Top Digital Transformation Trends That Will Reorganize the Tech-Industry in 2020

The past decade has been a decade of dynamic disruption where a number of technologies came forward and took the center stage. Several organizations also adopted new age mechanisms to kick start their transformative journey. In the last few years, digital transformation has become the core for almost all tech-based and some not too tech-savvy organizations as well. In this digital race, to stay ahead, they are incorporating numerous tricks and techniques not just to outdo their contemporaries but to surpass their traditional and uninteresting mode of business.

As we have entered into a new decade, industry along with industry experts have started predicting how digital transformation will cause disruption in 2020 and beyond. Here is the list of top digital transformation trends that are more likely to shine this year.

Consumer Experience

Organizations will move forward in direction of solving increasing pressure on IT to enhance their bandwidth for delivering connected, personalized experiences to consumers, be it customers, partners, employees or developers.

On an average, around 900 applications are used in every organization which makes it messy for companies to provide a connected experience that is expected by consumers for a consistent journey across multiple channels – messaging services and mobile service portals. It has been estimated that omnichannel customers spend 10 percent more online than single-channel customers. Amid this, a connected experience would imply towards removing friction in the customer journey, and being accessible anywhere, anytime. With the rise in technology and on-demand services, consumers expect personalized services and think companies should understand their expectations and requirements.

Analytics: A Competitive Edge

Besides all the hypes, organizations still aren't heavily investing in analytics. Incorporating high standard analytics has become more important today as simply far too much valuable customer data is collected, processed and turned into insights for any company to remain competitive in the market. According to Forbes, "Flying blind and following your gut are no longer viable options when every other business is leveraging sophisticated analytics tools to identify problems, opportunities, and solutions. That's why we are seeing a consolidation of analytics capabilities across the tech world, from Salesforce acquiring Tableau, to Microsoft creating its own Power Platform." It is quite clear that every major company has already figured out that the future lies with data and technologies that can harness its true value. Regardless of what industry people work in, analytics will be one of the most dominant touch points of digital transformation in 2020.

AI at the Forefront of Digital Transformation

According to some digital experts, AI will be the key to delivering business outcomes with digital transformation. TBR analysts wrote in a September 2019 Digital Transformation Insights report, "AI is one of the technologies that will help standardize the digital transformation market and turn the wildly loose use of the term 'digital' into tangible business results." AI is and will surely infiltrate all business functions be it sales, marketing, HR or finance.

Rahul Singh, managing director with Pace Harmon said, "IT leaders should incorporate them into their business-driven data analytics strategy in 2020 to more quickly and effectively synthesize and present insights gleaned from the massive amounts of enterprise data – far more than teams of human data scientists can ever hope to assimilate. This will provide their business stakeholders with a competitive first-mover advantage."

Growing Importance of Mergers and Acquisition Activities

In the tech-industry or precisely in the IT outsourcing industry, mergers and acquisitions have accelerated as conventional IT companies are acquiring engineering and digital marketing firms to bring new capabilities to their clients. According to Steve Hall, partner and president of global technology research and advisory firm ISG, "This record pace of acquisitions will continue to reshape the landscape for CIOs and the service providers they partner with. The M&A activity will be a major source of disruption for CIOs as they are challenged to recognize potential synergies, but more importantly, to integrate digital capabilities into their product lines."

Relevance of APIs in Business Performance

Application Programming Interface is a type of application that exposes the functionality of other applications through standard procedures and allows people utilize different applications, avoiding redundancies and replications in programming codes. Taking advantage of APIs, businesses can improve their productivity and returns while giving space to innovation. Moreover, around 91 percent of companies that have designed their strategy keeping in mind the public and/or private APIs are gaining outstanding results.

Besides, a great level of personalization for customers improved user experience, and automation and efficiency of business processes are some of the major advantages of including API into a business process in 2020. It also lowers the barriers for thriving innovations to happen.