5 Technology Disruptors for 2020

In an increasingly digitised world, disruption by way of technological innovation is inevitable. It has become essential for all the organisations to stay up-to-date with the latest developments, at the same time carefully examine which of these are relevant for their particular business.

While there are a number of new and advanced technologies on the rise, including Big Data, IoT and Artificial Intelligence (AI) is proving to be the starting point that majority of enterprises are aiming for today.

By 2022, 70 per cent of enterprises will be experimenting with immersive technologies for consumer and enterprise use, and 25 per cent will have them deployed in production, according to Gartner.

Technologies such as geo-tagging, offline data saving, business intelligence, and advanced analytics allow enterprises to keep a tab on the entire ecosystem. The advantages of these cutting-edge technologies are not just limited to productivity gains. Enhanced customer experience, process improvements, and reduced go-to-market time for solutions are some of the other key benefits

Now, while the last few years saw businesses experiment with these technologies, 2020 will see disruptions as a result of combining these technologies. Let’s take a look at some of these disruptions expected in 2020:

1. Increased Customer Engagement by integrating AI with VR and AR

For most industries, Augmented Reality (AR) and Virtual Reality (VR) have been the key drivers of customer engagement (and eventually sales) for a while now.

In 2020, AR/VR experiences will become even more immersive by integrating AI. This will allow businesses to not only create customized offerings but also offer a personalized experience for their users. Most VR experiences will allow users to interact with the construct through natural language processing (NLP) capability. AI will also power AR experiences, with mobile handsets being a key way of engaging with the content.

The key beneficiary of this disruption will be the Retail industry. By integrating AR/VR experiences with personalized offerings, the industry is already witnessed an uptick in consumer interest. With AI-powered AR/VR providing increased customer engagement, retailers will be able to identify deviations in customer’s behavior and accordingly modify their outreach campaigns.

Going forward, retailers should be able to engage customers across the journey cycles, improve store experiences through proper planogram design and updates, while empowering field representatives with actionable data.

2. Automation to Hyper-automation

The key goals of automation have always been to reduce the cost of human capital, reduce errors and improve process efficiency. While complete automation is required to truly realize the benefits, the reality is far from it. With hyper-automation though, this will change.

Hyper-automation is the application of software, AI, and automation tools to augment workers and automate processes. It has the potential to even automate the decision-making process in organizations. Take the sales and marketing functions as an example, where automation is fairly mature.

In marketing, hyper-automation in welcome emails, reminder emails, and re-engagement emails will be exceptionally effective in promoting customer engagement. On the other hand, in sales, the use of hyper-automated Customer Relationship Management (CRMs) will enable organizations to prospect, filter, and cater to multiple clients at the same time.

In 2020, increased deployment of hyper-automation platforms will enable organizations to get closer to their transformation and optimization initiatives. Accepting and adapting to these changes, both in spirit and in practice, will be imperative for organizations to fully realize the benefits of business transformation initiatives.

3. Rise of Connected Cloud

Cloud tech services are expected to be utilized by 90% of global organizations by 2022. With this tipping point, the connected platform economies will gain further steam, thereby making cloud a strategic enabler for this change in digital business.

With benefits such as simplification of operations, improvement in reliability and availability, and cost-effective operations, the connected cloud will be the next disruption in cloud computing. In 2020, organizations will start restructuring their distributed cloud infrastructure to support operations on like-for-like cloud services.

With a promise of low cost-high scalability, this disruption will be particularly suited to SMBs. With a level playing field, SMBs will be able to test new technologies with reduced deployment time, enhance their market penetration, optimize their resources, and maximize their returns.

The way forward for operational leaders is to manage their cloud ecosystems to encompass the workforce, customers, partner ecosystem and infrastructure. The aim should be to meet the increasing customer expectations and be agile enough to adapt to the changes in the markets.

4. Intelligent Database management: The Next-Gen management process

Databases are becoming more complex with the sheer volume and type of data being generated. With data from industrial IoT and Smart Cities only expected to increase, another complexity for the modern database is analyzing live data streams. Thus, it is only natural that the integration of AI and machine/deep learning models with such database become the norm.

This is where intelligent database management or AI database will find increased acceptance in 2020. Coupled with AI chips and GPU-driven database systems, such customizable databases will interface directly with NLP queries, thereby making the ML models easy to implement and test.

Such systems will not only be cost-effective to process a high volume of real-time data but will enable data-driven insights to accelerate the revenue as well.

Organizations should investigate how they can have intelligent database management systems in place, in order to achieve automated profiling to analyze data buckets, maintain data quality, and enrich the database with deep insights. This will enable them to reduce the time as well as the cost to acquire the ‘next new customer’.

5. Data-as-a-service (DaaS)

In 2020, it is expected that close to 90% of large organizations will be using DaaS to generate some form of revenue. Given that it is highly accessible, this technology also has the potential for seamless, real-time inter-department data sharing within organizations. Its growing implementation is highlighted through the emergence of a number of players such as map data providers and product catalog vendors. Companies working with data that others could utilize can monetize it by selling based on the nature and/or size of data.

Technology today is evolving more rapidly than ever before and with the increasing adoption of these technologies across multiple applications and functions, the business environment will become even more dynamic. As a result, for organizations to succeed, the relevance of business priorities, scalability of infrastructure, and quality of customer experiences will have to be the focus in 2020. Companies that are able to adapt and upgrade themselves and emerge stronger, will be the one to benefit from these disruptions.

Snehashish Bhattacharjee, Global CEO, Denave