Top 5 digital transformation trends for success in 2021 and beyond

Technology is rapidly changing and transforming the way we live and work today. To thrive in today’s work environment, companies and businesses should consider replacing traditional technology with more robust digital tools to help maintain efficiency and productivity. Moreover, this would help them stay ahead of the competition and relevant to existing customers while gaining new ones.

With a few significant changes, these robust tools can help companies in not only keeping up with the constantly changing customer expectations but also exceeding them with best-in-class experiences.

This process of replacing traditional technological aspects and manual processes with more advanced tools and digital processes is known as digital transformation.

Will core technologies such as big data, analytics, and artificial intelligence (AI) still make headlines, or are we going to see newer, emerging technologies take the lead? Only time will give the correct answer, but here are the top 5 digital transformation trends for 2021 & beyond.

Robotic Process Automation (RPA)

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Like any other technological aspect, intelligent automation is another digital transformation trend that will garner a lot of attention and investment in 2021. Intelligent automation combines robotic process automation (RPA) and AI to automate entire business processes end-to-end.

With more focus on RPA, it is predicted that companies and businesses will adopt AI immensely to automate decision-making operations, which will, in turn, automatically trigger an increased dependence on AI.

Customer Relationship Management (CRM)

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Making improvements to customer experience (CX) will offer major advantages to companies and businesses that successfully implement customer-focused strategies.

Holistic customer profiles that leverage CRM, transactional, and third-party data along with integrating both online and offline customer data with identity resolution tools are at the base of every effective digital transformation.

What the majority of businesses don’t have is not actually the technology in on itself, as CRM vendors offer them tools such as AI and those for process automation.

In fact, what companies, and their respective decision-makers must be extremely serious about, is building up a culture of data e process-based decision making.

Companies now need to decide what information they need to collect and how to keep these profiles clean and valuable in the long run.

Customer Experience Management (CX)

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CX has become such a significant part of differentiation today that it cannot be categorized under marketing or sales. It needs to be a full-scale, top-down, bottom-up attitude among every individual in your business. Creating a company culture driven by CX is the only way to live in 2021 and beyond.

Improving the customer experience is increasingly being seen by companies as one of the best ways to gain more customers and retain existing ones. Companies now realize that customers want highly customizable and personalized experiences. According to a study, about 75% of customers are more likely to purchase from a brand that knows their identity and purchase history.

Based on the customer’s purchase history, companies can recommend items for future purchases, thereby boosting sales and increasing conversions. Besides, brands are shifting to big data analytics to gain insights into their customers and offer them the best and the most personalized CX.

Data Science and Big Data

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For making business decisions, data is paramount. Every day, around 2.5 quintillion bytes of data is created.

When speaking about data in general, we must remember the amount of data generated every day. For instance, 90% of the data has been generated in recent years and less than 2% of that data is being used today. This means that the volume at which data is generated today, and other insights are underivable because of the lack of analytical tools is rather perplexing.

This is where big data and advanced analytical tools come into the picture. These technologies have offered most companies the ability to extract insights from huge volumes of data. As insights derived from existing data become the source of newer business and revenue models, it is predicted that data value management will become an important part of digital transformation.

Artificial Intelligence (AI)

According to a recent study by PwC, AI will contribute almost $15.7 trillion to the global economy by 2030. AI is being integrated more and more into company processes.

Big tech organizations such as Microsoft, Google, and Facebook invest huge amounts of money in AI every year. Other companies can harness the potential of AI with minimal expenditure. Thanks to AI-driven accounting software, companies can, for instance, take advantage of continuous accounting in which exchanges are entered into the accounting system automatically and in real-time.

On the other hand, machine learning (ML) solutions study the data and identify patterns, allowing the software tool to make forecasts and predictions while automating daily activities such as routing customer invoices or adjusting payroll.

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It’s not enough to simply recognize and understand the most important digital transformation trends for your company. You must also learn to implement, deploy and then embrace the change across your company and employees, allowing everyone to be part of the change.