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What Trends and Technologies Should be Top of Mind for Businesses?

By Trey Norman, COO, Mindbreeze

The business landscape is constantly changing, so investments in technology should be too. With economic uncertainty, businesses need to be strategic in their investments but still facilitate efficiency and productivity simultaneously. Investing in digital transformation and automation solutions could be the answer to prepare companies to be recession-proof and future-proof. Below, you will read about three predictions, trends, and technologies companies should consider in order to stay competitive and profitable.

Technology innovation will continue to ramp up, not slow down:

Companies will indeed cut costs and scale back if a recession is truly on the horizon, but production expectations will not change. Employees will be tasked with increasing pace and producing the same output at the very least so the business doesn't halt. Halts in operations only cause customers to be less satisfied, and of course, this is something organizations want to avoid at all costs - even if the headcount is less than the norm.

Investing in solutions capable of aggregating and consolidating data, information, and knowledge is vital to ensure a slowdown does not happen. If employees are expected to provide similar outputs, it only makes sense to provide them with tools that allow them to do so. Consolidating data helps employees find information faster, a true advantage when research is a large part of most roles and departments. The information generated from searches can provide critical insights to employees in real time, saving them from stressful and time-consuming efforts.

AI-driven question-answering will be a key feature of technology investments:

With data existing in various silos and documents throughout a company, businesses need a way to find information faster, even if their department did not create the content. Company-wide information from structured and unstructured information has loads of knowledge embedded in them. Employees just need a way to find it and make decisions based on what they discover. In machine learning, there is a technique called Natural Language Question Answering (NLQA). NLQA allows the workforce to search questions and receive generated answers compiled and extracted from the information inside company documents - emails, videos, contracts, whitepapers, website content, memos, and more.

The knowledge base within a company can act as the best friend or personal assistant to employees if given the tools to search and find answers with the click of a button - ultimately saving time and costs.

Customization, personalization, and AI democratization will be key drivers:

Companies need highly specific solutions for their workforce and move away from a one-size-fits-all approach. Many people do not have experience with complicated applications and technical training, so low-code or no-code technology is essential for massive rollouts. Making AI simple so different roles can see relevant information and insights in customized, personalized dashboards they can easily design is a significant characteristic of an intelligent technology investment.

Technology tends to be complicated, and many individuals don't want to continue to add complex applications to their toolbox because that diminishes the use of the tool.

AI and machine learning, two terms that sometimes sound scary to businesses, can be simplified and integrated seamlessly into existing applications. With seamless integration and the ability to personalize how AI gets used and seen, companies can leverage the impacts and see more ROI. A significant factor is that less complication means less training, and less training equals more time saved.

Overall, we saw tons of technology rollouts during the pandemic over the last two years. In 2023, these investments will look reasonably different with the employee top of mind and making processes simpler across the entire organization. Using data properly for decision-making and business process transformation is a game changer for all functional areas within a company.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Trey Norman serves as COO for the Mindbreeze Corporation and Vice President of Sales for North America. He studied Electrical Engineering at Texas A&M a University with a specialization in Digital Signal Processing. Trey is dedicated to helping customers uncover new insights in their data with the help of his team of machine learning and insight engine specialists.