Is Office Software Enough These Days?

The way we work is changing quickly.

So you might be asking yourself: Is Office software enough these days?

You’re in the right place. Today, we’ll look at how you can effectively utilize the right technology towards your company. (Hint: You need more than Office!)

Let’s dig right in.

How business communication has evolved

First:

What we need to realize is that jobs never actually change. Instead, it’s how we do them that changes.

An excellent example of this is how things are documented in companies.

Verified information has been the basis of business since the early ages – contracts, minutes of meetings, and other documents. Unlike a normal, casual conversation, words are always recorded in one way or another in the corporate world.

One of the earliest examples of business documentation was discovered just this year. It was a customer complaint document that dated back more than 4000 years, meticulously carved into a stone tablet which must have taken hours and hours of work.

You can imagine how tedious that process must have been.

Fortunately, paper and ink made such corporate documentation much more comfortable. Typewriters and computers made business documentation much faster.

Ultimately, word processing software helped us make documents more accurate, presentable, and accessible. Since they came out, word processing tools, presentation applications, and digital spreadsheets became core to business productivity.

Companies began competing on creating software that would log and present data in a better way. The office was, as you know, the top suite of products on the market. Companies who produced office applications managed to generate billions annually from selling them.

It was only a few years ago when companies used to send all employees to Office training. Those employees who were more competent at Office had a clear edge over others. Companies believed that the only way to communicate was by using Office tools.

But this all changed when, in recent years, many web applications were introduced to the market, and information started flowing without the use of Office tools.

These applications began facilitating the presentation of communication, as well as automating processes. Companies started racing to automate processes and workflows as they became a measure of a business’s creativity.

And then came the smartphones. Smartphones further changed the data communication scene. Daily, massive transfers of data are managed through thousands of different mobile applications, and each one specialized in doing a specific job.

For example, WhatsApp is an application many companies use today to communicate internally and externally. That’s just one example of the numerous applications businesses use.

In short, just a decade ago, the vast majority of information was being exchanged through Office tools. Today? A fraction of this data is being communicated through the Office. This number, whatever it is, will continue to dwindle over the years until it reaches zero.