At the beginning of the nineteenth century, technology paved its way into the business world, transforming businesses forever. Now, digitalization is vital for companies to meet and exceed their performance standards. In fact, the estimated spending on digital transformation for 2022 is $1.6 trillion U.S.
Several companies offer IT services to help you keep up with the emerging trends in digital transformation. The benefits of IT services are countless, from increasing efficiency to creating a seamless communication channel; you can be sure of your business’s success by employing them. Technology is constantly evolving, making it hard to keep up with the trends. This article will list the latest digital transformation trends in the business world.
1. Cloud Technology
Previously, businesses operated on on-premises infrastructure, demanding investment in physical servers, software licenses, and networking equipment to scale up business growth. However, with the emergence of cloud services, you can store and share documents with any internet-enabled device, access data, and collaborate with anyone worldwide.
If you lose your data because of technical glitches, cloud backups can recover it promptly and mitigate your downtime. It’s no surprise that the cloud is in high demand due to how cost-effective it is. While you may have to initially invest in setting up and operating cloud technology, note that it will enable you to achieve economies of scale quickly.
2. Blockchain Technology and NFTs
Businesses have begun the extensive use of blockchain technology to enhance security and mitigate potential risks. Blockchain technology secures data records and transactions across a decentralized ledger, reducing the potential for fraud and maintaining integrity between different entities. This is because all data and transactions are verified by a network rather than a single party.
One of the widespread applications of blockchain is NFTs or non-fungible tokens, which represent ownership of data that cannot be duplicated. While NFTs have brought considerable attention to digital art and games, they are also effective for verifying the authenticity of products, managing business-critical data, and tracking assets. NFTs ensure a secure and reliable ecosystem for customers and products, so your brand and supply chain are protected from illegal breaches.
3. Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning
Many businesses are adopting Artificial Intelligence as part of their digital transformation strategy in this modern era. Over one-third of executives adopted artificial intelligence (AI) for their companies in 2022. AI cuts down data analysis and processing delays, and machine learning is a branch of artificial intelligence that enables software applications to analyze given data and algorithms and improve the experience without explicit instructions.
AI can be applied to improve Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems to foster positive communication and relationships with your prospects and leads to enhance their accuracy. They make CRM self-update and auto-correct, improving customer interactions.
AI is also proficient at analyzing people’s search patterns and providing the information that best fits their needs. This can help your business recognize your target audience’s demands and behavior, so you can generate marketing campaigns solely focused on them, saving your resources, time, and money.
4. The Hybrid Work Model
After the pandemic, the hybrid work model has become the new norm, giving greater flexibility to employees to work from home or in the office. Due to its flexibility and convenience, most organizations are shifting their paradigm in how we work.
More precisely, a survey conducted between 2019 to 2022 showed 53% of U.S. workers worked in a hybrid model in the fourth quarter of 2022. This digital trend has enabled businesses to maximize productivity by enhancing and centralizing their technology so employees can collaborate remotely in a seamless manner.
In addition, the hybrid work model is cost-effective, allowing the HR department to hire people from anywhere in the world and save office costs. Diversity in the workforce also translates into business growth and profitability.
5. Low-Code Platforms
Low-code platforms enable developers to design and build software applications in a graphical interface that does not require knowledge of coding. Conventionally, all interfaces and applications were built through hand-coded programming, which demanded time and extensive effort. However, low-code platforms incorporate advanced tools such as drag-and-drop modelers, pre-built templates, and intuitive UI to create software applications, enabling accessibility like never before.
In recent years, IT teams have been actively incorporating low-code platforms in their strategic plans to enrich the decision-making process involved in rapid prototyping, deployment, and new product development. This has allowed developing teams to reduce the length of application development cycles without compromising on quality.
6. Customer Data Platform (CDP)
Managing and organizing thousands of data points from multiple disparate channels in a business can be tedious. Companies need to track customer activity on their website and social media channels, as each interaction is valuable to marketing strategies. Consequently, companies opt for Customer Data Platforms (CDP) that collect information from multiple sources and integrate it into one database. CDP allows companies to gather customer data in a single place and accurately understand customer interests and needs, making positive customer experiences possible.
CDPs can gather data from any source, for instance, email, social media, and data management platforms. They then accurately analyze and separate customer profiles and present customer interaction activity and predictive scoring using machine learning.
7. Cyber Security
Data protection is integral to your business structure. Hackers will make constant efforts to find security vulnerabilities in your system, so they can misuse credit cards, addresses, and emails stored in your database. Modern-day businesses have to revamp their privacy policies and correctly handle customer data by preventing unauthorized sharing or phishing scams.
A proper cyber security system defends you from potential cyber-attacks by encrypting emails, addresses, files, and other critical data. Training employees to identify phishing and scam attempts is also integral to your security strategy.
Organizations with strong data protection policies are able to develop long-lasting relationships with their customers based on trust, generating more revenue and establishing a strong reputation in the market.
Endnote
Knowledge about the latest digital marketing trends gives you a competitive edge in business. You must embrace and deploy successful digital transformation projects to maximize your business’s adaptability and flexibility and future-proof your business model. Note that these models and technologies are trending because they are time-saving, cost-effective, and flexible.
For your business to succeed, you must meet customer demands, which are usually built around factors such as timely response, delivery, and accessible website. You can do so by accelerating your digital transformation to keep your systems up-to-date and increase their efficiency. To create an agile and flexible organization, you must compete now and into the future by leveraging trending technologies and creating general public awareness about your brand.