Six Top Digital Transformation Trends That Will Dominate in 2021

by Managed Outsource Managed Outsource Solutions

The world is facing a global challenge with the COVID-19 pandemic taking its toll. Even during this pandemic, there is one arena that is smiling bright – “Digital Transformation”. No longer regarded as a “should have” component, digital transformation has now become an essential tool for organizations worldwide, no matter what size and segment they belong to. With the beginning of 2021, digitization trends have exposed certain eye striking transformations – more so due to the pandemic that has struck the world. Digital transformation involves the integration of digital technologies to create new or modify existing business processes, culture and customer expectations to meet the challenging demands or requirements of the market. For successful implementation of digital transformation, businesses could consider data conversion with the help of data entry services.

Enhancing the stakeholder experiences have always been a major objective of digital transformations (right from the beginning to the end) for companies. According to MuleSoft’s Connectivity Benchmark survey, almost every CIO is actively involved in digital transformation projects. In fact, 99 percent of IT decision makers are entrusted with the job of using new technologies to modernize legacy processes and implement new business model innovation opportunities. With significant advancements in the field of technology, digital transformation continues to evolve and innovative ways are discovered to improve the efficiency of the business. Hence, keeping an advance track of the latest advancements and trends in digital transformation and evaluating their technological efficiency is crucial for organizations. Here discussed are some of the top digital transformation trends that will shape or dominate in 2021 –

5G Will Dominate – The use of 5G technology is no more in its infancy stage as its immense reliability is unlocking new capabilities in the sphere of other mega trends. Today, with professional lives being connected heavily through remote working, video calls and internet connectivity - digital collaboration with reliable connectivity and bandwidth has become a core part of businesses. The increased reliance on mobile devices, tablets, and IoT sensors highlights the need or demand for flawless connectivity which can be availed with 5G networks. Today, organizations cannot afford to remain disconnected; the value of 5G deployments will increasingly become mainstream in 2021.

Explosion of Customer Data Platforms (CDP) – The world witnessed a severe explosion of customer data platforms (CDP) over the last year. Fragmented data from multiple sources can be quite difficult to organize for those companies that rely on timely and well-curated data to operate optimally. As per estimates from IBM, the so called “data” costs US businesses roughly $3 trillion annually. Therefore, addressing this challenge has become a top priority for companies of all sizes. CDPs can be a perfect solution for this problem by collecting data from all available sources, organizing it, tagging it, and making it usable for anyone who needs access to it. In fact, top companies like Adobe, SAP, Oracle, Treasure Data and Microsoft have already invested heavily in providing the market with powerful new CDPs to provide the coveted 360 customer view. The exponential growth or data is not going to stop any longer. Analytics platforms, data warehouses and visualization tools will retain its relevance. With fragmented business operations (involving the work-from-home models) and continuing data collection across an ever-expanding ecosystem of touch points, customer data platforms (CDPs) are definitely going to gain momentum in 2021.

Cyber security is the need of the hour - With the pandemic and high-end digitization, securing data or information remains a top priority. The pandemic situation has created a significant rise in hacking attempts, data breaches, threats, malicious attacks and server interventions against businesses globally. Due to an increase in network traffic, mobile devices, and WFH (work-from-home systems), the entire organizational data is at risk. With fewer employees working onsite on the same secure network, it is clear that companies support their networks, upgrade their cyber security strategies, and expand them to home networks and mobile work-from-home devices. Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) will be a crucial part of this trend as organizations attempt to address nefarious activities that require more sophisticated tools and algorithms to extract data. There are many companies that are amplifying their efforts to make their products and services more secure to deal with certain data threats. For instance, Microsoft (MS) invested resources in key security areas like - active directory, software and cloud.

Privacy and confidential computing gains focus - Confidential computing is another unique approach to sustain cyber security, particularly when addressing communication and data privacy. Confidential computing involves encrypting not just the data, but the entire computing process, thereby creating additional layers of security around sensitive information. Companies like Google and Microsoft are developing new protocols and best practices through the confidential computing consortium. Even though the technology is relatively in its beginning stage, it is expected to gain huge momentum in the coming years.

Hybrid cloud enterprise infrastructure – Right from SaaS applications, On-premises software solutions and a mix of public and private clouds, businesses are increasingly moving towards a hybrid cloud infrastructure. Hybrid cloud strategies help organizations strike the right balance for their unique cloud infrastructure needs. Over the past year, there have been major investments in hybrid from large public cloud providers like AWS, Azure, Google, IBM and Oracle in building tools that enable simpler connectivity between on-premises datacenters and cloud. The basic focus has been to address the challenges of exponential data growth, while also being proactive on issues like privacy, security and compliance. The modernized approach to hybrid cloud is expanding from traditional IT to support industrial applications as well. For instance, Honeywell International Inc. (headquartered in North Carolina, US) has created a unique IoT platform using an open source and hybrid cloud approach. With this platform, the industrial data can be seamlessly managed and integrated with traditional cloud datacenters, applications and workload.

WFH, remote teams and virtual spaces – Due to the pandemic, work-from-home (WFH) trend has become quite normal now. Working from home suddenly became the only viable option for many companies, (particularly in areas with strict corona virus lockdowns). Many global technology companies like Google and Facebook have already extended work from home policies through 2020 and or for parts of 2021. Remote teams have become a necessity for the digital ecosystem. Smarter and effective working policies have been introduced. Technology is increasingly being leveraged to its best, without making business operations to suffer. The WFH regime has witnessed a potential increase in sales of network components, connectivity, IoT tools and sensors, mobile devices, cloud-based devices, and more.

The COVID-19 pandemic has revolutionized both the trajectory and the velocity of digital transformation, and will likely continue to do so into 2021. Organizations are facing new trend lines and priorities towards digitization and therefore need to plan for a long-time digital strategy to stay relevant. Organizations that are planning to begin their digital transformation process need to have a clear-cut understanding of the basic concepts and approaches. With proper understanding, they can take digital transformation beyond IT and make a positive impact on operational performance. Data transformation with the help of a reliable data entry company would make the digital transition process much easier.