(This post originally appeared on Forbes)
Here are five things in technology that happened this past week and how they affect your business. Did you miss them?
1 — Windows 7 patch warning: antivirus clash causing PCs to freeze.
Just like in April when the Windows 7 update clashed with several antivirus products, the May 2019 Windows 7 updates are problematic for users of McAfee and Sophos security products. Sophos recently posted an alert about problems for users who installed the May 14 monthly rollup KB449164 and the security-only update KB4499175. And Microsoft confirmed startup issues with several McAfee security products, saying the updates might cause the system to have slow startup or become unresponsive at restart. (Source: ZDNet)
Why this is important for your business:
If this information is affecting your business than you’ve got a problem. No, not the antivirus clash. It’s that you’re still running Windows 7! If you’re having a decent year – as many small businesses are – it’s a good time to reinvest that money in upgrading your network to the most recent version of Windows. Microsoft is still supporting Windows 7 but c’mon, you know their passion lies with Windows 10. You should get your company current before their support runs out. (My company, The Marks Group PC, is a Microsoft partner).
2 — Bill.com launches an upgrade to their business payments platform.
This week, financial process automation leader Bill.com introduced what they say is the industry’s first platform that uses AI to provide end-to-end financial workflow automation. Its new Intelligent Business Payments Platform streamlines and controls payment processes while saving small and medium-sized companies time and reducing human error. Since many SMBs today still spend 23% of their workday manually managing many back office processes, there is a huge demand for automation of such processes, which has—until now—only been available to enterprise companies. (Source: Bill.com )
Why this is important for your business:
As I recently wrote on Inc.com: My prediction is that many smart businesses owners will be using technologies like these in the not-so-distant future. Why? Because these applications eliminate man-hours. They cut costs. They reduce fixed overhead. And one day that will also be in the not-so-distant future the economy will turn downwards, sales will dry up and the companies with the lowest cost structures will be in a better position to navigate and survive. Those are the companies that are right now automating their back offices while the going is good.
3 — Box revamps its workplace automation tool Relay and debuts new Tasks and File Request features.
In September, 2016, Box—the creator of the non-code, cloud-hosted workflow–introduced Relay—a business process automation tool designed to link recruiting, budgeting, and sales activities across a range of systems. Now, the company has announced a Relay redesign, which features a supercharged workflow engine, streamlined dashboard, and menus of new triggers and conditions. The tool can now route content based on metadata attributes like date, dropdown, multi-select, and open text fields, and its enhanced dashboard shows history, allowing process owners to see exportable lists of who created, updated, or deleted workflow or to elect users to create and manage their own workflows. (Source: Venture Beat)
Why this is important for your business:
Once a competitor, Box has now become a strong partner to other collaboration systems like Office 365 and Google’s G-Suite. The company offers a single platform for managing content, documents and workflow and counts more than 41 million users and 85,000 businesses as customers. True, the platform is mostly geared towards larger enterprises, but if your business has complex filing, security and workflow needs you may want to consider the investment.
4 — Zendesk acquires Smooch and doubles down on support via messaging apps like WhatsApp.
This week, customer support specialist Zendesk acquired Smooch—a startup that claims to be an ‘omnichannel messaging platform’ allowing companies’ customer care teams to interact with people over messaging platforms like WhatsApp, WeChat, Line and Messenger, as well as text and email. One of the first partners for the WhatsApp Business API, Smooch has also been a longtime partner of Zendesk. The deal between the two underscores the big impact of messaging apps in customer service. Even though phone and internet are huge points of contact, Zendesk says messaging apps are one of the features its customers request most. (Source: Tech Crunch)
Why this is important for your business:
My best clients are neurotic about keeping up with customer issues, incidents, complaints and problems. No, it’s not fun. But the faster these get resolved the happier customers are which means higher retainage and less churn. Also, being on top of issues helps many identify other opportunities. That’s the reason behind Zendesk’s growth over the past few years: many businesses have figured out that a strong support system is the backbone of a strong customer service operation.
5— Google sees Gmail as a key to its collaboration plans.
In last month’s issue of Google Cloud Next, the company said it sees the future of its team messaging tool Google Hangouts Chat as intertwined with Gmail, which allows users to switch into Chat without changing apps. Google believes that combining chat and email enables conversations to be pushed to the most fitting channel. Whereas team chat is best for ad-hoc discussions with colleagues, email is better for more formal interactions. (Source: Computer World)
Why this is important for your business:
If your company uses G-Suite then bear in mind the direction Google is going: in short, it’s all about Gmail. And that makes sense, because most of our communications still and will continue to revolve around our email.
