Digital transformation is no longer just bugging the minds of tech enthusiasts. Non-tech professionals, decision makers, marketing managers, even senior executive would have known the importance of digital transformation in this day and age.
It refers to any business process where technology is used to solve the ever-changing market and business requirements. Currently, about 70 percent of IT managers and CIOs are involved in projects related to digital transformation.
Digital business transformations must be aimed at improving the stakeholder experience. Stakeholders are partners, customers, employees, and even the community that the business serves.
Organisations that fail to integrate digital transformation into their systems may not survive longer - you either embrace digital transformation or you'll be thrown overboard.
Here are 10 digital transformation trends expected to shape the 2020 business landscape:
1. Using External Stakeholders to Co-create Value
Many successful businesses are building network with external stakeholders while also not forgetting your customers and other partners. A leading research found that companies can incorporate services and products seamlessly into their customer experience, and that digital ecosystems are currently on the rise.
Co-creation of value through external partnership can be achieved through the use of data aggregation, platformification, and APIs.
2. Fueling Business Performance With APIs
If you leverage APIs, you'll experience increased revenue and productivity and there will be room for innovation. However, to achieve this, the APIs must be easily reusable and productised to deliver full value. 91% of companies that own private and/or public APIs do experience positive business outcomes because APIs help businesses to innovate smarter and faster.
3. Adoption of 5G Network
2020 is going to be a year of 5G. Already, some big names in this industry are being quoted, these include Ericsson, Nokia, Verizon, AT&T, and Qualcomm. Huawei is at the forefront of ensuring 5G deployments keep up with the demand.
Already, 5G phones are being released by the leading Android handset makers. 5G brings better mobile networks because of the faster broadband speeds.
4. A faster Wi-Fi
5G combined with Wi-Fi 6 will bring much faster wireless connection and processing speeds in 2020. The two will create a wonderful end-to-end connectivity for office and home use. It is projected that download speeds will increase and the number of Wi-Fi connected devices will also grow significantly in the near future. For your company to have a competitive edge, you can start thinking along the lines of combining the two technologies.
5. Analytics
If you fail to invest in analytics in 2020, then you'll probably be out of business by 2021. Analytics is among the leading Digital Transformation Trends because it helps in processing customer data to give insights on useful customer behaviour that can be helping in improving their experience.
That's why were are witnessing the consolidation of analytics across different platforms. Many companies have realised that data is the future of their companies.
6. The Consumer Experience
Consumers come first. There's an increasing pressure on IT to open up channels to deliver personalised and connected experience for consumers and extend it to developers, employees, and partners.
Currently, there are only an average of 900 applications being used in organisations. This has made it very difficult for organisations to provide a connected and personalised experience to consumers. On the other hand, these very consumers expect consistent and seamless connectivity across a variety of channels including mobile service portals and messaging devices.
The trend now is to remove any friction in the customers journey and ensuring that you can be accessed anytime and anywhere. You should also try to make your services to be as personalised as possible. 76 percent of customers want businesses to understand their needs and expectations.
7. Data-Driven Business
At the heart of all the Digital Transformation Trends is the process of analysing data. You need to put your data into work to quickly launch services and products, streamline operations, and improve customer experience.
Many IT managers agree that data silos are a great challenge in their businesses. Research shows that an organisation's performance is positively correlated with breaking down these data silos. Many organisations have realised this and leading companies are reported to be working on sharing insights and eliminating data silos.
Removing friction in the movement of products, resources, and services is directly influenced by how you can leverage data to improve efficiency in your operations.
8. Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence
Companies are increasingly investing in Artificial Intelligence capabilities to personalise and expedite customer service, increase productivity, and reduce human bias.
Many companies are learning that both that machine learning tools and AI depend on the data they are fed. For these to serve you better, you have to feed them with high-quality data.
It is projected that 2025 will see a 95% growth in the adoption of AI which is a very powerful tool for automating tasks and personalising customer service.
Chatbots/virtual agents, basic task automation, and machine learning and the most common applications of AI. And it is reported that by 2020, up to 25% of customer service operations will rely on virtual customer assistants.
9. Multi-Cloud Computing
Many companies are currently running on multi-cloud environments which involve moving between different cloud environment. This movement is complicated and can only be simplified by the use of containerisation and application programming interface-led application development.
Already a good number of companies with over 1000 employees have a multi-cloud strategy in place. However, they report that the biggest challenges they face are managing costs, managing apps, and the complexity of running on this environment.
It is reported that in the next 18 months, there will be a remarkable growth in companies that use containerised applications in running their business environments.
10. Partnership With IT to Boost Business
IT has become the core enabler to businesses. To optimise business performance, businesses are putting a lot of pressure on IT to deliver more and faster.
For your company to succeed, you must run as a tech company and you must leverage a combination of emerging and new technologies to improve the experience of all stakeholders. This means IT must be innovative, fast, and agile.
Conclusion
To remain relevant in 2020 and beyond, it is good for your company to embrace the Digital Transformation Trends discussed above. Not only that, technology being as dynamic as it is, you also need to keep an eye on any new developments.
