1. Better value for money
As margins grow tighter and businesses feel the squeeze, expect to see higher investment in practical digitisation. No longer can companies afford to treat digitisation as a way to spend money on new, shinier, and fancier toys. Instead, you can expect to see its implementation being used to drive business outcomes, cut down cost base and improve customer experience. In 2020 as markets compress under pressure, it’s going to be more about asking where the value lies and how business outcomes are achieved. Think, less flash more cash.
Nowhere is this more apparent than the retail sector, which has famously struggled to adapt to rapid digital transformation. If established businesses don’t begin viewing digitisation as a necessary tool in their armoury, they’ll be knocked out of the game by start-ups and others who see digitisation for what it is, and use it to disrupt markets.
2. Crisis prevention
We work closely with a lot of UK political manufacturing & utility companies, and all of them want to use IoT and AI for things like predictive maintenance. Using AI in this way would prevent assets in the field from breaking down, as well as aid in the optimisation of a scheduled workforce.
If the UK were to be hit by another Beast from the East, utilities companies, for instance, would be able to use AI to predict the likelihood of increased callouts and prepare their staff numbers accordingly.
3. Cloud democracy
Cloud migration will remain a significant trend in 2020 as it continues to remove the barrier to entry, allowing start-ups to create a product with minimum investment. You can now open an AWS account and build an application. This would have been impossible not too long ago, you would have needed a data centre and the money for one, but now, due to cloud, it’s no longer an issue.
As well as lowering the barrier to entry, cloud applications offer a host of benefits including increased agility and greater personalisation. The use of cloud-based technologies for instance, allows businesses to provide a personalised service to customers by leveraging big data and AI capabilities in a ‘pay as you go’ model. This in turn could lead to an increase in customer loyalty which results in potentially better profits.
4. Fewer tedious tasks
Robot Process Automation (RPA) will take off as it allows businesses to save costs by automating low-value tasks and letting the rest of the workforce focus on high-value tasks such as customer focus. Not only can an RPA complete tasks three times faster than its human counterpoint, but it minimises risk for businesses through increased visibility and audit trails.
Ultimately, RPA allows organisations to free up time for their employees, which in turn means they can focus on achieving specific business outcomes rather than losing time and money on admin.
5. The personal touch
The biggest trend facing the tech industry for 2020 is older than all the technology put together; creating a positive customer experience. I think we can expect to see a greater integration of technologies in 2020 to achieve this outcome. We live in world where we no longer just want a highly personalised experience but expect one. We see ‘Human centred design’ awareness & adoption growing to design engaging customer journeys.
Integrating technology such as IoT and AI will allow all businesses, including traditional brick and mortar companies, to provide this personalised service. In fact, businesses have already started to seize this opportunity to make themselves stand out in the crowd, and you can see native digital brands creating highly personalised experiences for their customer base.
Sumant Kumar is director of digital transformation at CGI
