not exactly a portable solution. That's
(06:43):
where your workstation was, That's where you had to do
your work. If COVID nineteen had hit back in those days,
I'm honestly not certain how or even if companies could
have adapted in the wake of it, at least not
without potentially putting their employees in danger. But today we
have portable solutions. Lightweight laptops are commonplace. In fact, in
(07:07):
our office pretty much everyone has one, and improvements in
battery technology and more to the point, power management with laptops,
I mean that a laptop can last a lot longer
on a battery, even if you know you don't have
an outlet to plug into at the moment. They can
last a lot longer than the clunky, heavy things I
(07:28):
used to work on back in my college days. Uh
way back then, I remember having a laptop, although I
wouldn't call it a laptop because if you were to
put on your lap you would crush your legs. It
was a portable computer that was like a very heavy suitcase.
I almost think of it as like like one of
those things you would see in a spy movie, except
(07:49):
not as cool. Now, modern laptops make it possible for
you to do your work from anywhere, right, I mean,
that's their purpose. And before the pandemic, anywhere usually meant
wherever I was traveling for work, like if I was
going to c E s or to eat three or something,
I would bring my laptop with me. But today it
really does mean anywhere, and as things open up, working
(08:12):
from anywhere can actually be really nice. For a couple
of years, anywhere really just meant my office in my house,
like it's actually a spared room. It's a guest room
that we turned into an office slash studio for me.
But now now that things are opening up, anywhere can
also include stuff like the patio at a local coffee
(08:33):
shop if I want to go there to research and
write an episode. Patio culture in Atlanta is serious business.
We love al fresco dining during that sweet spot in
the spring just before the weather gets too hot. We're
starting to creep toward the too hot right now, so
get those patio days in why you can at Lantern's. Now.
On top of that, in the old days, the computer
(08:58):
was really where all the power was like your computer
was where all the power was. And by that I
meant we had to depend upon our PC to provide
all the processing and all the storage that we were
relying upon. Some companies had their own servers that would
let you save documents to a company network drive, so
(09:18):
you were saving your files to a server rather than
your work computer. But you know, your computer was really
your enabler and also the limiting factor on what you
could do. But the emergence of cloud and edge computing
services have completely changed that as well. Cloud services, whether
(09:39):
it's storage, or it's compute, or it's a mixture of
the two, mean that businesses can partner with providers in
order to handle all that heavy lifting, and the businesses
can then rely upon more nimble computer systems for employees.
That is an enormous change. It creates value bull options.
(10:00):
In some businesses, it might make sense to secure powerful
laptops or other computers for employees, but in many businesses
that kind of computer just isn't necessary as long as
the employee has a reliable Internet connection, and we've seen
a huge surgeon small businesses taking advantage of the cloud.
The circumstances of the pandemic really necessitated it. But beyond that,
(10:25):
the cloud has created new ways for businesses to you know,
do business. In many cases, it has expanded businesses ability
to reach new customers, sometimes customers that they never would
have encountered without the migration to the cloud. And of
course we're still seeing cases in which businesses are keeping
everything on premises or on prem as they say in
(10:48):
the biz, and then some of them are going with
a hybrid approach where they're keeping some servers on premises
and they're relying also on the cloud. And in those cases,
you're typically seeing businesses really keep mission critical, high security
applications and storage on premises and then offloading everything else
(11:12):
to the cloud. And it really expands your options. When
we come back, i'll talk about some other technologies that
have really enabled small businesses to continue working through the
last two years and ways that it's going to create
new opportunities moving forward. But first let's take a quick break.
(11:43):
We're back now getting back to connectivity. That's something that
also has changed dramatically since I began working. Not only
have we seen broadband access increase, we've seen data throughput
capabilities explode. You know what, we considered a fast back
when I first started working in the workforce, wouldn't even
(12:08):
qualify as slow. Today we would think of it as
excruciating lee slow plus. Now we're seeing more options for
connectivity than ever before, whether it's a fiber connection or
a five G wireless solution, or you know, even satellite
Internet services for people in remote locations. There are businesses
(12:29):
I have gone to that aren't served by hardlined UH
Internet connections, or they're not really in a place where
they can get reliable five G service, so they use satellites. Well,
satellite services even improved, so the connectivity component for small
businesses has enabled new ways to reach and serve customers.
