Essential Tech Skills For Any Modern Business Owner in 2024

Whether we like it or not, technology is one of the main cornerstones of a successful enterprise in today’s day and age. Along with striving for superior customer service, forward-thinking business owners must continually work to ensure they use the most efficient tools to provide their customers with a better experience. 

But what tech skills should we as managers be investing in, both for ourselves as well as our staff? That’s precisely the question that we’ll be looking to answer today, by sharing the top tech skills that are best positioned to be worth their weight in gold over the next decade at the least.

Stay ahead of the curve by mastering these essential competencies in 2024.

Content Creation

Part of creating favourable customer experiences and, hopefully, repeat business is providing superior content related to your organisation. Whether through producing thought-provoking written marketing copy or using Adobe Express to create stunning visuals for mobile and web platforms, consumers appreciate companies that provide ample information and transparency about the products and services they purchase.

Business owners also need, at minimum, a basic understanding of how search engines work and, thus, how consumers use them to look for products that meet their needs. Gone are the days of simply buying two or three inches of newspaper real estate to present a handwritten advertisement for your shop. We need to know how to write for numerous platforms, from email, video scripts, and trade shows to the never-ending stream of social media apps.

When we talk about tech, it doesn’t always mean learning how to code. It refers to how we leverage the skills we learned in grade school (reading & writing) and adapt them to the numerous marketing avenues and algorithms we have at our disposal to further the success of our business. 

Mastering these strategies gives you a clear advantage in reaching and engaging your target demographic in competitive markets.

Competency with Cybersecurity

Unfortunately, advancing technology makes things much easier for today’s criminals who seek to profit from data and intellectual property theft. Like us, they have the entire internet at their fingertips and can do a wealth of damage quickly.

As business owners, we need to accept this reality and continually stay abreast of the latest strategies for mitigating these threats. We must learn the basics about phishing attacks, ransomware, malware, and social engineering tactics.

We need to know what firewalls and encryption protocols are. We must take regular steps to ensure our foundational software and hardware systems are patched to prevent cyberattack exploitation. Owners must have robust data backup and recovery methodologies and ensure they’re regularly tested for functionality.

Incident response plans should be developed and tested, including sections about containing the problem, notifying stakeholders, and restoring normal operations while minimising business impact.

Finally, your employees should be fully invested in the security initiatives, with thorough training about security best practices. Associates need to know about safe browsing habits, password management, phishing, and how to recognize potential threats, whether online or in person.

Cloud Computing

In the interest of cost-effectiveness and scalability, business owners need to understand the Cloud and why it’s essential to modern business operations. Many security issues discussed above are addressed once you’ve positioned your operations into a modern cloud platform. You’ve eliminated the need for physical, bare-metal hardware, onsite security, patching, and upgrades. Most of these services are completed by the cloud provider, freeing the business owner to focus on the core tenets of his operations.

Get familiar with the primary service models and evaluate which makes the best sense for your organisation. Depending on your industry, you might choose Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS), or Software as a Service (SaaS). It’s also wise to routinely review and optimise the costs of your Cloud solutions, as it can be easy to find yourself paying for more processing power than you actually need – especially if you’re managing a small business that’s scaling steadily.

The common thread is that you lease space or computing buckets from service providers who do all of the hardware support for you. Your data and applications are available remotely according to specific service level agreements (SLAs), enhancing customer service and efficiency.

Some standard cloud computing examples include central collaboration applications such as Zoom, Slack, and Teams. Content management efforts can be handled with systems such as Adobe’s Creative Cloud All Apps, where you can access industry-leading tools, including PhotoShop, Premier Pro, Illustrator, and more.

Business Automation

Finally, in the age of AI, the most valuable skill that any business owner can equip themselves is a solid understanding of how they can leverage AI tools like ChatGPT. Thankfully, these AI tools have been available for a good few years now, so there are changemakers out there who have already experimented with the tools and found innovative applications so that you don’t have to. All you really need to do is take some ChatGPT courses and follow in their footsteps, then apply your newfound learnings to see just how your company can leverage AI as well.

In learning how to leverage ChatGPT and other business automation tools, you can not only free up valuable man hours from your staff every week, but perhaps also grant them more flexible working arrangements. Of course, the prevalence of flex-work schedules means many employees spend a good chunk of their working hours at home. Managers require a feasible process for tracking this activity to ensure deadlines are met and service levels maintained. Thankfully, business automation tools like Asana and Trello can also help automate project management processes.

Drive Success Through Tech Proficiency

In addition to all these tech skills, leaders are also advised to find new ways to foster team spirit and camaraderie, building relationships between multiple teams spanning time zones and continents. Adapting your soft skills to accommodate a rapidly digitising workforce can also help ensure that your business stays supportive of and inviting to both new and existing staff.

Use team-building activities such as virtual coffee breaks, remote training and development, and employee engagement platforms letting team leaders recognise achievements and address concerns proactively, further promoting morale and encouraging remote employee retention.

Utilising these skills is critical for business owners to thrive. From data analytics to cybersecurity, cloud computing to remote team management, staying up-to-date on technical education is crucial in driving innovation and maintaining competitiveness. By embracing these core competencies, business owners can confidently adapt to the evolving tech ecosystem, positioning their businesses for success.

(Devdiscourse's journalists were not involved in the production of this article. The facts and opinions appearing in the article do not reflect the views of Devdiscourse and Devdiscourse does not claim any responsibility for the same.)