No matter what industry or company size, businesses have always relied on the written word and numbers to conduct their daily operations throughout history. Whether it was for Accounts Payable/Receivable, Payroll and HR, Profit and Loss Statements, or Inventory, companies hired maintained their ledgers in the best way possible, given the technology of the age.
But, like they have done in many other parts of our lives, Information Technology and the greater digital world have radically changed how businesses work; we can boil down those changes to one word: “software.”
Gone are the days of harried clerks sitting at a stool, an oversized scarf wrapped around their necks for warmth, scratching out figures by hand in massive ledgers while their miserly boss looks on and guards the coal scuttle. Nowadays, pandemic “work at home” arrangements notwithstanding, employees sit at cubicles and access fast and efficient software applications, while their bosses monitor their hours via timesheet programs!
Business software has exploded over the decades. Today, there are applications for everything today, including Customer Relationship Management (CRM), word processing, database management, resource management, payroll, employee scheduling, collaboration, and more. Additionally, we’ve gone from buying software in a box filled with floppy disks to ordering software subscriptions online.
Alright, so times have changed, but how did we get here? How did we go from “Be here all the earlier the following day” to “I see you haven’t accessed your Excel spreadsheet yet today; what have you been doing all day?”
To answer this pressing question, we will take a trip through history and see how software’s role in traditional businesses began and then changed over the years. After all, if we want to know where we’re going, it’s wise to figure out where we’ve been. So, let’s set the Wayback Machine for the early 1980s and start…
…In The Beginning In the beginning, there was the Word (Perfect), and the Word was good.
In 1979, Satellite Software released WordPerfect, an excellent word processing program, for sale. Throughout the early to mid-‘80s, WordPerfect dominated the word processing market, silencing the thunderous clacking of millions of bulky typewriters and replacing it with the only slightly less annoying sound of countless keyboard clicks.
Word Perfect’s dominance ended when Microsoft successfully released Word. Whereas WordPerfect controlled over 50% of the global word processing market in the mid- ‘90s, Microsoft Word dominated the market in 2000, commanding a 95% share.
But the innovations weren’t limited to just word processing. Project management software and computer-aided drafting for computer-aided manufacturing (known better as CAD-CAM) arrived in the early ‘80s.
Accountants began relying on Lotus 1-2-3, a top-rated spreadsheet program released in the early ‘80s. Unfortunately, it too would fall victim to the Microsoft juggernaut, supplanted by Excel in the early ‘90s.
The Suite Life Integrated software packages raise the bar for business software.
What’s better than having a handful of software applications on hand to handle the different facets of business operations? Having those applications seamlessly share information amongst themselves!
Microsoft released Office in 1990, bundling PowerPoint, Excel, and Word together in one package, meant to work with Windows 3.0.
Let’s not forget that Microsoft wasn’t the only horse in the suite sweepstakes. As the home computer found its way into the working world, businesses began using applications like AppleWorks, Vizastar, and ContextMBA. The less complex and more frequent personal computers became, the greater the demand for bundled software, especially as more workplaces incorporated the latest computer technology.
Most of these suites bundled together some combination of software types, including charting, database management, communication, spreadsheets, and word processing. Companies could now purchase an all-in-one package designed to handle multiple everyday business functions.
Today, Adobe’s Creative Suite is probably the most well-known software package.
The Rise of Globalism Software makes our already shrinking world even smaller.
Let’s set aside the pejorative use of the term “globalism,” often found in political discussions, and instead focus on the word in a business context. Globalism explains and describes a world characterized by intercontinental network connections instead of national borders. These connections can be cultural, social, fiber optic, or, in our specific case, economic.
As defined by this United Nations background paper, economic globalization is "…the increasing interdependence of world economies as a result of the growing scale of cross-border trade of commodities and services, flow of international capital and wide and rapid spread of technologies."
With the rise of the Internet, national borders became less important as communities and groups developed based on shared interests and specific markets, heedless of national origin. Thanks to the Internet, traditional businesses of all sizes and types could easily engage in commerce with foreign customers. Granted, this also created a new need for regulations and standards, but the value of expanded markets more than made up for this.
SAP, the German multinational software corporation, was instrumental in facilitating the business world’s shift to globalism, offering enterprise software focusing on business management and customer relations. SAP particularly stands out thanks to its ERP (enterprise resource planning) software applications.