(12:53):
Businesses that in the past relied entirely upon you know,
in person UH interactions have had to adapt to this,
and a lot of them have done it incredibly well. Now.
I mentioned earlier that businesses can make use of servers
for in house networks, and another big change we've seen
(13:13):
since I started working is the cost and the availability
of servers. I remember, like when I started that consulting
firm in the nineties, it was the first time I
had ever interacted with servers outside of an academic setting,
and for a while only larger companies were really able
to afford servers or even have a need for them.
(13:34):
But today servers are much more affordable and they offer
businesses some incredibly useful and powerful tools. For example, employees
connected to the in house server can collaborate directly, they
can share files, they can share other resources with each
other without having to send that information over some other
network like the Internet for example, where seeing lots of
(13:57):
businesses adopt these kinds of strate geez. Now, ideally you've
got yourself a dedicated server, maybe you augment it with
a VPN or virtual private network, and this becomes not
just the nexus of collaboration, it also becomes a key
component to companies security. So one of the ugly trends
we've seen over the last two years is a serious
(14:20):
uptick in cybercrime. We saw everything from widespread phishing campaigns
that sought to trick people into handing over important information
or sometimes even control of a machine or even a network,
all the way up to massive state backed campaigns that
targeted some of the most influential companies and agencies around
(14:40):
the world. And this meant there was a big bright
spotlight on the challenges of I T security in a
distributed work setting. Well, I hate to say it, but
there is no such thing as a perfect security system. However,
one thing that is an important tool is a server.
(15:01):
If employees are logging into a server, if they're logging
into a company machine before they then do further explorations
out into the Internet for their work. For example, I
do a lot of research. So having that as a
stop is important because a business owner can employ security
(15:23):
tools to protect the business and the business's assets. On
the server side, a firewall is a really good start.
A firewall helps protect against unwanted traffic into a company's servers.
A tool that can detect and prevent intrusion attempts and
other threats can really mean the difference between business as
(15:45):
usual and going into full on damage control. So for
a lot of small businesses, incorporating a server into the
business makes a ton of sense. Though we do also
have to acknowledge that any security strategy also has to
include employee training and understanding. Anecdotally, I have seen an
(16:06):
uptick of phishing attempts targeting me recently. Most of those
are going to my phone via text messages or to
my personal email account, which suggests to me that my
information is probably part of a massive database that's being
traded around on the dark web somewhere. That's tons of fun.
That's something you obviously want to avoid if you can,
(16:28):
and it's certainly something that businesses want to avoid. You
don't want people exploiting information at your expense, so good
security practices help a lot in those cases. Something I
find really fascinating is how small businesses are starting to
leverage high tech solutions like machine learning and artificial intelligence
(16:50):
and data analytics. I often get a bit narrow minded
when it comes to certain things in technology. I make
assumptions such as the only companies that are really engaging
in those kinds of technologies are the really big ones,
you know, the companies that are known for pioneering AI
and machine learning. That somehow this is all confined to
(17:15):
laboratories and people in white coats with formula. But that's
really missing the point entirely, isn't it. I mean, I
get it like that is like that is the most
primitive way of looking at those disciplines, because why are
these companies even pursuing these technologies? What is the purpose
of doing all this R and D work well. Ultimately,
(17:38):
it's to offer a product up to customers, and customers
can include small businesses. So small businesses, while not necessarily
at the forefront of developing the next powerful AI, are
certainly taking advantage of those technologies, and more of those
small businesses are doing it every day. In fact, many
(18:00):
analysts suggest that small businesses are actually adopting these technologies
faster than the bigger companies because the small businesses are
more nimble, they're able to respond more quickly than the
big companies are. But then, what are they using these
technologies to do well. Sometimes it's for stuff that might
(18:20):
seem kind of mundane, such as automatic transcriptions for phone calls,
but that service can get really sophisticated. I'm sure some
of you have had experiences in which you were using
some sort of audio conferencing over the Internet, or maybe
some sort of speech to text application, and you probably
(18:41):
saw that depending on what you said, you might have
some interesting options pop up. For example, I've used the
notation program to remind myself of upcoming appointments and then
saw that the program actually created an option for me
to actively add the notation as an appointment to my
calendar that automatically said, oh, I understand you want to
(19:07):
be reminded of this event at this time on this day.
