Does anyone else remember when flip phones were all the rage just 10 short years ago? Back then, we could barely access the internet on mobile devices and today we couldn’t even survive without it. It’s no secret that the technology industry is growing quickly. Trends develop faster and faster with each new request to solve a problem or make a process more efficient. The tricky part is staying up to date with those trends and implementing them at their peak to reap the benefits.
According to Gartner, “business innovation will create extraordinary change from mundane concepts” over the next few years. Aligning your business and your goals to these changes now, will help you be even more prepared to implement them as they roll out.
So what should you look for?
Gartner Prediction: By 2020, 100 million consumers will shop in augmented reality.
Now more than ever, businesses are making a push toward digital purchasing. Working to implement new systems that allow customers to pay online or look up their history on-the-go is essential. It is estimated that by 2018, “smartphones will continue to drive more than 90% of AR-related experiences”. This all comes down to making it a priority to create a mobile space for your business to run on.
Customers and employees are beginning to expect that they should be able to engage with your company and products online while still getting a great quality of service. Working through this advancement now and striking out any problems will put you ahead of the curve when this becomes the main way of doing business.
Gartner Prediction: Through 2020, IoT will increase data center storage demand by less than 3%.
Currently, healthcare providers, manufacturing companies and natural resources, transportation and utilities verticals require an immense amount of storage space. If you are in any of these industries, this is something you have noticed and it is something that is expected to grow as all of your processes are moved to a digital space and the data continues to come in.
Within these verticals, it is required that a certain amount of data always be kept. You can’t just delete a patients records because you haven’t seen them in a year, right? Because of this, Gartner suggests looking into steady trends for scaling down data and reducing it where you can now, before it becomes too costly to keep every single file stored and secure. “Seek technology partners with experience in analytics, data management and storage in your industry” and save yourself the headache in the future.
Gartner Prediction: By 2020, IoT will save consumers and businesses $1 trillion a year in maintenance, services and consumables.
Working through every challenge now and implementing these changes throughout your company will pay off, and we mean pay off in the long run. Could you imagine actually saving millions in expensive and time consuming processes? Sounds like a dream, we know, but even Gartner confirms that it is possible with technology.
To achieve these goals, Gartner suggests setting a target goal of “10% reduction costs” and working your way up the ladder. Build a plan that targets advancements with “the fastest returns” and “start with POC projects that have short payback periods in order to build momentum” for larger projects as the year goes on.
Here’s to looking at the future! All of the advancements are coming down the pike and it’s time to make sure your business will reap the rewards.
