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Across the world, businesses are recognizing that next-gen tech holds the future to growth. Technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI) are transforming how organizations automate complex tasks, allocate labor and innovate every day. In fact, studies estimate that adopting AI could accelerate growth rates in labor productivity by over 40% by 2035.
In Asia, Chinese startup Cambricon recently raised $100 million in a Series A round led by a Chinese government fund for AI chip development.
Clearly, Chinese venture capitalists are equally bullish about AI’s role in contributing to the growth of the country’s semiconductor industry. These developments only confirm a global trend: the spread of next-generation technologies across various industries. It is no wonder a study by market research firm International Data Corp projects that the AI market will grow to $47 billion by 2020.
Today, businesses across industries all over the world are realizing that the new next-generation technologies, which have fueled dramatic changes in customer expectations, must now be harnessed by them. Why? To improve every company’s ability to better meet their clients’ expanding and evolving needs while driving time and cost savings and boosting enterprise productivity.
Tech Is Everywhere, Improving Everything
Nowhere is this more starkly evident than in the forays next-gen tech is currently making into such a traditional industry as farming. The world’s largest maker of agricultural equipment, John Deere, is embedding AI-enabled IoT sensors in its equipment to dramatically boost precision during sowing and reaping.
An iPad app that the company has created enables users to boost productivity and efficiency by helping track how many seeds have been planted per acre, demonstrate where exactly they are located and tell whether they have been spaced appropriately so that they grow without hindering one another.
Similarly, among a group of next-gen technologies that is making waves in the health care sector is augmented reality (AR). With its promise of immediacy, the technology is helping health care providers leverage expertise and skills remotely so that high-quality help “arrives” when it is needed, regardless of location. AR is also being used to train newly joined nurses in mastering the skills they need to check patients’ vital signs, as well as in providing surgeons 3D visualizations of their patient’s internal organs ahead of surgery.
It is no surprise, then, that not only do next-gen technologies help companies better meet end-user needs, but they also promise substantial improvements to bottom lines. Retail stores willing to be inventive are at the forefront of this trend in prioritizing the investment of technologies in their stores to help boost sales. Nordstrom, for example, which has made a name for itself in its embrace of technology (especially its use of big data), has seen company revenues soaring over the last decade to top $15.5 billion in 2017 — up from $9.1 billion in 2007.
This trend distinguishes Nordstrom among its peers as it was able to bump up sales during a time when most of its competitors witnessed sales flatline or fall.
Walmart, too, is credited with sustaining its growth figures for 11 consecutive quarters driven by a 63% year-on-year increase in online sales — likely due in large part to its embrace of new tech. The retail giant is reported to be using both AI and predictive analytics to help link its online and offline worlds to leverage the unique insights it gains from its point-of-sale systems to better foresee product demand patterns.
In my view, these developments across multiple industries make it abundantly clear that next-gen tech is here to stay.
As companies continue their search for ways to create innovative and sticky customer experiences, these new technologies look set to play a leading role in helping them meet their objectives. This is because next-gen technologies are uniquely placed in being able to deliver data, insights and forecasts with which businesses can tweak, optimize and go to market with brand new products and services at lowered costs and higher returns — all the while keeping the end user in mind.
Having once emerged as the product of digitization, next-gen technologies now symbolize the change that every company will undergo — digital transformation. Because at the end of the day, every business in today’s age is truly a digital business.