Digital transformation can make a huge impact on an organisation, but what form should digital transformation take? Here are the top technology trends impacting organisations in 2021.
Automation and machine-learning
Artificial intelligence (AI) and automated processes are changing the way in which organisations utilise data and engage with staff and stakeholders. These technologies transform how organisations can respond to challenges and demands, allowing human input to focus on strategy and creativity.
AI
Artificial intelligence is one of the key areas of focus for many organisations as the opportunity for improved efficiency and productivity is exponential. AI has the ability to analyse information and predict outcomes faster and more accurately than humans, ultimately empowering better decision making through detailed insights.
Sales teams are harnessing the power of AI through Dynamics 365 Sales, to support opportunity pipelines. By analysing masses of information, AI-powered solutions can learn from sale transactions and interactions. AI can then provide sales teams with meaningful insights and predictions on what sales will close, allowing teams to focus their effort on high probability opportunities.
Learn how Incremental helped Stanlow Terminals to establish a 5-year growth plan using Dynamics 365 Sales.
Automation
The automation of daily tasks and organisational processes is a technology trend that infiltrates every area of an organisation. Automating processes improves the workings of an organisation on a day-to-day, ground-floor level, impacting business users in a tangible way.
Business processes created by employees can be automated to speed up and lighten manual workloads. Automation solutions that offer low code/no code capabilities go one step further, by empowering every citizen in an organisation to automate processes without technical support. This eases pressure on IT teams and makes the opportunity for automation and productivity limitless.
Automated chatbots are quickly becoming a key communication channel for organisations and customers due to its speed and efficiency. Chatbots are automated, instant messaging systems that rapidly respond to customers and employees. Chatbots can be created, through solutions such a Power Virtual Agents, to respond to high-volume enquiries and direct users to useful resources, without having human, manual input. Power Virtual Agents utilise machine-learning to make them effective conversational tools, mirroring human interaction. Chatbots enable organisations to respond to customer enquiries with minimal resourcing.
Wellbeing centric technology
Across the globe, more people than ever before are now working from home. In 2020, Microsoft Teams saw a new daily record of 2.7 billion meeting minutes in one day. This experience has revealed some positive benefits of remote working such as a flexible working day. However, concerns around extended periods of remote working have come to the surface, such as burn–out, loneliness and longer working hours. Although at times the issue, technology has a key role to play in supporting employee wellbeing.
Solutions, such as Microsoft Viva, can be used to manage employee wellbeing. Viva Insights is aimed at both individual employees and managers, as it can track productivity and wellbeing at a personal and business-wide level. Individual identities are data-protected when providing leaders with impactful business-wide insights. The goal of Viva Insights is to nurture employee wellbeing and avoid burnout. For example, detecting when a team has too many meetings and not enough focus time, allowing managers to identify this issue and take corrective actions.
Hybrid working and smart offices
The way we work now and how we want to work in the future, has changed. With many office-based jobs functioning remotely due to the Covid-19 pandemic, employees and organisations have realised the benefits of having a flexible approach to a work environment.
However, as discussed in trend 2, there are concerns around extended periods of remote-working. In addition, many employees would now prefer to balance their time between home and the office – referred to as hybrid working.
To support effective hybrid working, organisations must invest in technology that can bridge the gap between remote and office workers. Microsoft Teams Rooms provides advanced functionality for a collaborative experience that is easy to use, deploy and manage. Microsoft Teams Room systems can unify visual content in meetings that both the people in the room and those joining the meeting remotely can experience, such as a content camera which shares physical whiteboard content into the virtual meeting. Collaboration tools which enable seamless communication with people in the room and those joining remotely, will be key to supporting a dynamic, hybrid environment.