By Armando “Butz” Bartolome
Modern business is full of unpredictability. In fact, nothing in this world is predictable in any sense. Imagine how business owners’ life would be – only if sales were known in advance, or there would be a full vision of how staff would become more caring about their jobs, then life would be a whole lot simpler, but better.
Just as Peter Drucker has said, “We know only two things about the future: It cannot be known, and it will be different from what exists now and from what we expect.”
The balancing of costs of large capital assets, rapidly increasing costs of materials, estimating customer needs, and determining a competitive price for products are just a few of the factors that remain to be the issues that any company continues to face. You may see a lot of businesses flourish over the years, but for sure, all of them suffered from several bumps before they become who they are today.
Handling Unpredictability
If everything else is unpredictability in our lives, what is the best way to handle this unpredictability to keep business owners’ sanity intact? This is one of the many challenges that business face today, and the challenges they face keeps on growing.
Back in the days, business classified situations into several categories and handle erratic circumstances is by considering eventualities in advance for each category. However, the fluctuations in demand and prices diversified according to each of the individual’s preferences, which happened at an increasingly rapid pace. As a business expands, i.e., going global, businesses face varying difficulties with regard to the different countries’ varying customs and cultures. To accurately classify all of these incidents would result in an incomprehensible number of categories. To envision all kinds of situations ahead of time is impossible. A business would rather need to constantly update its classifications and strategies which will definitely require huge efforts and a lot of money.
There is one way on how to change these uncertainties through artificial intelligence. Now, some people would probably be threatened to know that a non-human may just take over their jobs. But realistically, with the very demanding times, using a little help through AI can tremendously make a difference. People can only do so much, therefore, to seek help from these new age wonders is inevitable these days. But, it should also be noted that there may be some limitations. So, after all, a business cannot be completely run by a whole bunch of machines.
Such systems are able to generate customer recommendations for retailers. The facial recognition systems allow to instantly spot faces from photo data. The technology that can identify people’s faces is based on online images. Its limitations? Although certain AIs have been designed based on hypotheses of data that people would provide, they usually do not produce results that exceed human ideas.
Simply put, a business owner may not have the option to merge with its competitors that seems to be doing a whole lot better than him. Unfortunately, there is no magical solution to end all business owners’ miseries when it comes to getting over the endless problems that they come across. However, there are clearly two areas which should be given more attention.
Information
To make a business sustainable, a business owner may base his decisions on the kind of information that he gets from its competitors. However, it should be emphasized that the results may not always be the same. Therefore, to do a hit and miss is unavoidable. Some strategies may not work out for your business. You would need to gather enough data to come up with a more brilliant plan to provide an edge.
Time and Effort
A successful business is not made overnight. And so, as I always say, patience and perseverance are essential attributes of a successful entrepreneur. Although a business owner may want to be always on the lookout 24/7 just to be sure that everything is running smoothly, it is highly impossible that you could stay awake that long. Make use of other people’s help in running your business. Again, technology has given us so many things that would make our lives easier. You can have a great view of your office or your warehouse wherever you are by using a WIFI IP Camera where you can be able to have direct access to it from anywhere you are.
Indeed, a business, although it may have remained stable for so many years can just suddenly plunge deep. Unpredictable as it is, the one best way to save yourself from losing all the time, effort, and money that you have spent are to become a very passionate and dedicated entrepreneur. It may not be easy, but what else is easy these days? The competition is too high. You need to constantly update yourself with the latest trends. You need to be out there. Yes, that is a lot of work, but, it will be worthwhile.
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