Top 5 Tech Trends That Will Impact Your Business in 2020
By: Dave Jimenez, VP of Strategy for Dialexa
Business leaders who are tuned in to technology trends have tangible competitive advantages in today’s marketplace, and with greater customer experience and internal efficiencies comes increased profitability. Here are five of the hottest technology trends that could impact your business in 2020.
- Connected Retail
The combination of online and offline worlds in retail will continue to rise in 2020. About three years after the takeover of Whole Foods by Amazon, digital technologies are increasingly being tested in the Amazon world. We’ve all seen Amazon lockers in our favorite retail stores and soon will see even more brands connected in a variety of ways. Kroger’s new digital store collaboration with Microsoft, where they are making it easier to find your favorite items in the aisle, is just one example to keep an eye on.
2. Mobility as a Service
For the first time in history, the automotive market is less about vehicle features and more about vehicle accessibility, availability and “smartness.” Mobility as a Service is now a competitive market where automakers like BMW and Daimler have combined their carsharing subsidiaries DriveNow and Car2Go with the successful mobility app MyTaxi into a new billion-euro corporation. And Audi recently launched a subscription model where consumers are no longer locked in to a long-term loan or lease; instead opting for luxury by the month. The promise of 5G, with its high speed and low-latency will further enable innovation in this space.
3. Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence
We are beyond the buzzwords here at Dialexa. In 2019, we helped multiple customers rationalize the machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI) technology disciplines to drive real business outcomes and competitive advantage.
Deriving insights from data to improve business performance and customer experience unlocked unforeseen value in customer behaviors. Accelerating scale of a customer’s business while managing the risk profile related to that rapid growth was a key outcome that we helped to create. Driving operational optimization and efficiency is something that businesses have been doing for decades, but using AI to monitor and identify these opportunities on an ongoing basis has been the real game-changer. Reducing costs and driving value is no longer a “here and now” event that takes months and months to do. Optimization models are created for the business to increase customer loyalty and reduce customer churn, significantly improving revenue streams.
4. Privacy, Transparency, and Security
Every company is a technology company today. No matter what product or service you provide, technology plays a significant role in how you engage with your customers. What began as a means to provide a more personalized and superior user experience, turned into companies utilizing all of the “always on” and connected nature of consumers and their mobile devices. More and more of your data is being collected and used to provide these experiences. This has prompted companies to determine how they should deal with these mounting concerns so they can maintain trusting relationships with their customers.
We have a strong belief that in 2020, these concerns will significantly shape and form the future of the technology solutions created for customer interaction. Companies that can provide consumers with increased privacy and transparency related to what they are collecting and why, as well as how they will be good stewards of the data will have the edge. The trick will be doing those ever important things while still delivering a fantastic user experience.
5. More IT and Software Development Outsourcing to U.S. Technology Companies
IT and software development needs are more complex than ever before. New skill sets are needed with continuous training, cyber criminals are getting more sophisticated, workforces are going remote and big data is playing a critical role in business strategy. The difficulties of managing increasingly complex software development environments internally will lead to more medium-sized and large businesses outsourcing their software development needs to managed service providers (i.e. digital development agencies) to fill this role. And in today’s economy, the perceived savings of going outside the country no longer hold up.
According to CIO Magazine costs of offshore resources have been going up for over the last 10 years and automation and excellent DevOps is eliminating much of the work that actually was able to be successfully delivered in that model. There is also significant turnover taking place on these nearshore teams, so even if the time to ramp new resources up falls at the expense of the offshore provider, there is still a cost to the initiative itself in the lost knowledge within the departing team member than cannot be replaced.
Enterprises must also consider hybrid teams consisting of their own high quality people, onshore specialty consulting resources, and some offshore team members where risk can be mitigated while they are still locked into these kinds of offshore contracts. Quality of delivering with fidelity will increase, product creation (development) quality will increase, and speed to market will increase. The related business outcomes will completely change your business.
Learn more at dialexa.com