How about we just add that to your calendar. And
it's the AI component of this transcription service that is
able to contextualize what I was saying and quote unquote
understand that it meant I needed to put something on
my calendar. That is phenomenal. It's something that a lot
(19:31):
of us kind of take for granted, even after the
first time we see it. But that was a huge,
huge breakthrough. And that's just a simple example. I was
actually on a conference call just the other day and
during the call, I mentioned that I needed to email
someone on our team, and during the call, a little
(19:52):
notification popped up in the service I was using that
said do you want to add this to your to
do list? And it was email so and so, And
it was just amazing to me. And we're seeing these
kinds of services offer up even more utility as time
goes on. Imagine that business gets on the phone with
a supplier and that because of the phone service that
(20:16):
they're using, it automatically ends up creating a transcription of
the phone call. You have an AI component that's doing
speech to text. The AI might make note of specific
components of the conversation, such as any orders or sales,
prices of items, or inventory or supply schedules, all that
(20:38):
sort of stuff. We're seeing AI solutions automate many of
the processes that in the old days would have to
be tracked by human beings who would then input various
data points manually into spreadsheets and stuff. Now a lot
of that can be done automatically, and we're seeing technology
enable automated solutions that any business can take advantage of.
(21:01):
Typically it just includes securing a business license for a
specific product. There are limitless scenarios where machine learning and
AI are making transformative changes in how businesses operate, freeing
up people in the business to focus on things other
than tracking points of data. In the era of big data,
(21:22):
a critical component is data analysis. That was something that
was clear from the very beginning, but for a while,
data analysis capabilities were trailing behind data gathering capabilities. We
were gathering terra bytes worth of information at of a
frightening speed, really, and the ability to sort through it
(21:46):
was kind of lagging behind. Well, information is not valuable
if you can't figure out what is in that information
if you can't separate the signal from the noise. Fortunately,
very smart programmer came up with incredible algorithms that started
us on the process of being able to sort through
(22:07):
all this information and find the meaning within it. Machine
learning sped that process up significantly, and data analysis is critical,
whether it's getting a better understanding of what customers want
and expect, or it's for managing supply chains. Data analysis
is a key component for pretty much any small business.
(22:29):
It might not always be obvious, it might not even
be formally acknowledged, it might be done more like by
feel and intuition, but it's always there. It's rare for
a business to be successful without some element of data
analysis coming into play, and tech really makes that possible
on a scale that was unimaginable a few years ago.
(22:51):
But now we're seeing powerful systems, often driven by machine learning,
that can find real meaning in all the data that
we've collected, and this can end up being useful to
small businesses as well. Not that every small business has
to comb through terabytes of data to get things done,
but what might have seemed abstract in the past is
(23:12):
now a concrete reality and businesses are using these technologies
to get a better understanding of their business strategy, what works,
what doesn't work. They also get a better understanding of
their customers and how to do things better at lower
costs with higher revenues. Now, not all the changes from
the past couple of years are rosy small businesses based challenges.
(23:35):
As ever, some of those challenges have emerged over the
last decade or so. For example, pivoting to a digitized
strategy brings new consequences. A big one would be the
rise of the aggregators. So these are companies that collect
and curate other companies. They act as a sort of
(23:56):
clearing house or a centralized way for customers to find
what they're looking for. And there are massive online stores
that do this. They are numerous ones. They give small
businesses a chance to reach customers UH using the internet,
and they can rely on this enormous online store as
(24:16):
their platform. But this can come at a cost. The
customer may not ever associate the product with that small business.
