Digital technologies are forcing an unprecedented pace of change for business. They are not only changing the way we communicate but are also causing us to reshape our business models.To determine whether your business is on track to becoming an effective digital business, you need to ask the five following questions:

1. Do you proactively monitor the industry changes that are affecting your business?
Use web based tools to help track the impact that converged technologies are having on all aspects of your business, such as customer behaviors, new suppliers, technology trends etc. This approach will give you a holistic perspective of your industry and enable you to identify strategic options ahead of your competition.

2. Do you encourage collaborative behaviors within your organization?
It is crucial that your company provides the tools and environment that enable the sharing of knowledge and information in order to tap into one of its most valuable attributes – the tacit knowledge (the accumulated skills, experience and know-how) of your employees.

3. Do you regularly engage with communities external to your company?
It is essential to adopt a digital mindset and rethink how your business can more effectively engage (interact, listen, learn and co-create) with the rapidly growing collective knowledge base outside of your company in order to understand changing customer requirements, generate new ideas and gain important feedback.

4. Do you disrupt your business model?
Traditional business models, tools and methodologies do not adapt well to the opportunities and threats encountered in today’s digital world. First you need to understand how the individual elements of your existing model work together and then take full advantage of digital technologies to create a disruptive new business model – before your competition does it for you!

5. Do you inspire your employees to bring innovation into the workplace?
You need to encourage your employees to leverage the mobile and social technologies that they use in their everyday lives to generate innovative ideas that will enhance, simplify and accelerate the business processes within your company.

Have you answered “yes” to all the above questions? If so, yours is one of the few businesses with the foresight to understand that adopting a new mindset is essential in today’s fast paced digital environment. If you answered “no”, it’s not too late to follow the five steps above and begin the process of transforming your traditional organization into a truly digital one!

New technologies play a central role in modern business operations. Businesses using the newest technologies are generally more productive and efficient than their competitors. If you are interested in increasing your company’s productivity while decreasing its costs, you should review the various ways in which new technologies can benefit your business.

Technologies such as fax machines, telephones, and computers have all played an integral role in defining the modern business world. For instance, fax machines give companies the ability to complete transactions with customers and enter into contracts with other companies remotely. This capability helps businesses expand their operations beyond the limitations of their physical operations.

Telephones have also given companies the ability to transform the way they operate. Telephones give businesses the ability to communicate with employees and customers from around the world to provide better support and customer service. Telephones help companies remain informed concerning important aspects of their operations and this access to information helps them save money while increasing their productivity.

Computers have performed a similar function in the business world. Computers allow for modern enterprises to remain informed concerning global events as they unfold in real-time. Computers also permit companies to increase their productivity by helping them handle documents and important data more effectively.

Even today, new products are being released that are transforming the way businesses operate. VoIP technologies have given companies the ability to communicate with anyone in the world for a very low cost. By communicating through their Internet connections, companies can now communicate with employees and customers freely without worrying about the exorbitant costs commonly associated with international calls.

This technology seamlessly integrates with existing Internet connections too. Even small enterprises regularly enter global markets due to the substantially lower costs of communicating through existing Internet connections. Many services are now available allowing for calls to be made at a fraction of the cost of traditional phone calls.

Other advanced technologies include fax to e-mail services. Corporations can now instantly receive the faxes they are sent and store them in digital databases. Services that convert faxes to digital documents make it easier for organizations to handle their important documents.

Modern businesses obtain a competitive advantage by utilizing the best technologies. Enterprises using the most advanced technologies can greatly increase their productivity and efficiency to make their operations more profitable overall. Once your company is utilizing the most advanced technologies, you will be able to communicate with employees and customers with greater ease while also substantially reducing the costs of your communications.

We are now amongst the power of the digital age as our sense of physical communication weakens in the idolisation of communicating via text. Tim Berners-Lee has given us access to more than a billion worldwide internet users, making social media and digital technology a crucial additive to the events industry. How else are you going to build awareness and promote your event without the online communication tools in our hands?

As event managers we now embrace the web that has tangled the world into social media frenzy, and as we mark, set and grow a marketing pattern occurs that is sure to reign in a tidy attendant list.

1. We establish an online audience.

Setting the foundation of your event doesn’t stop with the framework of your exhibition stand or venue, which is why it is elementary to hone in on the channels of your target audiences. Event management companies UK protects themselves with domain names, websites and social profiles to anchor their presence online, owning a #hashtag, event page and blog. A content plan is generally distinguished that makes sure the event is never short of creative words when it comes to the build up of an event-because the run up is always full of valuable and interesting information (a documentation of planning and what’s to come).

2. We create gossip.

We can now turn our event into an online backpack that travels through the many social communities colonising on websites throughout the internet. Social networks go beyond the barriers of the general social sphere with PR sites, image sharing sites and online event planners pushing through the internet to spread your business and event to a wider audience who then share it with their collective and so on and so on. As the run up to an event usually sees the organisers utilising an array of social profiles to harvest the announcement of the event in question, target traffic is driven from the various social channels to the central hub that is a business’s website. By occupying a multitude of social profiles, an event is more likely to find its way into the top of the Google phenomenon whilst also contributing to the promotion of a business.

3. We self indulge through promotion.

Once the basis of information has been set in social vortexes, the time comes to elaborate the online presence of the event through the constant stream of promotion. Event talent, event organising specialists, and attendees are all encouraged to facilitate real time feedback and discussions through status updates, blog commenting and sharing of event marketing properties such as images, flyers, press releases and videos. Passive spectators are then worked into active participants as they begin to associate themselves with the event by sharing the marketing property through their own social networking.

4. There’s always an after party.

The key to a great event is held in the after math of conversations drilling how empiric the event was into the ears of those that did not attend. This maintains a momentum which surrounds the organisers and event purpose, and it’s important to archive that information as an asset in ways that keep the central hub beating long after an event has been hosted. The digital world has empowered us with a kind of celebrity-ism that empowers us to share our lives with people beyond our close friends and family which predominantly includes images and videos.

We can build on the success of our event skills through the assessment of our social outcome. Figuring out what worked well and what didn’t comes from feedback of all those involved and analytic systems within the social networks used.

As digitalisation has become elementary, events have boomed in capacity not only in regards to attendance but also to the awareness of event management companies and their abilities. We now have access to documented events from around the world that we would not have heard of yet alone seen or understood if it had not been for the internet. Live streams enable us to attend events visually and they play a unique part in the development of our own events through the online research we commence.

So in reality, our physical well being in the light of events has strengthened as we parade into hosted experiences thanks to the internet.