In continuing our look at trends that will have significant impact on your business in 2013, it’s hard to argue with the influence of mobile technology. More than a billion smartphones are in use worldwide, and by 2015, it’s forecast that another billion will be in consumers’ hands. Smartphone sales now exceed those of PCs, and they have become the most common devices used to surf the Web.

In recent surveys, many people would rather lose their wallet than their phone, and most don’t go more than an hour without checking it. For most of us, our phones store so much of our life’s data (contact information, banking details, loyalty IDs, calendar, email, passwords and much more) that they are in some ways an extension of our brain – storing vital data we’d be lost without.

Mobile phones have rendered point-and-shoot cameras obsolete, and there is a long list of other products that will soon fall prey, like business cards, keys to our homes and vehicles, loyalty cards, boarding passes and, eventually, even money.

Your smartphone is evolving into a virtual wallet that can be used like cash, credit and debit cards, loyalty cards and more.

By 2017, more than 85 percent of the point-of-sale terminals in the United States will take mobile payments. That’s less than five years from now. In Japan, 25 percent of mobile users already manage their finances and pay for products with their phones. We’re already lagging behind!

And it’s not just how we manage our money that will change. One of the biggest trends within the mobile industry is using our smartphones to track, measure and record our health information. There are already a ton of apps out there that will either allow you to enter data or use wireless health monitors to transmit data like your blood pressure, glucose levels, track sleep quality, etc. More than just recording data, our smartphones are becoming the portal to our health records as well. So what do we need to do to get our organizations ready for this tsunami of a trend?

Wake up: Most of you are still forcing your consumers to look at websites that were built for a desktop computer, not a mobile-optimized version. It’s not 1993 anymore, kids. Mobile devices are accessing your site every day. And soon, that will be happening more often than desktop browser visits, if it isn’t already.

Pull your head out of the sand and invest the time and money to really think about what mobile users are looking for when they search for you, and build it to serve their needs. Recognize where your company and smartphone technology intersects: For some of you, it might be very direct – you will need to accept mobile payments in your establishments. But for others, your connection may be a step or two away from the actual transaction.

It might be data driven, like comparison price shopping, or socially motivated, like reviews or crowdsourcing some aspect of what you offer.

Use mobile data to customize products and services: As people share more information with mobile apps and use their phones to interact with your company, they’re creating a flow of data. You can analyze this information and leverage it to hyper-customize their offerings, creating an experience they’ll want to brag about (via their smartphone of course) and repeat.

This is not an emerging trend. This is a trend that is literally changing how people live their daily lives. Get on the mobile train before you are left at the station.