They might instead associate the product with the overall huge
online store. And we've seen this a lot over the
last two years. UH food delivery services in particular have
(24:37):
really contributed to this. Restaurants can find it challenging to
connect with customers directly as these delivery services become a
literal go between for the restaurant and the customer. I
suspect we're going to see a lot of innovation in
this space as well, as small businesses find new ways
to reach customers, possibly adopting hybrid approaches to do so so,
(25:00):
in other words, maintaining a place on these larger online platforms,
but also keeping their own space as well so that
customers can go directly there. Maybe they'll find ways to
attract customers to those owned and operated stores. I imagine
(25:21):
we're going to see a lot more use of things
like online newsletters and such in order to do that,
because it kind of hearkens back to going to small
individual stores rather than a mall. Right, Like you're shopping
locally in locally owned stores, rather than going to a
(25:41):
giant box store or a shopping mall filled with you know,
franchised stores. I feel like that's where we're at right now,
where small businesses are finding ways where they can make
those connections with their customers and to perhaps not rely
so heavily on aggregators or maybe we'll see aggregators shift
(26:05):
a bit and how they operate so that there isn't
this disconnect between customer and business. Finally, I wanted to
mention that technology has enabled more people to pursue an
entrepreneurial dream than ever before. That, to me, is something
(26:25):
that we can't lose sight of. Technology has reached a
level of affordability and utility that allows people who had
a dream but no means to pursue it, to suddenly
flip that switch. And this is a global phenomenon. We're
seeing people who traditionally have been drastically underrepresented in small
(26:49):
businesses chase their dreams. Technology is what is powering that.
Whether it's someone in Atlanta spearheading a service that brings
rashly grown produce right off the far to customers in
the city, or it's a school for the deaf in
El Salvador adapting to remote instruction and subsequently expanding, which
(27:10):
meant they could accept more students, and that is an
incredible benefit both to the school and to the students themselves.
Tech is a foundational pillar for the future of work
in general and small businesses in particular. That's it for
this episode of tech Stuff. I hope you enjoyed this.
(27:30):
If you have suggestions for future topics that I should
cover in this podcast, please reach out to me. The
best way to do that is on Twitter. The handle
for the show is tech Stuff H s W and
I'll talk to you again really soon. Text Stuff is
(27:51):
an I Heart Radio production. For more podcasts from my
Heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite jumps come
Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from I Heart Radio.
Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host,
Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with iHeart Radio. And
how the tech are you today? I want to talk
about how small businesses are leveraging tech and how the
(00:26):
intersection of small business and tech is shaping the future
of work. But before we jump into that, let's talk
a bit about the recent past. And we all know
that COVID nineteen caused a level of disruption that your
typical Silicon Valley startup founder would only dream of. We
(00:48):
use that word in tech a lot, disruption, and and
typically it's shorthand for we're doing this thing that's been
done by other companies for ages, only we're doing it
different and better. But COVID nineteen wasn't entirely different level
of disruption. By the summer of twenty twenty, of small
(01:11):
businesses had closed due to the pandemic, and some of
them would never reopen. More would close over the following months,
and a lot of small businesses happen to be ones
that are disproportionately affected by requirements like social distancing. I'm
talking about your restaurants, your nail salons, your barbershops, your
tattoo parlors, and what have you. But we also saw
(01:34):
communities rally around local small businesses that we saw an
outpouring of support that buoyed businesses that otherwise would have
been struggling to remain open. And we saw innovation. In fact,
we saw tons of innovation. And I'm sure you have
all heard the saying that necessity is the mother of invention.
(01:58):
And if you need any proof that that saying is
absolutely true, just look at the massive trends we saw
over the last two years. Companies embraced digitization. Even companies
that happened so much as dipped their corporate toe into
the digital landscape found ways to pivot and to adapt.
(02:18):
I can't even tell you how many stories I heard
about how companies found ways to keep doing business and
what I would call beyond difficult circumstances. But let me
share my own experience, and I realized anecdotal evidence isn't
really evidence, but I think like it's a it's a
use case kind of. So obviously I podcast for I
(02:41):
Heart Radio well before the pandemic. The way that worked
is I would go into our office in Atlanta. I
would book one of our studios we have four of
them in the office, and I would record one or
more episodes sitting in a sound booth while my producer
Tari sat outside the sound booth monitoring the recording in
real time, marking down all the little moments where I
(03:03):
made a flub so that she could edit them out later.
Some episodes had a lot of those markups in them.
And then March twenty happened. That was a Friday, the thirteenth.
Fittingly enough, that was the last day our office was
open before we went into lockdown. Now, I know that
(03:23):
because for the longest time, all the desk calendars in
our office, the ones that require someone to you know,
physically change them. Anyone who had a desk calendar, it
was stuck on March thirteenth. I know that because on
rare occasions, I had to go to the office pretty infrequently.
