The constant and, to a certain extent, natural interaction that we have every day with technology has generated countless debates about how dependent we are and to what extent this dependence begins to play a negative role in our lives.

The advances and contributions that have been developed thanks to technological advances are evident in our daily lives in different industries, such as: transportation, medicine, telecommunications, business, among others. The dilemma becomes more complex when it is evident that the technological contribution is not transformed into a positive deliverable but on the contrary becomes a passive entity that mutates in downtime or decants into complex tasks (what is simple becomes so complicated that it becomes difficult to manage).

Advantages and disadvantages of positive dependency

Different studies highlight the advantages and disadvantages that technological escalation has represented in the life of human beings. As an example of this, a study carried out by Stanford University in 2020 approaches the topic by focusing its analysis mainly on technology applied to business (facilitating tools that simplify tasks with a high operational load). Making a very executive extraction of the study, we can specify 3 points to consider when thinking about generating a positive dependence on technology in business:

1. Technological tools are not imposed

 The pressure imposed by the pandemic has caused all companies to feel the need to sophisticate their processes by leveraging technology. The bad thing is when the company’s “moment of technological development” is not recognized and the company seeks to impose or integrate the most robust system of the moment without taking on the task of progressive development. In many cases this forced implementation ends in large losses of money and generating setbacks instead of positive changes.

2. Facilitating complement

Tests conducted by the study found that in more than 500 companies evaluated, about 44.5% of the processes in which a favorable technology partnership had been achieved, task efficiency and savings exceeded the rate of 36.2%. When technological development comes to positively complement existing processes, sustainable savings are achieved over time. Otherwise, when the technology became a “stopper” due to its complexity, it generated unnecessary repetitions or made processes more expensive by approximately 28.4%.

3. More strategy, less repetition

When the technological tool allows efforts to be focused on strategic and analytical tasks and rests repetitive processes on the machine, a real shift towards positive dependency begins to take place. It does not consume more from the team than is necessary to place in it the decision-making and analysis functions of the company’s north. 69.4% of the companies analyzed in the study focused their efforts in this way , thus achieving an impact on value generation x2.4 times what they did when their focus was on purely operational matters.