Believe it or not – the world has gone digital. From a 3-year-old toddler to a 70-year-old grandfather, everyone is glued to their mobile screens for one reason or the other. We are reliant on our smartphones to make the simplest of decisions like which movie to watch, what hair color to get, and where to go for next summer vacation. We are the digital generation, and there is no better time to put our businesses online. Yes, digital transformation is the need of the hour irrespective of what industry you’re into, what goods or services you’re providing to the customers. While all this may sound optimistic, there are substantial digital transformation challenges and constant upgrading that can hinder a business’s digital growth. In this blog, we will discuss the upcoming digital transformation trends to look up to for the year 2020. We will also dwell on challenges that digital businesses will likely face on their journey to becoming digitally transformed.
Digital transformation challenges 2020
Ever-evolving customer experience
The customers are always in touch with the brands they use or consume. They are always connected through physical contact at the retail stores through social media and, of course, after-sales services. Bad customer experience is a silent killer. Brands have to use digital media to lure customers towards the brand and not just drive sales. You have to put the customer at the top of every business activity or planning to win them over forever. The key is to build a customer-centric culture.
Employee resistance
Digital transformation is synonymous with employee pushback, as they may feel threatened by the ongoing digitization of process. Some of the ‘core’ team professionals might feel their jobs getting redundant or irrelevant given the technological advancement. The creative individuals will adapt to the change and transform their profiles with technology at the back of it all while others will simply call it quits. The best idea here is to bridge the skill gap to achieve what digital transformation aims at.
Short-term view challenge
Planning digital transformation extends beyond three to five months. The management must ensure that smaller milestones are marked and celebrated when achieved. This keeps the morale boosted by those in the plan for digital transformation. A pro-longed journey with so many people involved can cause staff exhaustion, frustration, and demotivation. This can be reversed.
Digital transformation trends 2020
Analytics are the backbone
Companies with massive digital investments must look at analytics in a big way. There is way too much customer data ready to collected, harvested, and interpreted to draw insights for better business decision-making. Flying blind with vague goals can be fatal for organizations in 2020. The future is in data for every single company looking to make it to 2021.
Automated Intelligence and Machine Learning
Businesses investing in analytics tools must also use AI and Machine Learning to churn out big data for useful insights. The sheer of data collected can be overwhelming and confusing for humans to interpret, which is why AI and machine learning are integral to digital transformation for 2020. AI and Machine Learning tools are easy to use, intuitive, informative, and extremely good at data analysis. Thanks to AI, big data can now be analyzed with a fraction of seconds to draw out results that help make informed business decisions. Besides, AI and Machine Learning will be increasingly used to leverage modern data architecture and mitigate the data governance problem that has plagued our businesses for the longest time.
5G
Although almost always associated with mobile data, 5G is way more than what we think it is. The tentacles of 5G spread as far into smart cities, smart manufacturing, and intelligent vehicles. The telecom giants are continually working to push the deployment of 5G to smooth out digital transformation for companies. This will allow them to push large chunks of data via AI and ML to produce faster, more accurate, and reliable information. With the Internet of Things and Augmented Reality, 5G will allow us to build smart homes where one motion can change the lighting, temperature, air quality, and open the windows as your command. The year 2020 will be a milestone for those aiming at the digital transformation of their business. With the well-defined digital transformation roadmap and enthusiastic human resources, companies do have an excellent future for 2021.
