In practice, you’re likely too concerned about all of your other business affairs to feel the need to repeatedly integrate the latest tools – especially with the rate at which technology improves.
Still, it is worth asking the question of whether or not there are any examples of tools or technologies that would have been useful to acquire. After all, it could be something that has the potential to make an enormous amount of difference when applied correctly.
Specific to What You Do
The most important technologies that you might be interested will likely be those that are as tailored to your slice of the industry as possible. This still doesn’t guarantee that you absolutely have to incorporate it into what you do, but it does mean that you should at least be giving it your consideration. If you aren’t using it, why is that? Sometimes it will strictly be an issue of resources, of how your budget doesn’t allow room for it, for example. Other times, it might be a question of whether or not your staff are suitably trained for something, making that training something that might jump up the priority list.
There will be other times that tools will make you think about how you can bend your structure around them, such as how concrete crushers for contractors might make you consider a more flexible hiring approach – if only temporarily.
Optional Acquisitions
Then again, not all industry tools will align so closely with your own goals and structure. Other times, you might be more content to let something slip by you. Even in these situations, however, it’s important to have a good sense of what kind of impact this decision can have. After all, making no decision is still a decision, and if every other business that your customers might choose are using a certain tool, people might question why you aren’t.
This doesn’t have to be a problem. If you can demonstrate why such a tool isn’t necessary for you, letting your results speak for themselves, people might be suitably convinced. However, it’s also something that the marketing of your competitors could use to paint you in a negative light through contrast.
Broad Business Tools
When it comes to something more general, like AI, there is a question mark over whether or not your business would benefit from it at all. You don’t want to take your whole business off the rails just to jump on a trend, you want to know that the time and money involved with the acquisition in the first place is going to be one that pays off. This might be something that you determine by talking to several advisors, but you might simply ask yourself how you would use a tool like this and whether it’s genuinely likely to improve your output o