2020 has been an unforgettable year in all senses. And over the past six months, we have experienced so many changes that they would take ten years under normal conditions. When we faced an unprecedented pandemic challenge, Light IT were about to choose: adapt or leave. And that was about technologies that were at the head of global changes, helping to overcome difficulties and predict possible development scenarios under conditions of uncertainty.
According to McKinsey, the business is ahead of forecasts for digitizing customer interactions by 3-4 years, in terms of seven years’ digital products’ share. At Cisco, shaping technological trends, they paid particular attention to the pace of development of communication networks. They admitted that the indicators that were supposed to be achieved by 2024 could be completed this year.
The pressure on business is evident. Staying competitive requires change, and the logical step is to embark on a digital transformation. The pandemic has accelerated this process.
Today’s reality is a fundamental rethinking and transformation of business, a change in management/marketing/corporate culture approaches due to the introduction of technology. The main goal of such changes is to improve the efficiency of the company and its viability over the long term.
The importance of digital transformation no longer requires unnecessary evidence. The following five can be distinguished as the most significant trends that should be considered when formulating strategies.
What Technologies And Digital Transformation Tools Are Business Interests Focused On In 2021-2022?
As we race to adapt in 2021, connecting workplace technologies to open communication and enable collaboration between individuals, teams, and customers will lead to more mergers, acquisitions, and reorganizations of significant vendors’ portfolios. This will make the most prominent vendors even more dominant.
(Michael Fauscette)
Hybridity raises technology complexity, which will be answered by automation.
Let’s overview six best digital trends for the nearest years:
- Robotic Process Automation
- Task Mining
- Big Data/ Artificial Intelligence/ Machine Learning
- Cloud
- Edge and IoT
1. RPA
Robotic process automation or robotic automation has been heard for more than one year, but the technology has received notable development in the last 2-3 years. Banking and financial sectors, telecom, medicine, industry, logistics, marketing – the list of areas where robots are used is growing every day. In 2018, Deloitte predicted that almost universal digitalization of business processes should be expected within five years. The Everest Group notes that increased interest in the RPA market will actively grow until 2022.
RPA tools can reduce repetitive tasks and free up employee time for creative or strategic missions by leveraging AI and robotization to maximize impact. In addition, the technology eliminates the influence of the human factor and the errors caused by it. Such technologies connect disparate automated processes of the company “on top” of existing IT systems, creating a single digital ecosystem. It helps to significantly optimize internal processes, reduce costs and increase overall profits.
The automatization and digitalization of business processes allow you to reduce the risk of employee burnout caused by monotonous manual labor, increase the execution speed of the techniques themselves, and control them.
Many companies choose new processes for robotization, the actual course of which does not correspond to the regulated ones. Let’s say a particular process should last 5 hours, but it takes 7.5 hours. All of these will impact RPA performance, reducing the technology’s positive business impact and ROI.
The solution to this problem can be process mining, which, based on internal logs, visualizes the “as is” process, identifying all the “bottlenecks.” Understanding the actual alignment, various subtleties, and nuances, it is possible to determine the most suitable operations for robotization, getting the maximum effect from the implementation of RPA.
2. Task Mining
Another exciting technology gaining popularity is task mining, emphasizing shifting to identifying and defining repetitive routine operations. Its result is detecting the most laborious and “heavy” steps that can be automated and normalized. It resembles process mining, but there is a fundamental difference. If the logs of the organization’s information systems are the source of data in process analytics, they are monitoring agents in task mining.
3. Big Data, AI, and Machine Learning
Research says that 90% of the world’s data has been created in the past few years, but only 1% is effectively used. Companies such as SAP, Microsoft, and Salesforce are leading the way in promoting big data and data processing tools. They offer products for business intelligence, management, manufacturing, social infrastructure, and government.
Machine learning and artificial intelligence, which operate based on Big Data, are moving out of the realm of fantasy and becoming “closer to the earth.” For the economy, their strength lies in industrial automation and the development of Industry 4.0 and consumers – in the personal approach from corporations.
Augmented reality is more valuable than virtual reality right now. VR is super tech and fun, but the market is still limited to games and highly specialized areas. AR (augmented reality) is not so futuristic, but it is already being used widely.
It helps in training personnel in enterprises, medicine, education, advertising, and design. While VR struggles with internal problems and high costs, AR simplifies life and acquires new functionality.
4. Cloud
Modern companies use cloud services not out of a passion for everything new and technological. It helps them meet the challenges of the modern economy and increase their volumes. In addition, cloud storage is becoming a popular product for ordinary users.
The term multi-cloud should become a buzzword in this area since the security and stability of information exchange between different storages remain relevant.
Measures “from outside” are not enough. As part of digital transformation initiatives, it is necessary to understand that changes will affect technical and technological aspects and general management.
To stay competitive in the marketplace, companies must build their own digital competencies to meet customer expectations and streamline existing internal business processes. Today, the winner is the one who can react faster to the changes taking place in the market. And for this, on the one hand, it is necessary to make automated decisions. On the other, new sources
5. Edge and the Internet of Things
With the development of the IoT (Internet of Things) and the increase in the number of connected devices, the need for advanced technologies for collecting and processing data increases. Smart homes, smart transportation, and smart cities have little chance of an exemplary implementation if they rely entirely on cloud computing. Therefore, companies that develop products for local calculations in real-time, including wireless data transmission technologies – Edge, have excellent prospects in this market.
Edge and cloud services are not mutually exclusive but complementary. Despite potential rivalries in specific areas, they form the backbone of developing the Internet of Things, machine learning, and artificial intelligence.
Conclusions
Leaders will need to consider the specifics of digitalization when hiring and consider changes in corporate culture, set up employee training, and be prepared for the emergence of new job positions. They will have to show more trust in the data than before.
Although most of these trends are assumptions about future changes, the progress of the digital economy is apparent. It will change business models, industry, and, of course, consumers. These digital transformation trends may not necessarily revolutionize 2022 but are already profoundly influencing how we work, play, and communicate.
