Top 10: The Digital Transformation Trends in 2021

The coronavirus pandemic has sent shockwaves further beyond the healthcare dimension, permeating many aspects of our daily life. It has affected our way of interacting with each other, our way of buying things, and even our pre-existing business models.

We have been pushed towards making more progress in digital business transformation in a few months than in all recent years altogether. Where will this new path lead us? We can’t be entirely sure, but these digital transformation trends will very likely be relevant in 2021.

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1. Quantum computers

In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, quantum computers have been used to develop therapies and potential vaccines.

What makes a quantum computer different? These computers use qubits instead of using traditional bits. Like normal bits, qubits can be “on” or “off” but they can also be “on” and “off” at the same time. This ability is known as “overlapping” and offers a huge range of possibilities. Their capability to query, monitor, and analyse data comes almost without limitation. When this technology is deployed, we will be able to do things that we would not have even dreamed of just some years ago.

These computers are called to transform medicine, break sophisticated encryption techniques, and revolutionise communications.

2. “Headless technology”

By using this kind of software architecture, companies can separate their front-end content (i.e. everything that the user can find on the app or website) from the back-end (the app’s internal processes, also jointly known as the “server-side”). This separation enables creating more personalised shopping experiences.

86% of companies state that their customer acquisition costs have increased.

This means that companies need to maximise the ROI of their new customer acquisition net costs and also that they have to focus on designing strategies to retain these customers and promote their loyalty.

Companies willing and able to push forward their digital transformation strategy to offer better shopping experiences will gain a competitive edge over their industry rivals.

3. Hybrid service environments

A hybrid environment combines and merges public cloud and private cloud services to create a single, flexible, and cost-effective infrastructure.

This so-to-speak “hybrid cloud” is responsible for orchestrating and managing apps, as well as for building an infrastructure adapted to each company’s workloads, helping it achieve its technical and business goals more effectively than with the public or private cloud alone. We strongly recommend companies that have not yet begun to maximise their business potential through digitalisation to rely on digital transformation consulting services.

4. Artificial Intelligence (AI)

Businesses, governments, and other institutions have needed to work together to come up with quick solutions against the spread of the coronavirus. Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning have been the tools they have naturally turned to.

Many people think that AI is somewhat of a distant future technology but, in fact, it already is an important part of our daily lives. It’s presently involved in many common aspects of our lives such as shopping or entertainment.

Its use will keep on growing and expanding at a global level to a wide range of areas of our everyday lives.

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5. Customer Data Platforms (CDP)

These platforms collect and structure data from customer profiles in real-time, creating a data system formed by information packages. These data packages provide a solid and unified basis for companies to improve how they interact with their buyers.

Customer data is becoming increasingly complex and, at the same time, increasingly necessary for sales and marketing operations. Company digitalisation involves the opportunity of being able to effectively manage all this information that costumers leave behind when they use the Internet. This is something that companies willing to become more competitive cannot afford to ignore.

6. Telecommuting

Over recent years, employees across many industries have been expressing a growing need for greater labour flexibility. However, the current breakthrough in telecommuting has come as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic rather than out of these requests. Working from home has suddenly become the only viable option for many companies.

This has been made possible by the agile development and deployment of technologies such as Zoom, Webex, or Microsoft Teams. These platforms have pushed their digital transformation strategy quite significantly as to their use and development. There has also been an increase in computer sales and connectivity investments to fill in the gap created by social distancing.

Undoubtedly, this health crisis has shown that employees working remotely can carry out their tasks effectively and such insight entails several economic improvements for companies.

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7. Privacy

Online privacy is becoming increasingly relevant and particularly important of late. The idea behind attaining proper privacy is to encrypt the entire computing process—not just the data—creating thus additional layers of security around confidential information.

Google, Microsoft, and Alibaba have taken to the task of developing new protocols and best practices through the Confidential Computing Consortium. It’s still in a state of development, but we should begin to see a strong trend regarding privacy improvements in 2021 in response to the swell in confidential data moving around the Internet.

8. Cybersecurity

The pandemic has put cybersecurity in the spotlight once more. Hackers have taken advantage of the circumstances caused by the coronavirus pandemic to expand their targeting campaigns against companies all around the world.

From January to April 2020 alone, banks suffered an increase in attacks of 238% and cloud servers of 600%. With fewer employees working on-premises, strengthening their networks and updating cybersecurity protocols has become a must for companies.

Software providers must build up their efforts to make their products more secure and able to cope to a greater extent with the escalation of threats that will most likely carry on next year.

? Also read | Cybersecurity For Startups (A Step-By-Step Guide)

9. 5G standardisation

We’ve heard a lot about the benefits of 5G, but ever since telecommuting and digital collaboration have become a cornerstone of our working lives, some of its benefits such as reliable connectivity and increased bandwidth have truly become essential.

Businesses cannot afford to be off the data grid and implementing 5G is now seen as a key element for maintaining good connectivity soon.

10. Hybrid devices

The current trend is to be connected 24/7. Customers are looking for lighter, smaller, and more versatile devices that offer a higher connectivity degree than their older counterparts. Instead of carrying several devices, the trend is to use hybrid devices such as Microsoft Surface Duo or Samsung Galaxy Fold 2. These can work as phones and tablets alike and can be folded and unfolded according to your needs.

Are you about to start a digital transformation within your company?

Now you know what the main digital transformation trends for 2021 are. But to successfully implement your company’s digital transformation strategy you must keep in mind some important things: mind-set change, process improvement, putting the customer at the center…

Yeeply can help you with making your company’s digital business transformation become a success. Let us know what you have in mind and we will put forth solutions tailored for your company.