Editor’s note: This article was first published in November 2010, during Spain’s economic crisis; social networks, mobile technology and remote access to company databases are presented as new, and its forecast on teleworking staff dates from that time.
Companies are aware of the need to innovate and adapt to the times. If you, as a business owner, don’t adapt, your company dies. Now, a company may be willing to prepare for change, but if the company changes, its employees have to adapt to those changes too. That’s where training companies, which have been increasingly in demand lately, come in.
The problem is that training companies have had to innovate and adapt as well, so the typical firm that sends a trainer to teach sales techniques and how to keep productivity high in the company is no longer enough. That’s obsolete.
If you decide to start a business that provides training to companies, it’s easier than ever, provided you know your way around new technologies and around getting companies to do business and promote themselves online.
That’s what currently sets the old employee-training companies apart from the new ones:
- The old ones keep teaching how to deal with walk-in customers and sales techniques. These are obviously necessary and shouldn’t be dropped; they simply need to offer more services.
- The new ones, which have the most work ahead of them in the coming years, are those that know that online business and sales are the way out of the crisis for most companies: if a market such as Spain is a bit “sluggish”, you have to look for markets abroad, and only the internet connects you with all the other markets.
The role of the new training companies is to introduce every member and employee of a company to new technologies. So you’ll teach each employee how to use a social network productively, advanced new software of all kinds, and mobile technology so that employees can stay connected with one another at all times, and of course how employees can connect to the company database wherever they are.
Lately they have been teaching companies how to get ready to encourage teleworking, a practice that companies will no doubt accept, with more than 10% of their workforce working this way.
In a nutshell, you need to bring companies into the new technological century. That’s what is in demand right now, and these are the companies currently in an emerging sector.
I should point out that Spain has been one of the slowest countries to turn to technological innovation, and there are still fairly large companies that haven’t realised how important this is.
Thankfully, though, attitudes are starting to change, and that may speed up the way out of the crisis.
Further reading
- 5 business ideas in services for companies
- Business ideas in leisure and tourism
- 10 business ideas with no investment
- 3 business ideas you can start with little money
- 15 business ideas no one has exploited yet
Featured image: Lcjuera, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
