The business sector is facing new challenges such as digital disruption and the world of borderless competition where there are both local and international players and only strong competitors can grasp opportunities.
Foreign businesses have successfully arrived. They include Grab which began as a ride hailing app and has already become a super app in Thailand and throughout the region. Another example is Netflix which is a very popular streaming service provider among Thai people. Many more foreign businesses either have arrived or will follow suit to take their market shares in the country.
The key question is “how much the business sector has been prepared for the competition.” The strengthening of the four pillars of business namely customers, organizations, employees and partners to cope with competition in the era of digital economy driven mainly by technologies and innovations is what businesses must quickly accomplish before being wiped out of their industry regretfully by competitors and digital disruption.
Based on its experiences and expertise in both business and technologies, Bluebik presents these seven investment trends that must be followed immediately to increase competitiveness and gain advantage in borderless business environments.
1) Omni-channel Experience – It refers to the expansion of channels, both online and offline, to communicate with customers and provide them with seamless experiences in their product and service purchases which can be done through all channels. Bad experiences may mean that organizations’ investment in mobile applications, more access channels etc. to satisfy consumers has become a waste of money. Therefore, investment in the technologies that enable organizations to meet the needs of customers smoothly through all channels cannot be deferred. The technologies include a customer data platform (CDP) and marketing automation.
2) Hyper-personalization – This most advanced kind of marketing requires the best understanding of customers to fulfill their personal and different needs. The heart of hyper-personalization is customers’ data including their behaviors that organizations analyze to present the right products or services through right channels and times. All organizations must invest in advanced analytics and the technologies that are related to customer relationship management such as Salesforce to maintain their existing customer bases and reach new groups of customers.
3) Cloud Computing – Today it is important for businesses to migrate parts of their infrastructures to Cloud Computing. Among its advantages, Cloud Computing allows users to do auto scaling to increase or reduce the sizes of servers according to their use. Thus, organizations can cut infrastructural costs and decrease the risks of losing business opportunities. Cloud Computing also helps lower long-term maintenance costs, make business more flexible and stronger, and serve the new and popular way of “work from anywhere”.
4) Cyber Security – The world is fully entering the digital era while being shadowed by cybercrime which is ready to attack whenever it finds a loophole in businesses. Therefore, investment in cybersecurity to protect assets and credibility is a priority of many organizations because cyberattacks nowadays are not limited to data theft. They are more diverse and complicated and have already happened in many cases. The latest example is the collapse of the LUNA coin which was attacked by an opportunistic hacker because there were loopholes in the algorithm that was used to balance the value of LUNA and the UST stablecoin. There must be serious investment in cyber security. Personnel must be educated. Authentication processes must be improved and technologies must be carefully selected and applied to raise security standards. This is to protect organizations from cyberattacks which mostly cause great damage.
5) Data-driven decision-making – The ability to make right decisions is a necessary qualification of personnel, especially executives. The technologies that enable right decision-making include the data architecture that sets standard for the big data of organizations and advanced analytics with artificial intelligence (AI). Data analyses have developed. Unstructured data like photo, video and audio files can be analyzed. Many organizations can do video analytics. Data from CCTV at shops show foot traffic which can be used to develop business use cases.
6) Agile culture – It is the working environment where dominant values, behavioral principles and guidelines for action are foundations and employees at all levels are allowed to adapt to cultural and strategic changes. An agile culture turns team silos into cross-functional teamwork which lets employees switch their fields of work and collaborate efficiently with other teams responsible for different projects. Such a working environment prompts employees to move from their comfort zones to study zones and achieve their maximum efficiency. Moreover, an agile culture also goes along well with the presently trendy hybrid workplace model. This is the reason why organizations must invest in the technologies that allow employees at all levels to collaborate efficiently while an agile culture is the mechanism that supports their effective teamwork.
7) API Economy – People cannot prosper individually, and neither can businesses. The sustainable growth of businesses and the capabilities of business executives depend on their ability to unlock their own potential and that of their partners. Business connection is thus the first priority of organizations. Businesses should Invest in the application programming interface (API) economy, especially business-to-business (B2B) integration, that supports mobile devices and Internet of Things. It enables partners to access information on business systems, collaboratively expand customers’ access channels and develop innovations for seamless experiences in purchasing products and services. These create opportunities for organizations and partners for their inclusive, steady and sustainable growth.
Apart from competitiveness, technologies evidently play more and more important roles in business. Many executives are facing the challenges of choosing the right and worthwhile technologies and experts of various fields that can serve present usage and support future development. Definitely the consultancies that have expertise in both business and technologies can be of the greatest help. Their experiences in various fields of business, their perspectives and their ideas can boost the strengths and overcome the weaknesses of clients in all dimensions.
