The Coronavirus pandemic has catapulted digital transformation to the top of the must-haves in the minds of CIOs. It has been a go-to enabler for organizations to enhance their customer experience and generate higher ROI. Businesses with brick-and-mortar presence were shifting their approach towards building a digital presence to stay relevant and ahead of their competition. Many have already begun their digital transformation journey, while some are in the designing phase. Technology landscape is dynamic in nature. While the pandemic forced businesses to adopt digital drivers such as automation, big data, digital workforce, etc., they were soon replaced with the next big wave of digital transformation. This new wave has brought in new trends that will shape up the next normal.
Needless to say, the new wave of digital technology trends can reduce human interactions, increase productivity, initiate automation, and simplify lives. Organizations need to understand the importance of this technology paradigm shift, and leverage it to create digital ecosystems and become future-ready enterprises to welcome the next normal with both hands.
Today it is not just about having the best products anymore. The new wave of millennials prefers convenience over loyalty. Today the norm is creating digital experiences to support modern web in the form of progressive web apps, true native mobile apps with best-in class UX, intelligent chat-bots, conversational apps, wearables, and immersive experiences that could leverage augmented reality. Organizations are trying to maximize the use of components and backend integration that leads to a unified and seamless experience across channels. The next big thing in Customer experience (CX) is to design amazing applications for any audience across any device with no limits on user experience taking full advantage of the underlying device OS for native and full power of modern browsers for web. The Omni-channel tools eliminate data siloes, and bring all the data at one place. Be it a web presence, a physical store visit, or a mobile application click, omni-channel binds all customer-facing interfaces together, integrates at the back-end, and helps in better CX and data visibility across the board.
Secondly, we have seen, Cloud is already adopted by most organizations to create seamless business continuity and a fast-paced go-to market. Application programming interfaces (APIs) are the key in building economies of scale. From converting legacy infrastructure to micro-services, APIs will help businesses to reduce data silos and create collaborative experiences. It will also help them convert scattered applications into one behemoth of a data mart, helping them in making critical business-decisions and increase their overall ROI. Going forward, As-a-Service (aaS) has already become the norm to become a truly digital-native enterprise. The new trend in the aaS model is Everything-as-a-Service (XaaS) where services rendered and delivered will completely reside on the cloud with virtual access to almost everything. Tools such as the Internet of Things (IoT) and Artificial Intelligence (AI) will play a crucial role in building those services, or augmenting existing services to achieve the digital-native status quo.