But it did happen, so our whole operation had to
(03:48):
shift to remote work. Now my show publishes daily, so
there was no real gap in publication. We secured microphones
for all the hosts. We established cloud storage solutions to
upload all the audio files because you know, we're no
longer recording them directly to studio computers. Our producers adapted
(04:09):
to edit and publish shows offsite while they were working remotely.
The whole operation changed from this centralized arrangement to a
distributed one. March thirteenth, we're in the office. March six
we're recording from home. And here's the amazing thing. Nearly
every show on the network did this without an interruption
(04:33):
in production. Now, there were kinks that had to be
ironed out. Of course, not everything worked perfectly out of
the box, but we adapted. To this day, our office
tends to be pretty quiet. Even as things have opened up.
People have adapted their work styles. We use digital collaborative
project management solutions to work together. We use online video
(04:54):
conferencing services in order to have meetings. We even have
web based studio solutions to record episodes with multiple hosts.
You know, when we first started, everyone was recording natively
on their own devices, and a producer had to mix
it all together. Now we're actually using tools that allow
us to do like a studio recording, but it's a
(05:14):
virtual one. Uh Me. I don't have to worry about
that very often because I'm a solo host, but you know,
I've got it. I do use it whenever I do
interviews and things like that. Now, the way we do
work in our office has fundamentally changed, and I believe
at least some of that change is permanent. I think
I'll see people in the office more regularly in the future.
(05:37):
But I really do believe that a hybrid approach is
how will work from here on out for most of us.
And that's true for tons of other businesses as well,
even for those businesses that cannot adopt a hybrid approach.
We've seen some massive moves toward digitizing work processes, whether
(05:58):
it's adopting online payment strategies or instituting digitized payroll services.
Small businesses have evolved more in the past two years
than they had in the previous decade. Now there is
a lot of technology that has made all of this possible.
I've been in the workforce for a long time, so
I've seen some big changes in tech. When I first
(06:20):
started in the workforce, which was not at how Stuff
Works or Stuff Media or I Heart Radio, it was
in a consulting firm. Well, when I first started, your
average employee workstation was a desktop computer, typically a tower
that was connected to a big old monitor. I'm talking
about the CRT monitors, not exactly a portable solution. That's
(06:43):
where your workstation was, That's where you had to do
your work. If COVID nineteen had hit back in those days,
I'm honestly not certain how or even if companies could
have adapted in the wake of it, at least not
without potentially putting their employees in danger. But today we
have portable solutions. Lightweight laptops are commonplace. In fact, in
(07:07):
our office pretty much everyone has one, and improvements in
battery technology and more to the point, power management with laptops,
I mean that a laptop can last a lot longer
on a battery, even if you know you don't have
an outlet to plug into at the moment. They can
last a lot longer than the clunky, heavy things I
(07:28):
used to work on back in my college days. Uh
way back then, I remember having a laptop, although I
wouldn't call it a laptop because if you were to
put on your lap you would crush your legs. It
was a portable computer that was like a very heavy suitcase.
I almost think of it as like like one of
those things you would see in a spy movie, except
(07:49):
not as cool. Now, modern laptops make it possible for
you to do your work from anywhere, right, I mean,
that's their purpose. And before the pandemic, anywhere usually meant
wherever I was traveling for work, like if I was
going to c E s or to eat three or something,
I would bring my laptop with me. But today it
really does mean anywhere, and as things open up, working
(08:12):
from anywhere can actually be really nice. For a couple
of years, anywhere really just meant my office in my house,
like it's actually a spared room. It's a guest room
that we turned into an office slash studio for me.
But now now that things are opening up, anywhere can
also include stuff like the patio at a local coffee
(08:33):
shop if I want to go there to research and
write an episode. Patio culture in Atlanta is serious business.
We love al fresco dining during that sweet spot in
the spring just before the weather gets too hot. We're
starting to creep toward the too hot right now, so
get those patio days in why you can at Lantern's. Now.
