The Future of Industries Post COVID-19: Top Technology Trends and Their Impact
Since the beginning of the year, the world has witnessed the unfolding of the Covid-19 pandemic. In just a few months, it had transformed people’s lives on an unprecedented scale, impacted every industry, and altered the course of the industry’s growth.
But the pandemic has not slowed innovation, rather, it has amplified it to a historic level. It brought more digital transformation in the last few months than in the last 20 years, allowing businesses and people to continue operations as usual. It has demonstrated the need for building infrastructure for any business to support digitization and stay competitive in the post-COVID -19 world.
Covid-19: Ultimate Catalyst for Digital Transformation
The start of 2020 will be marked as a benchmark of digital transformation. Businesses might have reduced their direct in-person operations amid social distancing, but are in need of policies and solutions using emerging technologies to automate their business process and increase productivity.
How fast can businesses adapt to these emerging technologies?
Keeping this reality check in mind, here are the top technology trends evolving currently that will have long-lasting effects on people and companies post pandemic.
- As industries begin to navigate in the post COVID landscape and economies slowly resume, the application of Artificial Intelligence will be significant in adapting to the new normal.
- Businesses will be experimenting with VR and AR tools to train employees, hold meetings and conferences, collaborate on projects, and connect virtually. Educational institutes will use them to simplify complex subjects.
- Cloud technology will receive a surge in implementation across a wide range of applications by both businesses and educational institutes to meet resource demand and make accessibility easier.
- Connecting with IoT devices will improve quality of life and make daily tasks more comfortable and simple.
- Cybersecurity is one of the vital technologies that will be useful to protect volumes of private data, as thousands of people are currently working remotely for the first time.
- Blockchain technology will improve the transparency of businesses that rely on the seamless integration of disparate systems like healthcare facilities.
How Will These Trends Affect Top Industries?
To date, the COVID-19 pandemic is the first health and humanitarian crisis to make industries adjust to digital changes. The majority of the industries are turning Covid-19’s challenges into meaningful change, preparing themselves for what is coming next. This adaptability and shifting mindset will play a key role in the sustainability of those enterprises. Read on to know how these new trends are shaping up key industries for the new normal.
As per Statista, manufacturing along with the travel industry is the topmost impacted sector, with personnel, operations, supply chain, and revenue seeing effects. Only digitally mature companies have greater resilience, especially in employee engagement and supply chain operations.
Manufacturers migrating their critical applications to the cloud can function more smoothly as their workforce can easily access data and resources despite their location. The flexibility of cloud applications has eliminated concerns such as data security and performance.
Data gives manufacturers new insights in response to the pandemic, helping them to identify lead indicators to build confidence for investments. Enterprises investing in advanced analytics make better use of these capabilities.
Automation reduces the human handling of goods, conducts automatic quality inspections, relieves constraints in the workforce to improve operations, increases productivity, and maintains supply chain continuity even with skeletal crews.
With technological advances like click and collect, contactless payments, customized products, and so on, the retail landscape is booming during the pandemic and will continue in the post-pandemic. Retailers using automation both in stores and in warehouses have a competitive edge, as their consumers, employees, and operations face a lower risk.
Demand forecasting powered by machine learning is the most practical application to today’s reality as it is more adaptable to changes and faster to implement. It enhances customer and provider relationships, optimizes logistics and manufacturing processes, and runs smarter marketing campaigns.
Gartner predicted that by 2020 up to 100 million consumers are expected to use augmented reality in their shopping experience. As the fear of infection persists, augmented shopping with, ‘Try-before-you-buy’ approach and IoT products like smart mirrors allow the customers to engage and interact with products online. Data Science and ML-powered engines can with personal recommendations for customers to anticipate their wants. In fact, 35% of Amazon’s sales are driven by the recommendation engine.
Robots and drones provide autonomous monitoring for inventory management and pricing of products, they identify inventory issues and report them, provide personalized answers to customer’s queries and gather data for a better understanding of their preferences. Cleaning, moving goods, last-mile delivery are not just human tasks anymore.
When WHO declared Covid-19 a global pandemic, education application downloads worldwide surged 90% as compared to the weekly average in the fourth quarter of last year. Educational institutes of every size and kind are finding it valuable to shift to virtual platforms.
AI and ML-based models are helping students to estimate their success rate to complete a course. Big data models are used to plan and design adaptive learning, offering personalized and customized teaching based on the learning requirements of a given student. Based on an individual’s current knowledge and skills, recommendation engines can be developed to suggest the next courses required to achieve proficiency in an area of interest.
Online learning helps both students and teachers to upgrade their knowledge. A technology-driven education will also support the learning process for students with special needs such as reading passages to visually impaired students, and helping screen students with learning disabilities, diagnosing reading, and identifying any academic difficulties.
Teachers can easily identify areas for improvement with periodic assessments. Natural language processing will be used for evaluation and reading for purely theoretical subjects. Augmented and virtual reality techniques help students in visualizing subjects with experimental set-ups such as biology, anatomy, physics, and chemistry.
Covid-19 has exhibited the need for advanced banking technologies and cost-cutting efficiencies. One such technology need is Cloud and Software as a Service (SaaS). It has low infrastructure costs, offers quick changes, resilience, and security. It allows banks to operate with agility and speed to stand with their competitors.
AI improves the customer experience through personalization. This digital ecosystem is based on intuitive, self-learning software, enhancing responses to customer needs. Explainable AI allows customers to understand why a particular (even though negative) decision was made, building better relationships with banks.
Post pandemic and even during one, virtual consultations by medical professionals will become the mainstream care delivery model. Techs like AI, ML, and IoT are already being used to connect proactively with customers for virtual trials and monitoring disease progression.
Some of the digital adoptions of technologies include telemedicine, AI-based X-ray, and CT scan image analysis. Automation in the healthcare industry eliminates human error, reduces time spent on routine tasks, and cuts costs.
Cloud technology and data analytics will provide seamless collaboration and communication between medical centers and health care partners, helping to identify the best treatments and make informed medical decisions.
How can iLink help you with the new reality?
As the future is taking shape with complexity, uncertainty, and opportunity, iLink’s offerings help industries anticipate the needs of society, adjust to new strategies, and suggest solutions to the upcoming challenges. We help organizations address deeply needed changes from a technology perspective at speed and scale to evolve and stay ahead of their competition.
Speak to an expert today to learn how iLink can help you.
