4 Trends of Digital Transformation in 2021

In the last decade or so, it had become increasingly clear that organizations that have embraced digital transformation are more likely to thrive compared to organizations that are hesitant to make the transformation.   

Many were still not convinced. Then, the pandemic happened. And nothing and everything changed.   

The global workforce made a transition from working at their desks in their office to working at their desks in their kitchen. As if nothing happened. But a global disruption made businesses re-think everything about how a business ought to be run. At the center of this re-thinking was data — the most valuable commodity in today’s economy.   

Going forward, data is going to be critical to business success, that is certain. But is today’s data management ready for the new normal? Can the infrastructure keep up with the ever-advancing times? What about data security?  

Big digital transformation changes are on the way. Here’s what we expect.   

Looking beyond technical knowledge 

There is no question that business intelligence solutions provide businesses a competitive edge. However, many businesses fail to integrate them in their workflows, given the steep learning curve.   

Inertia or the reluctance to change is a deterrent to learning any new habit. But what if the habit offers the least resistance?   

This is what we expect will happen to data onboarding and management. On one side, data literacy is increasing exponentially. While on the other, BI tools are becoming handier and much easier to use.   

The democratization of data 

And as business intelligence tools become handier and much easier to use, data analytics becomes democratized.   

Just like the power of data analytics is leveraged to forecast the weather, businesses will leverage it to forecast sales and to conduct sales analytics. They will anticipate the expectations and needs of customers with customer analytics. And for benchmarking with competitor analytics.

Building for tomorrow  

What’s the most exciting thing about the democratization of data is that the analytics of one vertical will inform the decision-making of others. Insights learned from sales analytics are as crucial to marketing as the insights learned from customer analytics are to sales.   

However, this exchange of data is most productive when it is without friction. And to ensure that, businesses are expected to heavily invest in data governance solutions, the infrastructure that governs the movement, management, and quality of data.   

Data governance solutions ensure that the exchange of data between workflows and processes — something expected to be frequent, cross-linked, complex — takes place with maximum efficiency.  

Bottlenecks cost money. Bottlenecks, at scale, cost a lot of money.    

Next-gen business intelligence tools  

The innovations happening at a frightening pace will widen the scope of BI tools, making them more capable of automating complex tasks and more accurate at forecasting trends.   

However, given the public backlash against the misuse of their data, data privacy and security will take center stage in 2021 and years to come.   

Ultimately, businesses are all about managing risks. They make timely changes that protect them against future threats. Perhaps another pandemic. 

If they must get those changes right, they must rely on data, not intuition.