Hands-Free Productivity
With smart products like Echo Dot from Amazon, which comes paired with a digital assistant, Alexa, you can get and make reminders, send and receive SMS, check the weather, look for restaurants to order food from, and figure out the best possible routes to a destination. That’s a lot of things you can do without even needing to use your hands. The Echo Dot can also act as a speaker, so you can switch to your tunes when you need to relax or get amped up for work. Other built-in features that the Echo Dot comes with include voice commands for controlling the lights and locks in your workspace.
Smart Safe
Effectively managing cash is integral to businesses of all sorts and sizes. However, it’s also a common source of the problem that business owners must deal with on a daily basis. The majority spend time on manual processes and inefficiencies because they think there’s no other way of doing it. They are stuck with a traditional floor safe for keeping their money secure. This is where smart safes enter the picture. Smart safes combine the traditional floor safe strengths with the high-tech features accessible with today’s advanced technology. Smart safes use cutting-edge counterfeit detection system to accept, verify, record, and store money.
Lower Energy Costs
Thermostats don’t sound catchy or hip, but today’s smart thermostats can definitely turn it around for this unappreciated device in your home and office. Businesses can use smart thermostats in the workplace to reduce energy consumption and, ultimately, lower bills. Smart thermostats, like Nest and Emerson Sensi, are IOT devices that let you remotely control the temperatures in an environment through a mobile device. This way, you save money on heating/cooling while also making sure that your employees are comfortable and productive.
Automated Inventory Management
Automated reordering of supplies can make inventory management more efficient. With these devices, businesses can immediately detect when supplies are low and reorder them. A good example of auto-fulfillment in action is in the printers being used by your business. Smart printers that are connected via WiFi can instantly detect when ink or toner is low and reorders cartridges from your respective suppliers. Automated inventory management can lower costs and improve fulfillment of orders sent out to consumers and business partners.
Fitness Monitors
A healthy and fit workforce tends to perform much better. They are more productive and are less prone to getting stressed or burnt out from work. Physical conditioning can be tracked through smart fitness and health monitors. Popular health trackers, like Fitbit, can be used to collect employee data at low costs. Regardless of what kind of tracker you use, make sure to use the data to affect positive change in the workplace. Regularly monitor your employees’ heart rate, pulse, blood pressure, steps, and overall physical activity and encourage them to improve their numbers. A lot of CEOs, like Saleh Stevens, can attest to the benefits of maintaining an active lifestyle through physical exercise.
Faster Production
Scaling your business is much easier now that production facilities are being built with better and smarter robots and machines to handle the repetitive and laborious tasks of cutting molds and assembling product parts. A smarter assembly line and manufacturing facility can also lead to less carbon footprint produced by these businesses by eliminating unnecessary motions. and reducing fuel and electricity consumption.
Final Thoughts
While smart technologies are definitely advantageous, they are mere tools to a business owner. How you use it is what makes the difference. As Saleh Stevens says, thinking big is key to getting big. Once the grandeur of a huge and life-changing idea starts to settle down, try to look for actual potential applications for the smart tech. Integrate it gradually into your existing IT. Rushing into a smart technology in the hopes of harnessing the cost-cutting advantages can backfire. Last but not least, try to get everyone on board when implementing a new piece of smart technology. Anticipate challenges concerning how your employees handle the learning curve.
