Question

Please Provide a two full detailed paragraphs discussing how this trend may affect your firm and how it is affected by innovation in modern business management.

Globally, the business landscape is changing in many ways and innovation isn’t just prized in the Bloomberg Index; it’s the only way for businesses to compete. Businesses need to adapt in order to stay competitive in the global economy. Here are three ways the business landscape is evolving and how businesses can grow alongside it to stay up to date.

1. Freelance talent

Freelancers represent a much larger group of workers today than in the past. According to a 2014 study released by the Freelancers Union, 53 million Americans are freelance workers, making up approximately 34 percent of the total workforce. This figure includes 21.1 million independent contractors, 14.3 million moonlighters, 9.3 million diversified workers, 5.5 million temporary workers and 2.8 freelance business owners. The total number of freelancers is expected to increase 50 percent by 2020.

Freelance work is far more flexible than typical nine-to-five employment. And as technology allows people to get more work accomplished remotely, many are turning to freelance work as a means of better maintaining a healthier work life balance. This means some of the best talent on the marketplace are working as freelancers and businesses that want to tap into that talent must look into hiring freelancers.

"Businesses are finally realizing that to attract the best talent, they need to change the way they think about employment. The desire for flexibility and work/life balance is one of the primary reasons why we are seeing a much greater percentage of freelancers in the workforce today,” says Erin Yoffe Halper, Founder and CEO of The Upside.

Additionally, embracing independent contractors can be a way to get more done in less time while cutting costs. Hiring skilled freelancers can give companies the highly experienced talent they often need to quickly rollout projects or increase output without burdening their teams. Often times adding too much to the workload of permanent employees can lead to burnout and work quality may be sacrificed. But freelance workers can take on these additional duties at lower costs than hiring additional full-time employees. CIOs are finding out that processes must be identified, documented, and optimized before they’re ready for robotic process automation – and that humans aren’t always a reliable data source for this.

“Businesses that begin to embrace the concept of creating a talent assortment of full-time and freelance workers to maximize efficiencies will be the businesses that attract the best talent. Like any technology or economic evolution, there is a first-mover advantage to embracing the freelance movement,” advises Halper.

2. Digital infrastructure

As recently as a decade ago, entrepreneurs looking to start a new business often had to come up with a large sum of start-up capital. They’d often have to pay for a physical space to operate their business, along with all the other necessary supplies. They’d also need the funds to pay for upkeep, utilities, and other infrastructure costs. But the days of having to take on all the costs of starting or running a business are long gone.

With new technology, there are endless ways to be cost effective and grow your business. For example, in today's digital world, companies can forego the cost of building and maintaining data centers on their premises. Instead, they can purchase Infrastructure as a Service and save on the cost of servers, storage and hardware.

"Replacing cloud storage and providing processor and memory allows businesses to accomplish resource-intensive projects involving computer-generated imagery, artificial intelligence, and virtual reality at an affordable price," says Michael Stollaire, President and CEO of Titanium, a blockchain-infrastructure provider.

Retailers know they need to evolve, even though they can’t do it overnight. But while there’s no silver bullet for transforming culture, collaboration, and workflows inside a large organization, there are steps you can take to make sure your business is receptive. This is especially beneficial for technology startups, who have innovative ideas but not the infrastructure to launch or operate them.

3. New money

Small mom and pop businesses have their charms. But nowadays cash-only establishments will have a hard time drawing customers. And thanks to tech companies like Square Inc., the now-ubiquitous mobile-payment application, it no longer makes sense for businesses not to accept all forms of payment. Many mobile payment providers often charge businesses lower rates for transactions than major financial institutions. Square charges a flat rate of 2.75 percent for swiped transactions, 3.5 percent + $0.15 for keyed transactions, and 2.9 percent + $0.30 for online transactions. And they don’t charge monthly fees or statement fees.

But nowadays the use of mobile transaction apps is even common place in some markets. Other more technologically advanced businesses are adopting other kinds of payment methods that allow customers to pay with their smartphones. Companies like Google, Apple and Samsung have all created their own payment apps and it will be important for businesses to become early adopters of these payment applications in order to set themselves apart from their competitors.

And the next wave in the financial world for businesses is embracing cryptocurrencies like bitcoin. Lots of people are investing their money in these currencies and businesses looking to get ahead of the curve should look for ways to get in on the ground floor.

Answer 1

The three emerging trends which are changing the ways of working and looking at business operations are the freelancing talent, the digital infrastructure and the new money introduced in the corporate environment. Discussing them one by one will allow us to know how they can be important for our business and modern business management. Freelancing is a way of putting in the skills and potential to work and bring results with a flexibility and freedom of balancing the work and personal life. This is what people today are more comfortable with and opting as a source of employment. With the technology involved in the work they do, they are able to deliver results at their own convenience of place and time. Where the people are preferring freelancing jobs the business management should be designed and customised in such a way that the work can be taken from these talented freelancers. Hiring freelancers will be cost effective for the companies as well because hiring full-time employees is a lengthy and costly affair. Maintaining the workforce even when the workflow is less can be costly for firms. In the case of freelancing contracts, skilled freelancers can be hired as and when required by the firms.

Digital infrastructure has allowed businesses to come on a digital platform and not require physical space or premises for operations. This helps in easy and simplified operations where there are transparency and flexibility. The cost of taking up and maintaining business premises is also saved. This can help entrepreneurs to focus on other operations and profit earning activities keeping their operations and data managed through the digitalised platform. The new sources of payments and money handling is also an emerging trend in business management. The applications used for paying through online sources. The cash transactions are slow and thus make the operations and returns run at a slow pace. Online payment options are adapted by technically advanced companies to ease operations and benefit the companies with more business over competitors. Thus getting digital in the field of infrastructure and operations is essential for a firm to stand out in the emerging trends of business management.