By Leo Gladys
2022 is just one more stepping stone towards a fully digital workforce.
Business technologies are advancing beyond our ability to develop them. As we move further and further into Industry 4.0, we are starting to see a recurring theme emerge. Digitisation is where it is. From optimisation and streamlining down to supply chain management. Every aspect of business can and will improve with the correct application of digital technologies in the coming years.
The world has already gone digital. There’s no stopping it. All we can do now is hang on to our hats while business tech advances beyond the point that we can keep up with it. As that digital skills gap grows, we need to start improvising. Business technologies are a wonderful way to apply knowledge we don’t have and cross our fingers that it works.
The World Has Gone Digital
We don’t know where the digitisation of the working world will stop. It started with each and every company developing a website of their own and has moved on to something much bigger than that. The addition of social media marketing as an advertising source, alongside the development of online methods of communication and consumer transparency, has left our heads spinning. Those few businesses that have evolved with the times are reeling from the transition… especially after the pandemic forced us all to go remote.
The 3 Biggest Incoming Business Technologies to Look Out For
As we move through Industry 4.0, here are the biggest new features we can expect from our working world.
1 – Business Automation
Although we will always need a workforce to carry out our job roles, business automation could be the way of the future. According to tech job searching site Hays Technology, business automation isn’t the dreaded change we think it is. Automation will aid the workforce we already have, rather than changing things so that ordinary people are put out of work.
Email answering is a good example. You could pay one IT person to answer emails all day asking if the client turned it off and back on again: or you could automate that response to thin the crowd of people emailing you every day. Automation is a tool, not a takeover.
2 – AI Intervention
The next step in progress for those who want to automate processes is to introduce an AI to the situation. The person has tried switching it off and back on again, and your product still doesn’t work. An AI program could step in and run different troubleshooting scenarios depending on the client’s needs. It’s not a robot, nobody is dealing with a metal-faced-server, but it is AI.
3 – VR and AR
Virtual and Augmented Reality are the two next stages of the digital shopping experience. Imagine if your local grocery shop could take place online. Imagine that it wasn’t a case of clicking on items and adding them to a shopping list. What if you could put on your VR headset and explore the store for yourself? What if you could place items into your online shopping basket with your own hands?
These are the digital ways of the future. It’s time we made them happen.
