Dr. S. Ramachandran Chief Development Officer –Suryadatta Group of Institutes
Turbulence and disruption has become a part of everyday’s life because of the rapid growth and influence of exponential technologies. The present era is of the data. ‘New age’ companies are architected to capture data far better than others. Companies are becoming datavores. FAANGs (Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix and Alphabet’s Google) are leading the Artificial Intelligence research along with BAT (Baidu, Alibaba and Tencent). Companies have started gathering online consumer data intensively, analyzing them extensively and use them for improving their business processes. Exponential technologies are leading us to an interesting cusp of our lifetime change in our lifestyle. Artificial Intelligence, IoT, Cybersecurity, Robotic Process Automation have gained significant momentum in our day to day activities.
Gone are days, when technology was built around businesses, today, businesses are built around technology. This transformation has penetrated deep into society, businesses and people, impacting the way we live, we work, interact and we do business. Apple’s Siri, Google Assistant and Amazon’s Alexa are the buzzwords by AI. Web and mobile have been serving us extensively and will continue to serve, whereas new interfaces are coming to the fore, changing the way we interact with software applications. Virtual Reality, Augmented Reality and Mixed Reality are now leveraged across the business domains.
The synergy between the traditional and new interfaces are being exploited to provide ultimate user experience in the applications. Cloud computing have made almost all business process, virtual and palm driven. The field of autonomous devices are rapidly growing and according to Gartner survey, by 2021, 10% of new vehicles will have autonomous driving capability compared to 1% in 2017. Devices ranging from sensors, wearables and smart assistants are already in vogue in our everyday life and IoT will be the key focus for powering digital transformation. Block chain shall manage contracts, consumer requests, transactions and provides huge computational resources required along with high availability.
Artificial Intelligence has started to permeate all aspects of business processes, society and humanity and has huge potentiality for delivering end to end impact. It is said that, smart phone users interact with their devices an average of 85 times a day, 46% report they could not live with smart phones. By the end of 2020, an estimated 50 billion devices will be wirelessly connected to the internet. Every second, 80 new objects are getting connected to the internet for the first time.
India now has close to 450 million internet users, including over 440 million millennials and over 390 million GenZ consumers (born after the year 2000). Most millennials are data natives. A data native expects their world to be digital, smart and demands personalized things as per their habits and taste. Banking processes have undergone significant changes to attract data natives. Approximately, 88% of the consumers search online before purchasing a product. Google uses Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning in the device of the consumer decides to show the products that the consumers would be interested in purchasing online. Alibaba is another example of e-commerce player, using AI and ML to improve the touch points of the consumer experience with the marketplace. E Commerce revolution is taking the retail industry by leaps and bounds ahead of traditional retailing, enriching the customer experience in multiple ways, as consumers are digitally savvy and their expectations are steadily increasing.
According to Deloitte Insurance Industry Outlook for 2018, mining data from IoT sensors for decision making, going digital and connecting data sources and leveraging them for business outcomes are becoming the drivers for growth. For example, using the data received from the customer’s smart phone using GPS features, the insurance companies can offer flexible travel insurance instead of offering a fixed duration insurance upfront. Block chain technology is considered as the biggest disruptor of this age. Block chain streamlines paperwork, increases data security and saves businesses costs by cutting out time consuming processes.
The role of technology and use of data is mind boggling with ecommerce industries critically exploiting the technology. Many of the technological innovations like AI, IoT, mobile and cloud based applications are predominantly revolving around the consumer and his experiences, carving out business models which are personalized and changing with time. The combinatorial effect of exponential technologies in effective utilization of data has drastically changed the business game worldwide.