Globalization for the little guy or girl

No doubt this disruption has been in progress for a while now, but it’s amazing to see how it continues to evolve and impact many businesses. New on-line marketplaces have impacted the way goods are bought and sold – and more efficient supply chain approaches have made it easier for smaller businesses to compete with traditional / box store brick and mortar. There are additional changes coming (we think) that will blend the tactile experience of a physical store with the compression of time and space. Think “real-time solutions from any location you prefer”. For example, an AR headset can be used to allow you to virtually place furnishings in your home before you buy. And new techniques like this will be even more powerful with 5 and 6G, allowing a family in remote locations (perhaps) to jointly select the details of a trip or event together. Lots of possibilities here that will help smaller companies reach a global audience and sell like a much larger company. In-turn, the disruptive properties here will continue to have potential negative impacts for brick and mortar.

Government regulation of technology

It’s inevitable we believe, for the government to become more involved in the security, privacy and regulation of big data, AI, and information collection. You are seeing this in Europe, and it’s likely to expand. We are active in the debate playing out now specifically with companies like Facebook, Equifax, Wells Fargo, Google, Microsoft and others. The issue at hand is the desire to use technology to customize outputs to match a user’s persona. But to establish this persona, data inputs must be collected, natural language processed and then prediction models are applied to help you with tailored choices. In theory it sounds great – in practice, it requires access to potentially sensitive and confidential information. While safeguards had been developed, cyber hackers have accessed these stacks with dramatic impact. A few wireless handset companies are currently under scrutiny for potentially recording voice and keystrokes. And, several of the voice recognition providers - while listening in and collecting user search terms for potential training data into their NLP engines - are experiencing public outcry and concerns about privacy. We are watching the regulatory and governance environment closely to see trends that may affect the revenue growth opportunities of several industries.

Analytics

Perhaps one of the first transformational and disruptive processes for business, this continues to evolve quickly. The engines and predictive models have become faster and stronger, but the biggest change has been with the exponential increases in data inflows. Mining data has become easier using available sources to include machine logs and sensor data, still images, video, audio, biometric information, government research, and sentiment from social feeds. Parsing of data, images and contextual combinations of both are creating much stronger analytic stacks that can be more quickly processed. Best in Breed benchmark can then be assigned metrics and compared to these benchmarks and scored. The result is a rich field of analytical information that can be output as insight – speeding effective decisions. 

Cognitive

This Includes machine learning, natural language processing, neural networks and AI. So much of this involves handing large amounts of data so that humans no longer need to process it all. A common misperception of AI is that it will replace humans, but in reality, most current AI efforts need humans to teach machines, refine processes and provide context. The implications for improved cognitive technology processes will continue to expand into all facets of business. Self-learning and computer-generated code is also expanding but (at this time) is really reinforced by humans and so the risks of computers taking over can be overstated. Computers trained properly can identify patterns in data and with visual assets as well. These can be further refined to make it possible to identify connections not previously noticed and the outputs can be visualized to help improve predictive tools. An enabler for the cognitive processes is with the improved quality and cost of many sensor types. This allows for swarming and crowdsourcing of tremendously large datasets. We believe the cognitive processes will become a disruptor touching virtually every business type. 

Sales Processes

This includes how we buy but also as importantly, how we sell. The salesforce function is changing dramatically for some industries – most notably how cars are sold. Technology is speeding more trusted information to the buyer so they can make an informed choice, find inventory, select best payment options and even schedule a delivery at home if they choose. Another example, Google, was formed in a garage with a promise to have ‘no selling function’, and many of their products are either sold direct (AdWords) or sold thru distributors. The primitive sales activity reporting tools are evolving and this may help some sales teams to remain effective – but there is a social trend here as well. Consumers just don’t want pressure sales and are willing to do their homework to make an informed choice. Technology is making it easier to obtain ratings, reviews and trusted third-party information ahead of a sale. Look for this disruption to continue and begin to affect other industries in the next 5 years.  

Digital Reality

This covers augmented reality (AR), virtual (VR), mixed reality (MR) and the Internet of Things (IoT). These technologies have the power to dramatically change how humans interact with data, technology and each other. Smaller and more powerful processors and have accelerated the hardware breakthroughs and this will dramatically continue. The devices are amazing, but often the connectivity, software and experiences are going to dominate progress. Visual, auditory and haptics can come together to provide an experience that is more intimate, lifelike and natural. These devices and software will continue to make interesting impacts in a number of industries including retail, medical, entertainment, aerospace and defense and others.

The Cloud

Connectivity speed and advancements will continue to enable cloud technologies to become mainstream. Remember when we all said “what is the cloud and what are the benefits”? Now we know. With many advantages, this is set to become the foundation of how other technology innovation is achieved. Using the massive computer power of the cloud will continue to facilitate innovative transactional mechanisms, new products and entirely new IT services. Many businesses will be more aggressively tapping into the cloud to integrate their systems and improve efficiency. All this will disrupt the proprietary mainframe business model and continue to speed IaaS, SaaS and other variants. Cloud technology is also a facilitator to the other technologies including digital experience, blockchain, quantum computing and digital reality.

Cyber

This can be thought of as the counter to cloud – but it is so much more. Certainly, the use of cloud and other computing approaches has required better encryption and security features and this will continue. But added to this is an entirely new and virtual technology opportunity that involves proactively managing risk – even before a computer process has even started. Each business will need to explore risk and security measures that protect against attack and integrate these into traditional processes. Most common is the loss of confidential data to include customer records and personal information, but also trade secrets, intellectual property and key process roadmaps. Prototype drawings, images and technical information are also at risk. Every bit of the company details and future plans can be compromised by a third-party domestic or international in nature. What makes cyber so scary is that the techniques are expected to become more sophisticated in the next few years. As a disrupter of your business, there may not be a bigger threat – working with outside specialists to build a prevention plan, and then working with a team of professionals to outline an action plan in the event of a successful attack is a prudent course of action

Digital Life – or sometimes called digital experience.

It seemed that this revolution started with the internet and specifically with the publishing industry. Talk about a disruption - - virtually all publishing concerns still struggle to keep their monetized business models humming as before. Case in point – the publishing industry was often dominated by large concerns, but with digital transformation, everyone with a smartphone could immediately become a video journalist. This important information industry has seen some remarkable changes and challenges such as reductions in subscriber revenue and fake news. But there are other industries affected as well. Health care is not a market focus for CEVOH, but we have been interested to watch the digital transformation taking place there. The stakes are enormous. On one hand is better health care with a free flow of information thru doctor portals and health care organizations. This information can meet in the middle where it should – the patient. Never before has there been so much upside potential to share information quickly and efficiently – so that one-person benefits. On the other hand, there is regulation and privacy. A simple misdiagnosis or bad typing could cause employment problems, or social bullying. The privacy issues are real. And with genome research, how devastating would it be if this information became recklessly shared with others? The potential (and the $) of digitizing health care are enormous – from using AI to second opinion a MRI scan and underlying cause to remotely seeing germy patients without exposing others. Switching to food services, the digitization of the restaurant world will make people taking menu orders obsolete – eventually automated prep and custom meals will become tablestakes. And how about autonomous driving and delivery? The industries of mass transit, ride sharing, and even automobile transportation are in for some real disruptions (and enhancements). Computing to a digital life is well underway as a technology forcing function.