How To Leverage Technologies To Stay Ahead Of The Curve?
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The pandemic has delivered such a shock to the entire socio-economic ecosystem of the world that businesses absolutely need to reassess their future technology roadmap. Comprehensive digital transformation has become the most urgent and important. The real question is how to use different technologies to stay ahead of the curve and improve margins and toplines? How can businesses leverage technologies to make the GTM cheaper and faster?
Not just large enterprises, but even small and medium-size organizations need to carefully consider the strategic business and market gaps that will open or simply disappear with Digital transformation. An organization's ability to connect, predict, and adapt in real-time for the benefit of customers will be essential to business growth.
As a first step, organizations must move away from taking a short-term approach to digital initiatives. They need to strategize and see digital as a central and key channel for customer interaction processes to improve customer experience, productivity, offerings, or serve new geographies.
Employees are the most essential element in digital transformation. Organizations big and small need to make sure that the transformation is appealing to employees and training is in parallel with the job role to create positive reinforcements. Unless employees commit themselves to use technology, they will continue to rely on older, and at times quicker yet prone to error processes. Therefore, Employees must be encouraged to share their innovations and challenges to give them a sense of ownership and intent.
Let’s look at some key technologies that are being leveraged by businesses to stay ahead of the curve. Data driven decision making, innovating & marketing, Robotic Process Automation, Virtual Business Services, and Artificial Intelligence & Machine Learning are amongst the first technologies to be adopted by market leaders. The tech trends in healthcare, education, manufacturing, retail, and finance when examined together give further insights about the possibilities.
Data is not just the oil of business engines. It is becoming the entire engine at times. Collecting and Leveraging data and analytics for innovation has become critical for organizations of all sizes to remain relevant and stay ahead of peers. Gone are the days when an establishment or shop was too small for digitalization or to leverage data in decision making. Many Micro SMEs have started using billing data to prompt customer purchase decisions. With the integration of mobile numbers in billing systems, rudimentary CRM is within the reach of every business. In the case of mid-size and large organizations, it has become even more important for the business to learn from and make data-driven decisions. According to Gartner, by 2023, more than 33% of large organizations will have analysts practicing decision intelligence, including decision modeling. Decision Intelligence provides a framework to help data and analytics leaders design, compose, model, align, execute, monitor, and tune decision models and processes in the context of business outcomes and behavior.”
Robotic Process Automation will help in faster response to market changes and improved GTM. With employees free from highly repetitive, routine tasks, they can focus on higher-value work. According to Gartner, “The key driver for RPA projects is their ability to improve process quality, speed, and productivity.” RPA is most strategic for processes in financial services, banking, healthcare, telecom, public sector, and retail industries.
Virtual business services and processes is a new stream to emerge as a serious business tech imperative. Expo and exhibitions with their allied stall costs and teams travel and stay overheads can now be conducted virtually with excellent results as seen during the pandemic. Similarly, staff recruitment in remote areas can be virtual. The entertainment business has released a new revenue stream in virtual events that will coexist with physical events. YouTubes virtual New Year's Eve party and the recent smash hit Dua Lipa's' Studio 2054s virtual performances are good examples. Automobile showrooms have also seen much success with the leverage of virtual tech.
One of the most visible forms of AI and ML experience in enterprise operations will be in the form of Conversational AI. It is extremely beneficial for enterprises with their cost efficiency, scalability, and engagement potential and supports multiple business use cases.
Remote work digital infrastructure adoption such as telecommuting tech, enterprise virtual reality will become important even for small businesses. Many non-essential functions can be situated in remote and lower-cost locations or at homes with remote connectivity enablement. Tele-sales agents, back-office functions like the accounts team are some examples.
CB Insights in its report highlights some of the tech trends created or accelerated in different industries. These trends, along with some added future scanning, present a good roadmap that can be leveraged.
●The Healthcare industry will need to accelerate using data, wearables, and VR to make care more accessible. These could include telehealth technology, continuous & remote diagnostics, teletherapy, virtual fitness & gyms, and senior care & aging services.
●The education sector will need remote learning technology initiatives to normalize hybrid teaching and learning. They will need to enable the best of the classroom and social experience with the complete embedding of online content and pedagogy. The seamless continuous transition will thus be possible for students and teachers to make the best of individual situations.
●The manufacturing industry will look at Digital supply chain management systems, 3D, and automation technology to boost the industry agility and flexibility. 3D printing, Industrial automation & robotics, digital twinning, and robotic process automation will come in to focus. Advanced analytics-driven supply chain insights will provide supplier risk assessments and a way to predict disruptions before they happen (McKinsey).
●The retail sector will look at enhancing both the physical shopping experience and e-Commerce with complete omnichannel adoption. Physical shops will move to Phygital, and e-Commerce will fully enable more product categories starting with grocery. Virtual product try-outs and conversational commerce technologies will become the norm.
●Finance will adopt even more contactless options, including contactless payments, branchless banking, parametric insurance, socially integrated credit profiling. Robotic Process Automation will drive multiple productivity gains in the sector.
Organizations need to focus on adopting technologies that not only future proof them against unanticipated disruptions. They also need to create the headroom for on-demand tech sprints to beat the competition to emerging opportunities while running the steady business marathon.