Enterprise resource planning software is an integrated package (there’s that whole suite/integrated software concept popping up again) that handles critical business functions in real-time. A solid ERP covers tasks in areas such as Manufacturing, Human Resources, Order Processing, Financial Accounting, Supply Chain Management, Project Management, and Customer Relationship Management.
SAP began making a significant impact on global business operations in the ‘90s and is known as the world’s third-largest programming and software company as of the mid-2010s.
May the Salesforce Be with You Cloud computing makes its debut, and the business world will never be the same again.
Although the concept of cloud computing had been around in one form or another for decades, it was the 1999 release of Salesforce that brought the term into clear focus. Salesforce, an immensely popular Customer Relationship Management (CRM) service, delivered enterprise applications via a website, and so Software as a Service (SaaS) was introduced to the world. The door was now open for other software companies to deliver applications over the Internet.
Salesforce’s functions focus on analytics, application development, customer service, and marketing automation. The cloud-based product became a vital tool for businesses of all types, especially for enterprises trying to get traction and be competitive, such as startups during the dot.com boom. However, not even Salesforce’s revolutionary CRM software approach could shield many of these companies from the dot.com bubble bursting in 2001. However, regardless of the dot.com bust, the cloud genie was now out of the bottle. Fortunately, this was a good thing.
We Have Our Heads in the Clouds Businesses turn to the cloud for most of their IT needs.
Two big watershed events secured cloud computing’s place in the business world. First, in August of 2006, Amazon Web Services (AWS) debuted a new product: Elastic Compute Cloud, or EC2. Customers could now virtually rent computer space to run online applications and store data.
Secondly, Google launched Google Apps in 2009, offering browser-based applications to everyone, and making cloud usage easier and far more commonplace. These innovations were possible thanks to the advent of Web 2.0 in the early 2000s, which brought advantages such as dynamic content, free information classification, increased user participation, and an overall better user experience.
Now the cloud floodgates were open, and the technology changed the face of business forever. A company no longer needs to invest the money, resources, personnel, and square footage into an in-house data center. The cloud offered not only Software as a Service (SaaS), but Platform as a Service (PaaS), Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), and Functions as a Service (FaaS).
Any business could have a completely virtual IT department with these new offerings: software, platforms, storage. No more bulky servers, dedicated data centers, or numerous software boxes filled with floppies or discs to worry about.
Businesses can now subscribe to whatever software they need, scaling it to fit their company size. For instance, a graphics design company can purchase a subscription to Adobe’s Creative Suite and specify the number of users they want to grant access to. The business can keep the software subscription going for as long as they need, depending on pricing levels and such.
The Rise of Our Software Robot Overlords Robotic process automation makes its debut.
Our journey now brings us to the present and the next stage in business software usage. The problem with many enterprise-related IT functions is the sheer repetition and tedium involved. People get bored, which dents morale and makes them liable to commit errors that could otherwise hurt a business if the mistake is severe enough.
Enter Robotic Process Automation (RPA) to the rescue. Although introduced in 2010, RPA began to really take off around 2016, as the market began to grow sharply. Robotic Process Automation handles otherwise mundane, boring, and repetitive tasks, bringing cost-effectiveness, consistency, speed, and accuracy to the job.
Many industries already adopt RPA, including banking, financial services, healthcare, insurance, and legal. These enterprises have recognized the value that RPA brings to their organizations, helping them operate better. More industries such as utilities, retail, and manufacturing are set to adopt RPA. According to information in a report by Grand View Research, the worldwide RPA market was valued at USD 1.57 billion in 2020. Furthermore, projections show a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of almost 33% from 2021 to 2028.
RPA has been a particularly valuable tool during the COVID pandemic, with companies forced to operate with fewer employees on-site.
Of course, automation concerns people losing their jobs, a common and justifiable worry when machines are brought in to do what humans did before. However, the death of old jobs invariably brings in new positions, many of them related to supporting the latest technology. Furthermore, RPA improves morale by removing redundancy and freeing up employees to work on more meaningful and challenging tasks.
We’ve Come a Long Way from Paper Ledgers …and the innovations keep things interesting
Technology has increased exponentially over the past century and shows no signs of slowing down. Who knows what software tools we will be working with two decades from now? If the previous 20 years are any indication, it’s going to be fascinating finding out!