It’s been said that one thing that remains consistent is change. Everyday, businesses face many choices regarding changes. Each choice must be analyzed to see if it makes sense. Changes must only be adopted that will benefit your organization.

Think of all the technological changes that have occurred in just the last 10-20 years. Apple’s innovation with its iPod, iPhone and iPad have revolutionized the way we listen to music, use cell phones and access mobile computing technology, respectively.

Look at the difference between watching a Blu-ray Disc or high-definition TV vs. a DVD. Or, to really drive home the point, dust off your old VCR and (if it still works) watch a VHS tape. The difference is easily seen. TV technology now gives us a picture that provides at least six times more detail. It’s a 480p display with about 300,000 pixels vs. a 1080p display with more than 2,000,000 pixels. The splotch of green on the football field is suddenly transformed into individual blades of grass.

Or, consider the speed at which we’re now able to access the Internet. Did we ever imagine having access to high-speed Internet during the days of dial-up access in the 90s — that featured speeds up to 56,000 bits per second?

Of course, these are all obvious examples of technology changes almost all of us have embraced. Spotting someone listening to music on a portable cassette player, watching a movie on a VCR, or accessing the Internet via dial-up are certainly memories from days of yore.

But sometimes certain necessary changes in the way you run your business aren’t so obvious. Tradition can blind our eyes and cause us to be slow to adopt innovations that can increase efficiency and profitability. If something has been done a certain way for years, why change if it “appears” to be working?

Take, for example, business performance software. When RizePoint introduced the first business performance software to the market in 1997 to help companies run more efficiently, it was a new concept. Yes, businesses had the same needs of staying in compliance and strengthening brand consistency across the enterprise, Previously, businesses didn’t have a software-based system for automating the necessary evaluations and corrective actions for doing so.

Today, even though RizePoint is conducting approximately 1.7 million assessments annually and has over 285,000 users, we still run into businesses that are using yesterday’s VCR-like technology to gather crucial business performance data. These businesses ask, “Why use a business performance software? We’ve used a method that’s worked just fine for years.”

When we dive into that method, it’s usually a paper, a pencil and a clipboard. Someone writes the collected data down, and files it away — sometimes never to be seen again. The problem with this method is it may “work,” but the data isn’t being utilized or even looked at. This can lead to some very serious problems. If there are corrections that need to be made, it may be weeks or months before that data ends up in the decision maker’s hands so that those crucial corrections are executed.

With business performance software like ours, those corrections can be made immediately because the appropriate people are notified. The key is getting the right information into the right hands at the right time.

In this day and age, it makes no sense to use outdated technology. Businesses need to do all they can to maintain operational efficiency so they can stay competitive… and profitable.