On top of that, in the old days, the computer
(08:58):
was really where all the power was like your computer
was where all the power was. And by that I
meant we had to depend upon our PC to provide
all the processing and all the storage that we were
relying upon. Some companies had their own servers that would
let you save documents to a company network drive, so
(09:18):
you were saving your files to a server rather than
your work computer. But you know, your computer was really
your enabler and also the limiting factor on what you
could do. But the emergence of cloud and edge computing
services have completely changed that as well. Cloud services, whether
(09:39):
it's storage, or it's compute, or it's a mixture of
the two, mean that businesses can partner with providers in
order to handle all that heavy lifting, and the businesses
can then rely upon more nimble computer systems for employees.
That is an enormous change. It creates value bull options.
(10:00):
In some businesses, it might make sense to secure powerful
laptops or other computers for employees, but in many businesses
that kind of computer just isn't necessary as long as
the employee has a reliable Internet connection, and we've seen
a huge surgeon small businesses taking advantage of the cloud.
The circumstances of the pandemic really necessitated it. But beyond that,
(10:25):
the cloud has created new ways for businesses to you know,
do business. In many cases, it has expanded businesses ability
to reach new customers, sometimes customers that they never would
have encountered without the migration to the cloud. And of
course we're still seeing cases in which businesses are keeping
everything on premises or on prem as they say in
(10:48):
the biz, and then some of them are going with
a hybrid approach where they're keeping some servers on premises
and they're relying also on the cloud. And in those cases,
you're typically seeing businesses really keep mission critical, high security
applications and storage on premises and then offloading everything else
(11:12):
to the cloud. And it really expands your options. When
we come back, i'll talk about some other technologies that
have really enabled small businesses to continue working through the
last two years and ways that it's going to create
new opportunities moving forward. But first let's take a quick break.
(11:43):
We're back now getting back to connectivity. That's something that
also has changed dramatically since I began working. Not only
have we seen broadband access increase, we've seen data throughput
capabilities explode. You know what, we considered a fast back
when I first started working in the workforce, wouldn't even
(12:08):
qualify as slow. Today we would think of it as
excruciating lee slow plus. Now we're seeing more options for
connectivity than ever before, whether it's a fiber connection or
a five G wireless solution, or you know, even satellite
Internet services for people in remote locations. There are businesses
(12:29):
I have gone to that aren't served by hardlined UH
Internet connections, or they're not really in a place where
they can get reliable five G service, so they use satellites. Well,
satellite services even improved, so the connectivity component for small
businesses has enabled new ways to reach and serve customers.
(12:53):
Businesses that in the past relied entirely upon you know,
in person UH interactions have had to adapt to this,
and a lot of them have done it incredibly well. Now.
I mentioned earlier that businesses can make use of servers
for in house networks, and another big change we've seen
(13:13):
since I started working is the cost and the availability
of servers. I remember, like when I started that consulting
firm in the nineties, it was the first time I
had ever interacted with servers outside of an academic setting,
and for a while only larger companies were really able
to afford servers or even have a need for them.
(13:34):
But today servers are much more affordable and they offer
businesses some incredibly useful and powerful tools. For example, employees
connected to the in house server can collaborate directly, they
can share files, they can share other resources with each
other without having to send that information over some other
network like the Internet for example, where seeing lots of
(13:57):
businesses adopt these kinds of strate geez. Now, ideally you've
got yourself a dedicated server, maybe you augment it with
a VPN or virtual private network, and this becomes not
just the nexus of collaboration, it also becomes a key
component to companies security. So one of the ugly trends
we've seen over the last two years is a serious
(14:20):
uptick in cybercrime. We saw everything from widespread phishing campaigns
that sought to trick people into handing over important information
or sometimes even control of a machine or even a network,
all the way up to massive state backed campaigns that
targeted some of the most influential companies and agencies around
(14:40):
the world. And this meant there was a big bright
spotlight on the challenges of I T security in a
distributed work setting. Well, I hate to say it, but
there is no such thing as a perfect security system. However,
one thing that is an important tool is a server.
(15:01):
If employees are logging into a server, if they're logging
into a company machine before they then do further explorations
out into the Internet for their work. For example, I
do a lot of research. So having that as a
stop is important because a business owner can employ security
(15:23):
tools to protect the business and the business's assets. On
the server side, a firewall is a really good start.
A firewall helps protect against unwanted traffic into a company's servers.
