The Coronavirus pandemic has catapulted digital transformation to the top of the must-haves in the minds of CIOs. It has been a go-to enabler for organizations to enhance their customer experience and generate higher ROI. Businesses with brick-and-mortar presence were shifting their approach towards building a digital presence to stay relevant and ahead of their competition. Many have already begun their digital transformation journey, while some are in the designing phase. Technology landscape is dynamic in nature. While the pandemic forced businesses to adopt digital drivers such as automation, big data, digital workforce, etc., they were soon replaced with the next big wave of digital transformation. This new wave has brought in new trends that will shape up the next normal. Let’s look at 5 new such trends that will soon become the next must-haves.

Customer Experience Reimagined
It’s not just about having the best products anymore. The new wave of millennials prefers convenience over loyalty. Create digital experiences that support modern web in the form of progressive web apps, true native mobile apps with best-in-class UX, intelligent chat-bots, conversational apps, wearables, and immersive experiences that leverage augmented reality. Organizations are trying to maximize the use of components and backend integration that leads to a unified and seamless experience across channels.

The next big thing in Customer experience (CX) is to design amazing applications for any audience across any device with no limits on user experience taking full advantage of the underlying device OS for native and full power of modern browsers for web. Omni-channel tools eliminate data siloes, and bring all the data in one place. Be it a web presence, a physical store visit, or a mobile application click, omni-channel binds all customer-facing interfaces together, integrated at the back-end, and helps in better CX and data visibility across the board.

Data and User Privacy
In the wake of privacy concerns amongst digital users, we will be seeing organizations focusing on user and data privacy. This will soon become a unique selling proposition for many to leapfrog their competitors. This could mean that users in the next normal will be able to allow/deny access to their data residing on applications, web and other digital channels. The user will be the owner of his/her data. Data privacy has shaken even multi-national brethren, forcing them to comply with new regulations laid by authorities. EU has already entered the game with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) compliance policy and other regions have followed suit.

APIs – The Road to Cloud
Cloud is already adopted by most organizations to create a seamless business continuity and fasten go-to market. Application programming interfaces (APIs) are key in building economies of scale. From converting legacy infrastructure to micro-services, APIs will help businesses to reduce data silos and create collaborative experiences. It will also help them convert scattered applications into one behemoth of a data mart, helping them in making critical business-decisions and increase their overall ROI.

XaaS (Everything-as-a-Service)
As-a-Service (aaS) has already become the norm to become a truly digital-native enterprise. The new trend in the aaS model is Everything-as-a-Service (XaaS) where services rendered and delivered will completely reside on the cloud with virtual access to almost everything. Tools such as the Internet of Things (IoT) and Artificial Intelligence (AI) will play a crucial role in building those services or augmenting existing services to achieve the digital-native status quo.

AIaaS (Artificial Intelligence-as-a-Service)
AI technologies are already used by 77% of consumers. A number of technological innovations such as data processing, and face & speech recognition have become possible due to AI. AI is a vast area that includes AI platforms, chat-bots, machine learning (algorithm category consisting of various libraries and frameworks), deep learning, and analytics.

AI has led to rise in the use of machine learning in computing. AI has contributed significantly in creating a framework for cloud computing. Many IT industry giants are already betting huge on AIaaS (Artificial Intelligence as a Service) with new line of services such as digital assistance, cognitive computing, machine learning, business intelligence, and so on.

These services can have a significant impact on the day-to-day lives of consumers. With the help of vital statistics from health-care organizations, AI can help identify patterns and predict the desired outcome of a given situation in a focused environment. AI can also help in tracking of smart devices, thereby, creating a footprint of individuals. It can help marketers and advertisers with predictive data on what one is likely to do in a given event. This will help marketers to show relevant ads to consumers at the right time that could help them fetch better returns for their marketing dollars.

Needless to say, the new wave of digital technology trends can reduce human interactions, increase productivity, initiate automation, and simplify lives. Organizations need to understand the importance of this technology paradigm shift, and leverage it to create digital ecosystems and become future-ready enterprises to welcome the next normal with both hands.

Mobile service providers are spending billions of dollars building out nationwide 5G networks and are touting the benefits of the new services in TV and internet ads, but according to Accenture’s Communications & Media Industry Lead for North America Andrew Walker, those service providers are unlikely to see a rate of return when it comes to consumer subscriptions.

“It will be interesting to see whether they can raise prices,” he told RCR Wireless News, adding that they probably won’t be able to. “There’s no incremental revenue that they’re getting that they weren’t getting from 4G. It seems like a colossal waste of shareholder value.”

So, where is 5G going? Where is the value for telcos? For Accenture, the answer is cloud computing.

“We see 5G becoming the edge to enable cloud computing,” stated Walker. “There is a lot of focus around 5G as a transformative technology for businesses. Think about the image of dystopian movies like The Terminator, where the machines are making machines. 5G and the use cases we’re seeing right now [are about]how to make IoT work and achieve giant steps in thinks like productivity and worker safety.”

“If you have wicked fast speeds, now you’re able to do all of those analytics and super-fast computing in real time without having to plug in cables,” he continued.

The potential snag for operators is that cloud industry giants like Amazon, Google and Microsoft are emerging as huge competitors in this space.

“If you look at their capex spend and the undersea cables they’ve laid over the past few years,” began Walker, “essentially what they’ve built is a giant telecommunications network with processing and crazy speed ’round the globe.”

Naturally, this can be viewed as a major threat to telcos. But, that’s not the whole story.

According to Walker, what these tech giants are building — corporate date centers being transformed by the cloud — are “nice” and “neat,” but that without that last-mile connection being delivered by the telco— without fast connectivity speeds being delivered to the company, its employees and its machines—these cloud services “don’t deliver the value.”

“The telcos can deliver the edge cases and the connectivity and the speeds that make cloud far more impactful to businesses,” finished Walker.

A recent example is the July announcement that Accenture is working with AT&T to outfit Phillips 66, a 2,000-acre refinery in Belle Chasse, Louisiana, with a private cellular network solution that will lay the foundation for potential future 5G use cases.

Walker provider further insight into the project: “We are working with AT&T to kind of overlay the network across the entire space and then start to look out how people are doing their jobs and how machines are interrelating. And all of this goes back to the cloud to look at safety, throughput, where there are leaks and spills. Now all of the sensors on the machines can immediately report back to whatever cloud provider they’re using and run all of the analytics.”

“Cloud is really cool,” he added, “but without the advanced network across these 2,000 acres, it doesn’t help the company a lot.”