Top 5 digitisation trends for business

Digitisation has already become a vital part of a successful business. But the road to success cannot be paved with good intentions alone. It is great if your company is already committed to digitisation.  

Still, it is even more important to be aware of useful innovations. After all, these are the tools that can help you gain a competitive advantage and reduce the risk of potential losses.  

This blog post discusses the top 5 digitalisation trends that help ensure greater employee and customer satisfaction as well as more efficient process management. 

1. Omnichannel solutions 

Modern consumers have extremely high service demands. They also expect an impeccable user experience and functionalities in physical stores and digital channels, such as mobile apps, e-stores, etc. Therefore, the smooth operation of one sales channel is far from a panacea for that business. It is essential to ensure that all customer engagement and sales channels are integrated to work seamlessly together and respond to a person’s life events.  

Omnichannel marketing is becoming one of the top priorities in the B2B sector. According to the global research and consulting company Forrester, 70% of marketers in 2022 will consistently apply digital engagement strategies. While 17% of businesses consider omnichannel solutions the most crucial factor in choosing the tools they will use.  

This growing demand is reflected in financial investments. This year, it is forecast that marketers will spend up to 25% of their annual budget on the application of technological tools and services. 

Technology packages to ensure customer privacy 

As the number of cyberattacks increases, companies often prioritise customer privacy and security. However, there is not always a bold commitment. This is easy to see by simply checking the customer data or information being processed by a particular company.  

All that is needed is to review a website’s cookie and mobile app access policy. A detailed look at the data analysis tools used by a company often reveals how customer data is being handled irresponsibly.  

Deficient information security occurs due to many reasons, such as: 

According to Forrester, technology packages become the top solution for proper customer privacy rather than individual tools. These packages help ensure the complete security of customer data by including risk assessment, supply chain mapping, real-time risk intelligence, and business continuity management.  

Therefore, if a company is genuinely concerned about its customer data, it will first allocate financial and human resources to protecting that data from possible leaks for criminal purposes. And only then will its look for means to process the data for its own benefit.  

No one is immune to cyberattacks. Yet those who care about cybersecurity hygiene suffer less. 

3. A new strategy element of business – total experience 

The pandemic taught us how to work remotely and encouraged companies to discover internal systems to properly organise their work processes and external communication. However, these choices for implementing systems should not be left to managers alone.  

The most effective way to achieve this is by taking the end-users’ overall experience into account. In other words, the company’s internal system execution should be based on the employees’, customers’, and users’ experience.  

Providing a total experience leads to greater trust, satisfaction, loyalty, and support from customers and employees. The importance of this element is revealed in a report by the technology research and consulting company Gartner. It is estimated that by 2026, around 60% of large companies will use global practices to transform their business models. 

4. Platform services for easier processes 

Nothing complicates a simple process more than the burden of complex system administration. As a result, the need for platform solutions tailored to improve specific industries or particular business processes has been rapidly increasing.   

Major cloud service providers, such as Microsoft and AWS, are releasing new platform-as-a-service (PaaS) solutions daily that reduce the administrative burdens for users. In response, the software giants are developing new systems that do not require any modifications and are easier to implement.  

Businesses are increasingly choosing different cloud-based environments for individual projects. However, they are still leaving some solutions to their own data centres. With this in mind, manufacturers offer solutions that allow for multi-cloud and hybrid-cloud models.  

5. The future of business is data sharing 

Historically, companies have operated on a relatively closed basis, keeping their data hidden with the hopes of maintaining a competitive advantage. However, the global trends are now showing the opposite. Gartner‘s report forecasts that by 2023, the organisations that are already promoting data sharing will outperform their competitors in terms of many business metrics.  

The ability to share protected data with other ecosystems is driving new business models and products. For example, researchers and medical professionals pooled clinical data on common platforms at the beginning of the pandemic, accelerating the development of treatments and vaccines.  

Data sharing has also helped drug manufacturers, hospitals, and pharmacies run comprehensive vaccination programmes efficiently. The companies actively applying data-sharing practices will enjoy many advantages in the future.  

What to expect? 

The forecasts for the coming years make it clear that companies that do not shy away from a more open digitisation approach will secure the spot between market leaders. In many cases, this will not be a business sprint with a guaranteed return right here and right now.  

However, digitalisation will gradually help establish a competitive advantage and open up new business prospects. Moreover, it will ensure well-optimised processes that will be appreciated not only by employees but also by consumers. Therefore, companies should take action today instead of eating the dust of their competitors in a few years.  

Are you thinking of digitising your business processes? The Baltic Amadeus team is ready to help you with any digitisation issues. Contact us today.