A tool that can detect and prevent intrusion attempts and
other threats can really mean the difference between business as
(15:45):
usual and going into full on damage control. So for
a lot of small businesses, incorporating a server into the
business makes a ton of sense. Though we do also
have to acknowledge that any security strategy also has to
include employee training and understanding. Anecdotally, I have seen an
(16:06):
uptick of phishing attempts targeting me recently. Most of those
are going to my phone via text messages or to
my personal email account, which suggests to me that my
information is probably part of a massive database that's being
traded around on the dark web somewhere. That's tons of fun.
That's something you obviously want to avoid if you can,
(16:28):
and it's certainly something that businesses want to avoid. You
don't want people exploiting information at your expense, so good
security practices help a lot in those cases. Something I
find really fascinating is how small businesses are starting to
leverage high tech solutions like machine learning and artificial intelligence
(16:50):
and data analytics. I often get a bit narrow minded
when it comes to certain things in technology. I make
assumptions such as the only companies that are really engaging
in those kinds of technologies are the really big ones,
you know, the companies that are known for pioneering AI
and machine learning. That somehow this is all confined to
(17:15):
laboratories and people in white coats with formula. But that's
really missing the point entirely, isn't it. I mean, I
get it like that is like that is the most
primitive way of looking at those disciplines, because why are
these companies even pursuing these technologies? What is the purpose
of doing all this R and D work well. Ultimately,
(17:38):
it's to offer a product up to customers, and customers
can include small businesses. So small businesses, while not necessarily
at the forefront of developing the next powerful AI, are
certainly taking advantage of those technologies, and more of those
small businesses are doing it every day. In fact, many
(18:00):
analysts suggest that small businesses are actually adopting these technologies
faster than the bigger companies because the small businesses are
more nimble, they're able to respond more quickly than the
big companies are. But then, what are they using these
technologies to do well. Sometimes it's for stuff that might
(18:20):
seem kind of mundane, such as automatic transcriptions for phone calls,
but that service can get really sophisticated. I'm sure some
of you have had experiences in which you were using
some sort of audio conferencing over the Internet, or maybe
some sort of speech to text application, and you probably
(18:41):
saw that depending on what you said, you might have
some interesting options pop up. For example, I've used the
notation program to remind myself of upcoming appointments and then
saw that the program actually created an option for me
to actively add the notation as an appointment to my
calendar that automatically said, oh, I understand you want to
(19:07):
be reminded of this event at this time on this day.
How about we just add that to your calendar. And
it's the AI component of this transcription service that is
able to contextualize what I was saying and quote unquote
understand that it meant I needed to put something on
my calendar. That is phenomenal. It's something that a lot
(19:31):
of us kind of take for granted, even after the
first time we see it. But that was a huge,
huge breakthrough. And that's just a simple example. I was
actually on a conference call just the other day and
during the call, I mentioned that I needed to email
someone on our team, and during the call, a little
(19:52):
notification popped up in the service I was using that
said do you want to add this to your to
do list? And it was email so and so, And
it was just amazing to me. And we're seeing these
kinds of services offer up even more utility as time
goes on. Imagine that business gets on the phone with
a supplier and that because of the phone service that
(20:16):
they're using, it automatically ends up creating a transcription of
the phone call. You have an AI component that's doing
speech to text. The AI might make note of specific
components of the conversation, such as any orders or sales,
prices of items, or inventory or supply schedules, all that
(20:38):
sort of stuff. We're seeing AI solutions automate many of
the processes that in the old days would have to
be tracked by human beings who would then input various
data points manually into spreadsheets and stuff. Now a lot
of that can be done automatically, and we're seeing technology
enable automated solutions that any business can take advantage of.
(21:01):
Typically it just includes securing a business license for a
specific product. There are limitless scenarios where machine learning and
AI are making transformative changes in how businesses operate, freeing
up people in the business to focus on things other
than tracking points of data. In the era of big data,
(21:22):
a critical component is data analysis. That was something that
was clear from the very beginning, but for a while,
data analysis capabilities were trailing behind data gathering capabilities. We
were gathering terra bytes worth of information at of a
frightening speed, really, and the ability to sort through it
(21:46):
was kind of lagging behind. Well, information is not valuable
if you can't figure out what is in that information
if you can't separate the signal from the noise. Fortunately,
very smart programmer came up with incredible algorithms that started
us on the process of being able to sort through
(22:07):
all this information and find the meaning within it. Machine
learning sped that process up significantly, and data analysis is critical,
whether it's getting a better understanding of what customers want
and expect, or it's for managing supply chains. Data analysis
is a key component for pretty much any small business.
