If you are in business, any kind of business, then we know that you are always looking for the next big thing. That one selling point which you can offer to your customers. The one thing which will make you stand out from everyone else.

Nobody wants normal. Normal is what everybody can achieve. Providing the next level of anything is the future of a successful business.

If we look back just ten years ago, the world was a very different place. YouTube was a mere baby of a website, we all communicated with MSN Messenger and the very thought of a video call was still a wow factor.

Now we take it for granted. We can Skype or FaceTime anyone in the world instantly. If our clients in Australia need to be able to see what their design in Andover looks like, we can show them. Talk them through all of the design ideas and make changes with them live on video.

The days of sending paper-based images and concepts is over. We live in a world where the ideal office is a paperless place. Emails and digital copies are the normal way to communicate.

What good does looking back do for us? Well, apart from letting us feel nostalgic about our MSN friends and MySpace accounts. It gives us some indication of what the future might hold.

A little glimpse ahead and you won’t have to be a genius to know that having the right technology behind your business is a must. Even just having a look at the TalkTalk Business pages, show us where we must go to prepare for the future.

We wouldn’t have guessed ten years ago, that all of our business would have been conducted online somehow. It doesn’t matter what we do today, because every business has to be online to succeed. From the local florist to the massive multi-national cartels. The world is online.

Tomorrow will only build on what we have today. The future could contain any number of randomly profitable entities. We might be conducting business meetings in a virtual reality boardroom. The hologram might finally come into it’s own and become the go-to device for previewing design ideas. We might even be doing away with computer monitors and just wear personal screens like a wrist watch.

It’s almost impossible to know which inventions will flourish like the Internet and which will crumble and be forgotten like the BetaMax. The only thing we can be sure of is that every business will have to adapt and adopt in order to survive. The easiest way of prospering is to have everything in place, ready and waiting for the next revolution.

Having the right resources and specifically the right technology available today, will allow any business the ability to make the most of tomorrow.