Ask any dealer what his or her top five challenges are and keeping up with new technology is likely to be one of them. Identifying and learning about emerging technology that might eventually impact your business requires time and consistent effort. It’s also necessary. You don’t want to find out about significant new tech because a competitor is offering it or your customers are asking about it. It’s better to stay ahead of the curve.
As a long-time technology editor and analyst, it’s been my job to spot trends early that are relevant to my audience. What follows is my advice for how to stay current in technology and some recommendations for where to find information on emerging trends (in addition to ENX Magazine, of course).
- Define a scope. Consider your current offerings and anything else within the realm of what you might offer in the future. This will help keep your efforts to monitor developments more manageable.
- Identify a few keywords and phrases that are most relevant to your business. Use them to set up automated searches. Two resources I recommend for those searches are Sqoop and Seeking Alpha. Sqoop is good for company news and patent filings. Seeking Alpha caters to financial analysts and it gives you access to company presentations and transcripts, blog posts from analysts, and other market-related news. I no longer use Google for automated searches. It’s too big. The volume of results each day became overwhelming. If you have a search term that is highly specific, though, go ahead and give it a try.
- Take advantage of social media. Twitter and LinkedIn are your best bets to follow tech trends, and it all depends on who you follow. I go for a high signal-to-noise ratio–people who post only a few times a day, but who stay on point. You can read only so many tweets and posts in a day. For Twitter, I set up a list for all my must-follow people and sources. I make a point of reading this list every day. On LinkedIn, I aggressively unfollow people who consistently post items irrelevant to me. The most valuable resource on LinkedIn is its groups. Chances are, you can find an active group focused on whatever technology area you want to follow. They also give you the opportunity to interact with people knowledgeable on the subject matter.
- Attend trade shows. You probably go to events hosted by your OEM and software partners, and they are great for staying up to date within those universes. I suggest you also try to attend a non-vendor IT event once every year or two. O’Reilly, for example, hosts several good events on security, data analytics, and software architecture. And companies use events like CES to preview new products and technologies.
- Network. If you identify a new area that might work for your business, use your contacts to find knowledgeable people willing to let you pick their brains. Most people like sharing their knowledge and talking about what they do.
Try these sources to start. These are some of my favorite sources. You can follow them on Twitter or LinkedIn, subscribe to their newsletters, or explore their websites:
- Context: A market research firm that tracks technology sales. Twitter: @contextworld, website: www.contextworld.com
- IDC Hardcopy Peripherals Group: Research on hardcopy and printing. Twitter: @idchardcopy
- IEEE: A professional organization for IT focused on technological innovation. Twitter: @ieeeorg, website: www.ieee.org
- KurzweilAINews: A blog covering a range of emerging tech. Twitter: @kurzeilainews
- MIT Technology Review: MIT’s magazine for technology innovation. Twitter: @techreview, website: www.technologyreview.com
- Data Informed: Trends and best practices for data analytics in business. Twitter: @data_informed, website: www.data-informed.com
