SMEs of the future empowered by new technology
SMALL businesses will be able to tackle huge projects in the future with the help of digital design technology and 3-D printers, says a report into the future of business.
By the 2040s a business consisting of the boss and two or three ‘‘thinkers’’ or project managers may be able to digitally design new products and guide their production from raw materials using wall-sized touch screens, said Simon Raik-Allen, chief technology officer at accounting software company MYOB.
‘‘Your company could be just you and a couple of project managers . . . controlling every aspect of the company through new digital interfaces,’’ Raik-Allen said in MYOB’s Future of Business report: New Zealand 2040 report. ‘‘The wall-sized touch screens would allow you to design new products, guide the use of raw materials and channel resources to where they are most effective ... all with the wave of your hands,’’ he said.
MYOB asked technology experts and other business leaders to imagine how the future of business may look in 25 years, when the Treaty of Waitangi will be 200 years old.
The software company employs Raik-Allen to look at emerging trends in technology and see how they might be developed to benefit SMEs. He said one of the main improvements in business ef- ficiency would come from having better information easily available to business owners.
There would also barriers to expansion.
‘‘You will launch many projects
be
lower all at once and only give them a small amount of resource to start,’’ he said.
‘‘They will have to prove themselves to earn more capital, so competition and evolution will drive the way business operates.’’
Elsewhere in the report Microsoft New Zealand’s national technology officer Russell Craig said 3-D printing would redefine how businesses manufactured and distributed goods.
‘‘As the technology continues to improve to the point where we can print a component instead of ordering one made elsewhere, the focus for many businesses will become exporting intellectual property, rather than physical goods,’’ Craig said.
He noted the shift to selling IP rather than goods would have a huge impact on the manufacturing industries and that many jobs would disappear.
At the same time Craig said businesses would overwhelmingly ditch paper records and shift towards operating using cloudbased storage and software.
‘‘No longer are we dependent solely on local hardware capability for storage or computer power, but can utilise the power of the cloud,’’ he said.
Craig said the shift to cloudbased business would help to create a business environment where capability would no longer be as strongly linked to size, meaning SMEs could more easily lift trade with Asian countries and other global partners.