¶ … technology continuously emerges and develops, the challenges faced by many businesses in different industries similarly increases. Before, business competitions focus on marketing strategies to attract customers and clients. This includes print advertisements, television and radio advertisements. Every business deal has to be transacted manually. In this way of doing business, there are not much channels to use to be able to make or maintain a business' success. Time and devotion to thinking of marketing strategies that can be effective in gaining customers and clients are the major tools in competing with other businesses, all of which usually involves manual process of doing business such as performing business travels and lots of business meetings. This is especially true in the industry of product manufacturing and selling. However, in the emergence and continuous development of advanced technology, there have been rapid changes in the way business is done. Everything seems to change into a more comfortable process where technology successfully plays a great role. Because technology eases and hastens the conventional business processes, many organizations divert their business strategies into making use of technology.

Technology offers a wide array of ways that ease and hasten the conventional methods of doing business. Hence, many businesses are spending time and money to be in line with technology. This is also because since the time when different kinds of technology-based business methods were developed, customers and clients already prefer doing business in the "technology-way." This consequently becomes a challenge to many organizations to implement technologies that are appropriate to their business. But as technology is sometimes complex to employ especially during the first period of diverting from conventional business process into a technology-based business process, businesses must be ready to face all the challenges that technology can possibly pose.

One industry where technological advancements play an important role is product marketing and selling. Today, the technology of the Internet is playing a great role in allowing a fast and convenient process of product marketing and selling. The following sections in this paper will aim to discuss how the industry of product marketing and selling cope in the advancements of technology. To provide further idea on this, the following topic shall be explored.

Best practices used in the industry of product marketing and selling to leverage technology.

Challenges faced by the industry of product marketing and selling in the implementation of technology.

Best practices used in other industry to address technological opportunities and challenges.

Alternative methodologies that organizations use to identify the usefulness of technology.

How the best practices can solve the problems in the industry of product marketing and selling

As a manager, how can you maintain a competitive advantage through technological advancements.

Best Practices Used in the Industry of Product Marketing and Selling to Leverage Technology

The industry of product marketing and selling is among the industries where technology plays a very important role, and where there is a high competition between businesses in using technology. Because of this, it is essential that organizations involved in product marketing and selling should develop and implement operation practices and procedures that can maximize the use of technology as well as the benefits that it provides. Following are some of the best practices that are common in many organizations in the industry of product marketing and selling.

Ensure that the technology is customer-focused and customer-oriented.

Why do businesses strive to divert their operation and business processes into technology-based? Many organizations suggest that in order to maximize the benefits of technology, one of the practices that must be considered when implementing technology is that the technology must be for the benefit of the customers. As how companies and its people should be customer-focused and customer-oriented, so should technology. This is because the level at which the companies look at the welfare and satisfaction of the customer is a major factor that contributes to a company's success.

Ensure that implemented technology is flexible and can help build good business relationship

Another best practice that companies in the industry of product marketing and selling implement is looking after the performance of the technology they use. The technology must be capable of building good business relationship, such that it must be flexible and user-friendly. For instance, e-commerce web sites are very popular these days when it comes to marketing and selling products. Two examples of which are "e-Bay.com" and "Amazon.com." Such kind of technology should be able to provide all the services needed by the customers as if the technology is a sales representative or a customer service attendant of a company that can help customers with all their needs.

Use of technology in marketing...

The industry of product marketing and selling is among the many industries that make use of the real-time services of the Internet. Using the Internet is one of the best practices in product marketing and selling. Because of the billions of users of the Internet, using this channel provide businesses with convenience in for marketing and selling their products to large number of prospective customers.
Challenges faced by the industry of product marketing and selling in the implementation of technology

Implementing technology in the industry of product marketing and selling is quite difficult because of the fact that technology also presents problems. This is especially true in e-commerce technology where buying and selling takes place real-time and where risks are present particularly in terms of information security. Risks such as information fraud and malicious theft of information (i.e. during use of credit cards for payment) are among the challenges that the industry of product marketing and selling faces in the implementation of technology. E-commerce certainly makes trading convenient for both the sellers and the buyers because all that one is to do is to get connected to the Internet and he can already transact with a company. However, because of the information security problems that are present in the use of the Internet, the technological challenge brought on the shoulder of the industry of marketing and selling is how to solve Internet security problems as far as their e-commerce applications are concerned.

Another technological challenge faced by the industry of product marketing and selling is the present domination of large marketing and selling companies in which their web sites are already very much established and popular today. Examples of which are e-Bay and Amazon. Competing with these web sites is a challenge to new organizations in the industry. In that to be able to compete, they must market their business well and present a web site that can compare or exceed the usability of the current dominating web sites in the industry.

Best practices used in other industry to address technological opportunities and challenges

Other industries also address technological opportunities and challenges through establishment and implementation of practices that can help them cope with the advancements in technology. In fact, many organizations these days are coming up with strategic plans that build technology as among the foundations of their business. In relation to this, following are some of the best practices that other industries follow.

Education, such as trainings, on new technologies.

Developments and changes in technology is endless, thus it is important that businesses do not rely on their current knowledge and skills in technology. Otherwise, they will be left behind by others who keep themselves updated in technology and who leverages technology in their businesses. Continuous education, such as attending trainings on new technologies that come in the market, is one way which other industries carry out to address technological opportunities and challenges. In this way, they will be knowledgeable of new possibilities that can help them leverage technology in their business.

Globalization of business.

Globalization is among the solutions that some businesses in different industries apply to address the challenges and opportunities in technology. As indicated by M2 Presswire, in its article "UN: Globalization Today has 'Winners and Losers'; Challenge for Tomorrow is to Make it Work for All, says Secretary-General,"

Globalization is bringing many of us more choices and opportunities.

The globalization of technologies being used between organizations and industries causes an increase in the flow of money, thus increasing opportunities for many businesses. Moreover, globalization helps in the improvement of global economy. Eric Pan suggests that

Globalization has increased the flow of money, goods, services, people, and jobs across national boundaries.

Benchmarking

Benchmarking is another important best practice being carried out by many businesses these days. Such practice allows the evaluation of current technologies used in a business and can provide ideas and solutions for improvement. Bruce Summers, in his article Central Banking and Information Technology Revolution: Challenges and Opportunities, indicates the following benefit of benchmarking in addressing challenges in technology.

These periodic benchmarking exercises have a direct influence on how we conduct operations.

Further, this performance improvement study led us to outsource some network engineering and certain network operations functions

Alternative methodologies that organizations use to identify the usefulness of technology

Evaluating the usefulness of technology presents another challenge to businesses especially when leveraging current technologies. This is because the success…