The pandemic has delivered such a shock to the entire socio-economic ecosystem of the world that businesses absolutely need to reassess their future technology roadmap. Comprehensive digital transformation has become the most urgent and important. The real question is how to use different technologies to stay ahead of the curve and improve margins and toplines? How can businesses leverage technologies to make the GTM cheaper and faster?
Not just large enterprises, but even small and medium-size organizations need to carefully consider the strategic business and market gaps that will open or simply disappear with Digital transformation. An organization's ability to connect, predict, and adapt in real-time for the benefit of customers will be essential to business growth.
As a first step, organizations must move away from taking a short-term approach to digital initiatives. They need to strategize and see digital as a central and key channel for customer interaction processes to improve customer experience, productivity, offerings, or serve new geographies.
Employees are the most essential element in digital transformation. Organizations big and small need to make sure that the transformation is appealing to employees and training is in parallel with the job role to create positive reinforcements. Unless employees commit themselves to use technology, they will continue to rely on older, and at times quicker yet prone to error processes. Therefore, Employees must be encouraged to share their innovations and challenges to give them a sense of ownership and intent.
Let’s look at some key technologies that are being leveraged by businesses to stay ahead of the curve. Data driven decision making, innovating & marketing, Robotic Process Automation, Virtual Business Services, and Artificial Intelligence & Machine Learning are amongst the first technologies to be adopted by market leaders. The tech trends in healthcare, education, manufacturing, retail, and finance when examined together give further insights about the possibilities.
Data is not just the oil of business engines. It is becoming the entire engine at times. Collecting and Leveraging data and analytics for innovation has become critical for organizations of all sizes to remain relevant and stay ahead of peers. Gone are the days when an establishment or shop was too small for digitalization or to leverage data in decision making. Many Micro SMEs have started using billing data to prompt customer purchase decisions. With the integration of mobile numbers in billing systems, rudimentary CRM is within the reach of every business. In the case of mid-size and large organizations, it has become even more important for the business to learn from and make data-driven decisions. According to Gartner, by 2023, more than 33% of large organizations will have analysts practicing decision intelligence, including decision modeling. Decision Intelligence provides a framework to help data and analytics leaders design, compose, model, align, execute, monitor, and tune decision models and processes in the context of business outcomes and behavior.”
organizations must move away from taking a short-term approach to digital initiatives
Robotic Process Automation will help in faster response to market changes and improved GTM. With employees free from highly repetitive, routine tasks, they can focus on higher-value work. According to Gartner, “The key driver for RPA projects is their ability to improve process quality, speed, and productivity.” RPA is most strategic for processes in financial services, banking, healthcare, telecom, public sector, and retail industries.
Virtual business services and processes is a new stream to emerge as a serious business tech imperative. Expo and exhibitions with their allied stall costs and teams travel and stay overheads can now be conducted virtually with excellent results as seen during the pandemic. Similarly, staff recruitment in remote areas can be virtual. The entertainment business has released a new revenue stream in virtual events that will coexist with physical events. YouTubes virtual New Year's Eve party and the recent smash hit Dua Lipa's' Studio 2054s virtual performances are good examples. Automobile showrooms have also seen much success with the leverage of virtual tech.
One of the most visible forms of AI and ML experience in enterprise operations will be in the form of Conversational AI. It is extremely beneficial for enterprises with their cost efficiency, scalability, and engagement potential and supports multiple business use cases.
Remote work digital infrastructure adoption such as telecommuting tech, enterprise virtual reality will become important even for small businesses. Many non-essential functions can be situated in remote and lower-cost locations or at homes with remote connectivity enablement. Tele-sales agents, back-office functions like the accounts team are some examples.
CB Insights in its report highlights some of the tech trends created or accelerated in different industries. These trends, along with some added future scanning, present a good roadmap that can be leveraged.
●The Healthcare industry will need to accelerate using data, wearables, and VR to make care more accessible. These could include telehealth technology, continuous & remote diagnostics, teletherapy, virtual fitness & gyms, and senior care & aging services.
●The education sector will need remote learning technology initiatives to normalize hybrid teaching and learning. They will need to enable the best of the classroom and social experience with the complete embedding of online content and pedagogy. The seamless continuous transition will thus be possible for students and teachers to make the best of individual situations.
●The manufacturing industry will look at Digital supply chain management systems, 3D, and automation technology to boost the industry agility and flexibility. 3D printing, Industrial automation & robotics, digital twinning, and robotic process automation will come in to focus. Advanced analytics-driven supply chain insights will provide supplier risk assessments and a way to predict disruptions before they happen (McKinsey).
●The retail sector will look at enhancing both the physical shopping experience and e-Commerce with complete omnichannel adoption. Physical shops will move to Phygital, and e-Commerce will fully enable more product categories starting with grocery. Virtual product try-outs and conversational commerce technologies will become the norm.
●Finance will adopt even more contactless options, including contactless payments, branchless banking, parametric insurance, socially integrated credit profiling. Robotic Process Automation will drive multiple productivity gains in the sector.
Organizations need to focus on adopting technologies that not only future proof them against unanticipated disruptions. They also need to create the headroom for on-demand tech sprints to beat the competition to emerging opportunities while running the steady business marathon.
