Wearable technology - What you need to know!

Wearable technology is one of the biggest trends in IT and tech at the moment. The consumer market has embraced wearables such as smart watches and virtual reality headsets. However most businesses are still developing their strategies for making the most of the wearable technology trend.

While attention to wearables is widespread, adoption is not. From Google to Fitbit, Jawbone and Apple, wearables are garnering plenty of interest. Some early adopters in businesses are using the Apple Watch or Samsung Gear to monitor emails or manage their calendar while on the go. Others are using it to remind them to move about or to walk around the office throughout the day in order to burn a few calories.

Wearables are far from ubiquitous in the workplace just yet though. While the technology has developed quickly, businesses remain hesitant to integrate the devices into their everyday operations.

One of the reasons for businesses to consider adopting wearable tech is its ability to streamline normal business operations and improve a company's productivity. Whether it's a pair of smart glasses that help to guide a warehouse employee along the most efficient route or sensors that help employees more quickly reference needed information to complete a task, wearables allow businesses to improve efficiency in task management.

On the health and wellness side of things, many companies are now offering employees fitness trackers, coupled with incentive programmes, to encourage healthier lifestyles both in and out of the workplace. Healthier employees are often more productive and less frequently absent, and can save their employers on health care costs. For example, Fitbit offers a corporate wellness program to partner with companies trying to promote employee well-being.

Wearable tech is also changing how consumers interact with businesses. Some firms are exploring wearables in the form of targeted advertising and simplified payment services through the use of "near-field communication" (NFC) chips. This encourages improved communication with customers and also makes consumer data easier for businesses to gather.

Speech Recognition Technology

Speech recognition applications have been around for a long time but until recently haven't seen a huge uptake by the business community. With high accuracy and professional apps available for mobile devices, is voice recognition a technology that your business could make effective use of today?

Many business users may have already experienced what voice recognition can offer. Apple's Siri is already quite popular but Windows 10 users have Cortana, which moves the digital assistant to a whole new level of functionality. More importantly for today's businesses is the fact that Cortana is available on phones, tablets and desktop PCs offering a level of integration and familiarity across several devices being used across most firms.

Users can set up their systems to easily trigger voice recognition. They can use these systems to check calendars, book travel tickets or dictate rather than type. Being able to dictate at normal speaking speed and have your words accurately transcribed is a huge productivity bonus that most businesses can benefit from.

If your business requires typing the same blocks of text into numerous documents, speech recognition applications can have special commands defined that will enter these blocks of text for you. This is useful for standard clauses in contracts or email signatures.

Businesses in highly specialised sectors such as professional services or finance are in an ideal position to take advantage of what voice recognition can offer. All of the systems are learning machines - the more you use them, the more accurate they become. If your business often uses specialised terminology, voice recognition systems can learn these terms over time to ensure high levels of accuracy.

Ultimately, it's the time-saving factor that attracts businesses to voice recognition. Being able to spend less time typing and more time working on other things, is why an increasing number of businesses are adopting voice recognition into their IT systems.