We all know that Canada stands as one of the most progressive forces when it comes to a wide range of areas. From politics to social issues, Canadians and Ottawans both place a heavy emphasis on getting ahead of the curve and letting this progress help guide us all to a more successful, productive and inclusive future. When it comes to business, we can see this is in how massively we have shifted towards digitizing aspects of our business lives, and recent steps have made it easier than ever before.
All but the smallest and most intimate of businesses at this point in time have made the switch from pen-and-paper systems for the majority of their work into the digital environment. While there is a definite initial cost of implementation, both in terms of money and learning, the advantages in efficiency, alongside a rapidly evolving and competitive market, have forced many down a technological road with which they are not entirely comfortable.
Part of this comes to stubbornness, as those who have helped family with tech support can attest, but largely the issue is of intimidation. There exist dozens of applications for digital systems in business, after all, and hundreds of individual programs which could be capable of the task. The difficulty then, is not just knowing where to implement, but how, and on what scale.
There is a key development coming out of the recent programming world, however, which has made unprecedented strides in helping the more unfamiliar find their feet. Called RPA, or robotic process automation, these artificial intelligence led systems have been the saviour of businesses of many sizes.
While the actual programming and mathematics which go into RPA are quite complicated, the end idea is fairly simple. RPA takes a look at the different forms of digital data which a business uses and then finds the links between the pieces of information. From here, it can suggest automated systems to link these data sets in a way which significantly increases inefficiency.
Of course, there is still the initial issue of training and setup cost, but the same could be said for any new and advanced technology. Despite the initial investment price, these digital solutions pay dividends in the long run, and the sooner they are implemented the more they can save over a longer period of time.
While still very much in the upswing stages, it has been developments such as these and their rates of adoption within which have helped Ottawa find its place as one of the best in the world for entrepreneurs, both traditional and digital.
That is not to say that the inclusion of digital systems in and of itself is going to magically cure a poorly performing business, far from it. It does, however, mean that businesses which apply digital systems will be far better suited to carve out their own place within the highly competitive Ottawa market and have the long-term viability to survive no matter how large they eventually grow to become.
