7 Trends That Will Drive Digital Transformation
There’s only one thing that we’re sure of and that is change will continue to happen. Below are the top seven trends that will drive digital transformation in 2018.
Blockchain continues to be the top technology with many companies vying to own this market. Blockchain is not just about the latest fluctuations with Bitcoin but it is about using an open-source model to share data among companies. What Blockchain provides is a decentralized peer-to-peer model where the data cannot be modified by any party once a transaction is recorded. Every transaction is recorded and traced back to the buyer and seller, creating a digital ledger that cannot be altered. Being a new teechnology, the challenges are that there is no single standard yet and there are many security concerns that are still being addressed. Whether it lives up to the hype of being called the most disruptive technology in decades is yet to be seen.
Customer Experience is still at the top of the list as customers demand a seamless experience so that they get whatever they want, whenever they want it, regardless of the channel, in a seamless, easy-to-use experience. For example, when you interact with Amazon, you expect to receive the same experience whether you are using a laptop, a tablet, an iPhone, on a TV or Roku device, or in their store, or at one of the kiosks in the mall.
When developing new technologies, the challenge remains how to develop these seamless customer experiences so that the experience is designed around the users’ needs and the experience meets the brands’ needs as well. What we’ve seen so far is hit or miss. For example, in the name of efficiency, many organizations are implementing chatbots to reduce their costs but most customers find these annoying and not helpful. While chatbots implemented correctly can be quite helpful to the customer and can save money for the organization, many organizations have implemented them as a roadblock to reaching their customer service representatives.
In the rush to implement new features, organizations will need to be vigilant to follow best practices to ensure that the customer experience is safeguarded or they risk a backlash to their efforts.
The next movement in the Internet of Things (IoT) will on the industrial side. We’ve already seen IoT advancements on the consumer side with wearables and other connected devices but the next trend is to start using IoT devices within the supply chains and operations. For example, IoT will be used for tracking inventory automatically and when inventory levels are low, for automatically ordering new goods.
IoT is also pushing the speed at which devices are connected, how quickly information is processed and providing real-time information to users. It is driving the development of Edge Computing, which places nodes at the edge of cloud networks so that they are near the sources of IoT devices. This allows them to gather the data much quicker and send it upstream much quicker so that there are no bottlenecks.
There have been huge improvements in AI recently, from face recognition in the latest iPhone to major improvements in cognition and problem-solving. AI is already being heavily used in the security, for example, PayPal is using AI agents to detect malware and many financial organizations are using IBM’s Watson technologies to determine which trades to execute. There are several companies using AI technologies to scan medical images to help diagnose cancer. We will continue to see advancements in Machine Learning (ML) that will further provide efficiencies and the belief is that major opportunities in AI are only beginning to be explored.
There has been a huge improvement in Electronic Health Records (EHR) including standardization, however, there still isn’t a single standard across all platforms as there are still multiple standards.
