Technical and IT monitoring is a must for all companies! Trends, innovations and new approaches are constantly emerging. If you want to retain your customers, while leaving the competition behind, you need to keep an eye on technological developments.
For some tech businesses, this monitoring is necessary to keep up with their activity. It is impossible to provide the best services to our customers without knowing the latest equipment, languages ​​or simple requirements of computer systems (including search engine algorithms).
A technical and computer clock display helps in making informed decisions during the development of a project. It is also the key to a successful business strategy.
What is Technology Watch?
IT surveillance characterizes the process of collecting, analyzing and disseminating information related to a specific technical area. This usually includes:
- latest innovation.
- Emerging development trends.
- Active companies and their R&D strategies.
- Featured start-ups and innovators.
- The impact of adopting new technologies.
- Possible impact of technological changes.
- New market opportunities.
Why do computers and technology run clock?
The technical watch serves several purposes:
predict market trends
As you probably know, you stay ahead of the competition by adapting to emerging technologies quickly. To be the first, you must anticipate trends that could potentially disrupt the business landscape.
This includes studying patents filed in your industry, the application of technology in everyday business, the state of innovation, and its implementation.
Feeding your R&D department
Innovation-oriented companies use technology intelligence to identify new breakthroughs and high-potential inventions in a field.
A comprehensive technology watch keeps you informed of the value of new trends. It therefore provides the R&D teams with the elements to support innovation within your company. Through this monitoring, your researchers can find new projects or improvements to test.
Strengthen your technology portfolio
Given market expectations and competitive pressures, you should avoid techniques that add little value to your business. It is therefore essential to strengthen your technical portfolio by eliminating less profitable instruments and adding instruments of real strategic value.
By running a tech watch, you identify new software and hardware available in the market. You will be able to better manage your IT investment by selecting applications or machines that provide increased productivity (and greater profitability).
Securing new market opportunities
Identifying untapped markets and unexplored technological avenues secures business growth. Achieving this requires a deep understanding of how technology is affecting your industry.
Knowledge of market landscape and maturity, technological behavior of consumers as well as IT trends are critical to maintaining the relevant value proposition.
IT intelligence can provide this information based on knowledge gathered from patent databases, hi-tech and scientific journals as well as market reports.
By using technology intelligence, you can look beyond momentary market turmoil to make sound and sustainable investment decisions. Whether you are an industry veteran or are just starting out, this will help your business stay competitive in an ever-changing market.
How to clock your computer?
Operating a technical and IT watch can be time consuming without the right equipment! Here are some ways to monitor trends and innovations in your industry:
- Curated blogs and high-tech media (you’ll find a list of tools below).
- Follow IT influencers on social media (we have a list of people to follow, further down in the article).
- Take an inventory of your current devices, then do some research to find out if there are better apps or software out there.
- Regularly monitor the tools and equipment used by your competitors (maybe they show their backstage on social networks?).
- Attend conferences, webinars and trade shows dedicated to technology trends.
- Participate in online training to master new IT tools.
- Listen to podcasts dedicated to the tech sector (again, you’ll find a list further down in the article).
- Download white papers offered by big names in IT (IBM, Microsoft, Adobe, PayPlug, etc.).
4 tools to meet your tech watch
Several tools facilitate and automate your IT monitoring:
1.Google Alerts
With a Google account, you can get the latest information on technologies. With Google Alerts, you enter keywords and receive alerts when you touch on content on that topic. A great way to not miss any news you like, keep tabs on the competition and get information from reliable and recognized sources.
2. Feedly
Most blogs have an RSS feed. It is practical to follow the news of the media, blogs and reviews dedicated to technological innovations in your field of activity. To compile and categorize these feeds, you can use Feedly. Every day, you need to dedicate only 10-15 minutes to this tool to learn new things.
However, for your monitoring to be effective, favor only influential websites in the field of technology.
3.netvibes
Netvibes is also an RSS feed aggregator. However, this tool offers one additional feature: connecting social networks. For example, if you follow a lot of influencers or tech media on Twitter, you can add their feeds to the NetVibes dashboard. No need to connect to different platforms!
Likewise, you have the option of following hashtags to broaden your IT watch and not miss out on any technological advances.
4.flipboard
Flipboard is a news aggregator. Here, you select a specific area, such as technology and science, to find the most popular content on the topic. You can also follow a specific media or a period offered by certain users.
Articles come from various information sites, blogs or specialized magazines and are updated regularly. This saves you the research and compilation work upfront, just as you have to do with Netvibes or Feedly.
Whom to follow to do your tech and IT watch?
Now that you know the tools to run your computer clock, you need to find the sources! Bloggers, specialty media, podcasts, influencers… Find relevant content to stay updated with the tech world!
blog
If you are a developer looking for answers to a problem or looking for more information on a specific topic you can find many interesting blogs. Some of them may even show up again and again in your searches if the author works in the same field as you.
These are the blogs you need to follow and whose articles you need to read for effective IT monitoring.
In addition, the tool, application, software or framework you use must have an official blog. Remember to add them to your feed aggregator, but also remember to follow these tools on social networks.
Other blog ideas to follow: Ideas from Codeur.com and Graphiste.com! We regularly publish articles on tech news and industry trends, as well as tutorials to help you hone your skills. We recommend you add them to your RSS feed.
influential person
Twitter, LinkedIn or Medium… Tech influencers use microblogging platforms and social networks to inform their audience. Among the accounts to follow for your IT monitoring, we may mention:
- Jojol, an influencer who has garnered over 2 million subscribers thanks to test videos of tech products on his YouTube channel.
- Romain Lanry, owner of the YouTube channel TechNews&Tests,
- Influential person dealing with topics related to microdeed, cyber security, hacking, dark web, deepfakes etc.
- Leo Techmaker who gives the key to understanding all the new technologies and gives advice for designing certain tools.
- Nowtech, tech enthusiasts are offering advice on their YouTube channel. This dynamic team also organizes life to exchange with their community.
podcast
IT podcasts are often focused on a single domain (cloud, DevOps, mobile development, etc.). The hosts get a different expert on each show to talk about a specific topic. It could be an innovative technology, a framework, a language, a new feature, etc.
You can start by listening to their broadcasts:
- Double Slash is dedicated to web development and tools to use.
- Techologie, the podcast that tells you about eco-friendly technology and the innovations going in this direction (in line with the times!)
- Cast coders are exclusively dedicated to the Java programming language.
- Radio DevOps that interviews experts on specific topics, with infrastructures such as code, open source, Git best practices, etc.
- Human coders who do a technical clock (practical!), but who also give the floor to developers.
specific media
There are also specialized technical media that you can follow for your IT watch. it is a matter:
- Human Coders News, an interactive site where developers discuss current technical topics.
- Hebdu, which defines itself as the ultimate technical watch platform and which publishes articles by expert developers in their field.
- Paperswithcode, a site dedicated to data science.
- Graphicart to know everything you need to know about web design.
You can subscribe to their newsletter to receive regular updates and quickly discover new articles published.
our tip
For your technology watch to be effective, you must adopt methods, tools, and practices relevant to your business. Post an ad on Kodur, to be with you under your watch or to install a special technology. Our community of freelancers is ready to assist you!