As an enterprise, you can spot an early trend, hop onto this bandwagon, and ride it to the top. However, recognizing that something is, indeed, a rising trend and not a fluke is not always a simple task.
At the same time, this is not that difficult either. For instance, AI, NLP, cryptocurrencies, and machine learning will be big in the future. The same goes for datafication, which is the driving force of the modern business world.
Here’s why we’ve set aside some of these trends and a few benefits of being their early adopter.
1. Generative AI
The first technology that you should start using is generative AI. Even if you don’t want to use it to create entire scripts or articles, there’s so much it can do to make your job easier.
- Inspiration: Sometimes, developing many ideas for new content is hard. When it comes to content marketing, you have the quantity quote to fill. Coming up with a new idea is harder than you think. So, why not just ask an AI platform for suggestions? The better examples you provide it with, the better.
- Outlines and drafts: Another way generative AI helps save time is by helping you with outlines, drafts, and rephrasing technical parts of your content (meta). This may sound simplistic, but it will save hours of your time. These hours can be used doing something else, or you can use them to polish your content.
- Interpretation and learning: Analytical capabilities of generative AI go beyond just interpreting data. It’s also great at simplifying these results. This means you no longer have to rely on pie charts and graphs to break down the information for the rest of the team. With the right prompt, you can copy text and break it down to a layman.
Using some form of generative AI will be mandatory for anyone looking to be competitive in 2023.
2. Cryptocurrency
We can’t stress how important it is for a business to diversify its investments. You can’t just let the money sit dormant. Generally speaking, you should split all your money into three categories:
- Reinvesting in your business
- Investing in new venues
- Cash reserve
When it comes to investing, cryptocurrencies should be one of the options. Sure, you’re late for early investment in Bitcoin; however, you never know which token could be the next crypto to explode. Just balance major crypto investments with smaller, riskier coins, bringing better yield. In other words, you need to diversify this asset as you would diversify your other assets on a larger scale. Keep some money in these high-risk-high-reward coins and put everything else into bigger coins as a value preservation method.
It’s also worth mentioning that there are many crypto-adjacent technologies that you could leverage to your advantage. Smart contracts, blockchain security, and more are some perks you could access by adopting crypto early.
Accepting crypto payments can be a welcome change if you have a global audience. This way, you can have instant transfers at low fees. Just bear in mind that different regions have different crypto regulations. Still, having an additional option can hardly be seen as negative.
3. Tracking smart devices
The main reason why IoT has been talked about for a while, but it still hasn’t had the breakthrough that everyone announces, is the lack of smart devices. This is rapidly changing, and most modern equipment, gadgets, and devices, in general, are designed with smart capabilities and connectivity to Wi-Fi.
One of the main reasons that employee theft was so high in the past is that it was incredibly hard to catch perpetrators. There’s no breaking in since these people just abuse access they already have. Second, it would take a while until they get caught (at least until the next time you conduct an inventory audit). Lastly, the perpetrator is not the only person with this access, so you’ll have difficulty figuring out who it was. With devices connected to the network, this will be a lot harder to pull off.
Then, there’s the fact that your delivery system benefits from the fact that you can track your shipments in real-time. This will increase the efficiency of your customer support, and by giving access to this GPS tracking to your customers, you’ll eliminate the need for them ever to call to inquire about their shipment being late.
You’ll also get more insight into their use by tracking these devices in real-time. Usually, the reported and the real use don’t match. Now, you can examine the difference.
4. Datafication
Everything is data; however, this abstract concept needs to get an appropriate form to be actionable. What does this mean? Well, generally speaking, there are two types of data:
- Unstructured
- Structured
Structured data is easily quantifiable. It’s a number you can enter into a table or BI (business intelligence) software and analyze it. Unstructured data must be extracted and formatted into structured data before it can be analyzed.
There are two ways you can handle this. First, you can look for an intelligent information management system (IIMS). This powerful tool is designed to interpret and transform unstructured data into structured data. Integrating it into a document management system will automatically sort this data into the right file or table. In other words, it skips several menial steps and immediately delivers the desired outcome.
Second, you could do this manually, which will take an incredible amount of work hours (and be a very costly affair).
Thanks to the advancements in NLP (natural language processing), this task is simpler and more accurate than ever.
5. Machine learning
Learning from previous experience is a normal part of any line of work; however, with the help of machine learning, you can now make this simpler, automatic, and more accurate.
The bottom line is that the computing power of modern AI-powered platforms is immense, and you, as an entrepreneur, need to take advantage of it. It all comes down to feeding it enough relevant data.
This way, you’ll get better predictions and projections, superior decision-making, and even a much higher accuracy when it comes to predictive maintenance.
One of the fields where this is the most used is cybersecurity. Namely, analyzing user experience to the last small habit will make it easy to spot an account takeover. Even something as elusive as friendly fraud won’t be able to fool you much longer.
Now, most businesses are preoccupied with scaling up their business, and the best way to do so is to spot some of these small inaccuracies early on. With the help of machine learning, you’ll do a much easier job when it comes to recognizing these opportunities, regardless of whether we’re talking about supply chain optimization or growing market trends.
Leveraging technology is the simplest way to get the competitive edge you need
The thing with these five tech trends is that it’s inevitable for every enterprise to adopt them in the next decade. Why wait? Being an early adopter gives you a competitive edge and allows you to corner a part of the market that most of your competitors will soon be fighting. There are two ways to get ahead in the business world – being the best or first. By adopting these trends early, you can be both.