(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 — Amazon will sell smart locks so it can slip packages into your home.
This week, Amazon rolled out Amazon Key, a lock-and-camera system that customers control remotely to let delivery people slip goods into their houses. They can create temporary passcodes for friends and other services professionals to enter too. In development for more than a year, Amazon Key may help the company capture sales from shoppers who could not be home to receive an order in person and didn’t want to risk having it stolen from their doorstep. (Source: Fox Business)
Why this is important for your business:
A big business hurdle for Amazon merchants is getting deliveries to customers when they’re not at home home. If this program is a success, then the small merchants who sell on Amazon will have more an opportunity to overcome this challenge – and increase their sales. Oh, and if you compete against Amazon…what will your response be?
2 — LinkedIn wants to make your business chats snappier.
Hoping to boost engagement among its 500 million users, LinkedIn now offers enhanced messaging with a new automated smart replies feature for LinkedIn Messaging. It relies on machine learning to offer quick replies that are relevant to the context of a conversation, such as “Yes I am,” “Sure,” and “What time?” According to LinkedIn, users will see up to three responses based on the message they’ve received from a contact. (Source: ZDNet)
Why this is important for your business:
Bot technology like this will help business professionals on LinkedIn be more productive and increase their response time to people that reach out to them. This could turn into more leads and opportunities.
3 — “Pay with Google” arrives to speed up checkout.
This week, Google launched “Pay with Google” to make it easier to purchase things on Android devices. At launch, Pay with Google can be used in the Android app or Chrome browser at 15 places, including Doordash, Yelp EAT24, and Gametime—with about 12 more coming soon. (Source: The Verge)
Why this is important for your business:
Using this tool, your customers can choose the preferred credit or debit card they gave Google when setting up products like Google Play, YouTube, Chrome, or Android Pay. They can then authenticate the purchase with a security code or their Android device and then check out. There’s no need to enter multiple lines of payment details in online forms.
4 — Saudi Arabia plans to build futuristic city for innovators.
This week, the crown prince of Saudi Arabia announced a $500-billion plan to build a futuristic city run entirely on alternative sources of energy. Called the “Neom” project, the prince envisions a hub for technological innovation, funded by his kingdom’s sovereign wealth fund as well as the Saudi government and a range of private and international investors. (Source: The Daily Progress)
Why this is important for your business:
In the alternative business? How intrepid are you? Intrepid enough to move your company to Saudi Arabia? The kingdom’s business-friendly mission is to build the world’s largest sovereign wealth fund to invest in projects like Neom in order to diversify revenue away from oil exports and create more jobs.
5 — Why businesses are saving the humble text message.
A small company in England is at the forefront of this business text messaging. With just 200 employees, Esendex now sends out two billion text messages per year, on behalf of 30,000 businesses and other organizations, up from 100 million texts in 2010. (Source: BBC)
Why this is important for your business:
Even though the number of text messages being sent by people in the developed world has fallen since 2011, there continues to be one big growth area: notification SMS messages sent from businesses to customers. Most of us are now increasingly receiving such text messages on a regular basis, especially for reminders about appointments, maintenance, and deliveries.
No comments:
Post a Comment