In celebration of Agent@Home’s 10th anniversary, I thought it would be fun to look at some of the changes in technology over the past 10 years. Here’s my list of the most influential technology advancements that have truly helped the growth of the home-based travel agent market.

Landlines to VOIP: Every business owner needs to have a way to communicate with clients and suppliers. Once upon a time, we all had a phone on our desks tethered to a jack in the wall. We all paid Ma Bell for this privilege and usually forked over more money for features such as long-distance calls, caller ID, call forwarding or voicemail.

Today, many of us have opted to say goodbye to the traditional landline phones in favor of VOIP (Voice Over Internet Phone). As long as you have an Internet connection you can use one of the many services available — Magic Jack, Ring Central, Vonage, Oooma — and can even have phone service through many of the cable companies like Comcast and Cablevision. The benefit of having a VOIP service is that it has most of the features of a traditional landline, as well as unlimited long-distance calls, all at a much lower rate.

Mobile Phones: Remember how big, bulky and costly mobile phones were when they first came out? As time went on, these phones became smaller and sleeker. Then they started making them in various colors with more features and even some games. Today, we have the smartphone, which is almost like a full computer that fits in our pocket. And with so many plans and carriers to choose from, almost everyone can now afford to have a smartphone.

Computer Evolution: The desktop that I had 10 years ago had a monitor that took up way too much of my desk, took forever to boot up or shut down and ran a very slow operating system. Today, I have an all-in-one computer, which means everything is built into the monitor. It needs much less space, runs much faster and saves me time throughout the day. I also have a laptop that I can take when traveling or meeting a client. In addition, there are now tablets that can do almost everything that a full computer can do, so you can literally run your business from anywhere.

Email to Text: We all know how important it is to keep in touch with our clients, and email has been at the forefront of our ability to send price quotes, answer questions and follow up with our clients. Until recently! Over the past few years with the changes in cell phone plans, more and more people are now using texting to communicate. After all, everyone wants their answer immediately, don’t they?

Social Media: Once upon a time, people would actually go out to social gatherings or parties to meet people, catch up with clients, meet prospective clients or make business connections. Fortunately, or unfortunately with the development of all the social media channels available, many people are now making connections via the Web. Yes, in many ways this is a great way to get our message out to a lot of people whom you may not have had an opportunity to meet otherwise, but it has also become a bit impersonal, IMHO.

Business Location: How many traditional storefront travel agencies have closed and how many have moved home? The number of travel professionals who currently work from a home office has grown a lot since 2004. If you have the right equipment you can work anywhere. Your clients don’t care where you get your mail or sit your tail as long as you give them the products and service they desire.

Documents to EDocs: The airlines started issuing electronic documents and everyone freaked out, but then realized how much more convenient they actually could be. But when our other suppliers did the same thing, you would have thought the world had ended. Before you start sending me hate mail, let me explain my position. Do I like telling my clients they have to print their own documents? No, but most clients are used to completing online registration forms and print the confirmation page anyway. In most cases, this is all they will need in order to travel, and a lot of people are happy not to have to keep up with a whole booklet of documents that could be lost.

Brochures to EBrochures: Our suppliers have made changes in this area over the past several years as well. Many of them are making electronic documents available through their websites that we can customize with our agency name and client information and then send out via email. This is a great option especially since many of us have clients out of our immediate geographic area.

Webinars and Virtual Tradeshows: Continuing education is important to all of us and attending seminars or tradeshows is a great way to get this instruction. However, with the rising costs of these types of events, more suppliers are now hosting webinars and participating in the virtual tradeshows that are being held via the Web.

I’ll be back to the usual format of questions and answers about technology in my October column.