The Paperless Office
This 5-letter term refers to storing and accessing data over the internet instead of your computer's local hard drive.
What is the Cloud?
These automated computer programs—often found on retail websites—mimic human conversation to help customers track orders or answer FAQs 24/7.
What is a chatbot?
This 9-letter term is the general word for buying and selling goods or services using the internet.
What is e-commerce?
Businesses use platforms like Instagram, TikTok, and X to run ads and interact directly with their target audience through this medium.
What is social media?
Businesses use this collaborative software category, which includes Google Workspace and Microsoft 365, to let multiple employees edit the same document at the same time.
What is productivity software (or cloud suites)?
This technology uses physical robotic arms and sensors on factory conveyor belts to assemble products faster and with fewer errors than humans.
What is factory/manufacturing automation?
Instead of swiping a plastic card, customers can tap their smartphones at checkout counters using this 3-letter wireless technology.
What is NFC (Near-Field Communication)?
Companies send out automated newsletters and coupons directly to a customer's inbox using this specific marketing channel.
What is email marketing?
Instead of printing, signing, and scanning a contract, modern businesses use platforms like DocuSign to collect this legally binding digital equivalent.
What is an electronic signature (or e-signature)?
Restaurants and warehouses use these autonomous machines to carry heavy trays or move inventory boxes across a floor without a human driver.
What are robots (or AGVs - Automated Guided Vehicles)?
Amazon and Netflix use this type of algorithmic system to analyze your past behavior and suggest new products you are likely to buy.
What is a recommendation engine (or recommendation algorithm)?
Known by the acronym CRM, this type of software acts as a digital address book that tracks every interaction a business has with its clients.
What is Customer Relationship Management?
This is the specific 3-word name for the secure, off-site facility filled with rows of servers where a business's cloud data is actually physically stored.
What is a data center?
This specific branch of AI allows computers to learn from historical sales data and make predictions about future trends without being explicitly programmed.
What is machine learning?
Shopify and WooCommerce are popular examples of this type of digital system, which allows a business to build and manage its online storefront.
What is an e-commerce platform?
Acronymized as SEO, this is the practice of tweaking a business's website so it appears higher up when someone searches for a product on Google.
What is Search Engine Optimization?
To keep files safe if an office computer crashes, companies use this automated process to duplicate and store data in a separate, secure location.
What is a digital backup?
Acronymized as RPA, this technology uses software "bots" to automate repetitive, boring office tasks like copying data from an email into a spreadsheet.
What is Robotic Process Automation?
To protect your credit card numbers when you buy something online, websites use this process to scramble the data into an unreadable code.
What is encryption?
This 11-letter term describes a specific, fictional profile of an ideal customer created by marketers using data like age, income, and online habits.
What is a buyer persona?