The Covid-19 pandemic has in many ways accelerated digital transformation projects, with a growing focus on AI and the strategic importance of data to support decision making. This acceleration of trends has caused a shift in the things companies could, and should be investing in. Companies, regardless of their size, have been hit with rapid changes with technology more in the spotlight than ever before as companies scramble to transform operations and customer engagement and look for new ways of navigating a rapidly-changing way of working.
With data analytics identified as the number one tech initiative driving 2021 investments, businesses are facing the challenge of unlocking data insights and incorporating AI/analytics working with a largely remote workforce and while still maintaining a human connection. In this environment, a few trends can be identified to help stay ahead of the game, not just in 2021 but beyond. For startups, having the right technology at their core from the start is just as important and new players can learn from the lessons of larger businesses who have had to rapidly adapt.
Investing in data will be the greatest competitive edge
Around 90% of all data generated in the world is unstructured – video and audio is an example of this with the small amount of data used by organisations being just the tip of the iceberg. Of the large mass of unstructured data out there, voice is far and away the biggest opportunity in that it is sizable – but also largely untapped. In the past, the technology to tap into the data in a scalable and meaningful way that demonstrated critical ROI for enterprises just didn’t exist and that meant there was an inability to analyse at scale efficiently, a heavily manual process would be required to unlock and analyse conversations to extract meaningful insights. ...