(22:29):
It might not always be obvious, it might not even
be formally acknowledged, it might be done more like by
feel and intuition, but it's always there. It's rare for
a business to be successful without some element of data
analysis coming into play, and tech really makes that possible
on a scale that was unimaginable a few years ago.
(22:51):
But now we're seeing powerful systems, often driven by machine learning,
that can find real meaning in all the data that
we've collected, and this can end up being useful to
small businesses as well. Not that every small business has
to comb through terabytes of data to get things done,
but what might have seemed abstract in the past is
(23:12):
now a concrete reality and businesses are using these technologies
to get a better understanding of their business strategy, what works,
what doesn't work. They also get a better understanding of
their customers and how to do things better at lower
costs with higher revenues. Now, not all the changes from
the past couple of years are rosy small businesses based challenges.
(23:35):
As ever, some of those challenges have emerged over the
last decade or so. For example, pivoting to a digitized
strategy brings new consequences. A big one would be the
rise of the aggregators. So these are companies that collect
and curate other companies. They act as a sort of
(23:56):
clearing house or a centralized way for customers to find
what they're looking for. And there are massive online stores
that do this. They are numerous ones. They give small
businesses a chance to reach customers UH using the internet,
and they can rely on this enormous online store as
(24:16):
their platform. But this can come at a cost. The
customer may not ever associate the product with that small business.
They might instead associate the product with the overall huge
online store. And we've seen this a lot over the
last two years. UH food delivery services in particular have
(24:37):
really contributed to this. Restaurants can find it challenging to
connect with customers directly as these delivery services become a
literal go between for the restaurant and the customer. I
suspect we're going to see a lot of innovation in
this space as well, as small businesses find new ways
to reach customers, possibly adopting hybrid approaches to do so so,
(25:00):
in other words, maintaining a place on these larger online platforms,
but also keeping their own space as well so that
customers can go directly there. Maybe they'll find ways to
attract customers to those owned and operated stores. I imagine
(25:21):
we're going to see a lot more use of things
like online newsletters and such in order to do that,
because it kind of hearkens back to going to small
individual stores rather than a mall. Right, Like you're shopping
locally in locally owned stores, rather than going to a
(25:41):
giant box store or a shopping mall filled with you know,
franchised stores. I feel like that's where we're at right now,
where small businesses are finding ways where they can make
those connections with their customers and to perhaps not rely
so heavily on aggregators or maybe we'll see aggregators shift
(26:05):
a bit and how they operate so that there isn't
this disconnect between customer and business. Finally, I wanted to
mention that technology has enabled more people to pursue an
entrepreneurial dream than ever before. That, to me, is something
(26:25):
that we can't lose sight of. Technology has reached a
level of affordability and utility that allows people who had
a dream but no means to pursue it, to suddenly
flip that switch. And this is a global phenomenon. We're
seeing people who traditionally have been drastically underrepresented in small
(26:49):
businesses chase their dreams. Technology is what is powering that.
Whether it's someone in Atlanta spearheading a service that brings
rashly grown produce right off the far to customers in
the city, or it's a school for the deaf in
El Salvador adapting to remote instruction and subsequently expanding, which
(27:10):
meant they could accept more students, and that is an
incredible benefit both to the school and to the students themselves.
Tech is a foundational pillar for the future of work
in general and small businesses in particular. That's it for
this episode of tech Stuff. I hope you enjoyed this.
(27:30):
If you have suggestions for future topics that I should
cover in this podcast, please reach out to me. The
best way to do that is on Twitter. The handle
for the show is tech Stuff H s W and
I'll talk to you again really soon. Text Stuff is
(27:51):
an I Heart Radio production. For more podcasts from my
Heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite jumps come
TechStuff News
Hosts And Creators
Oz Woloshyn
Karah Preiss
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