The last couple of decades have been very exciting for industry. A large number of changes, primarily in technology, have led to sweeping changes in consumer behavior and the way manufacturers and service providers conduct their businesses. While, at one point in time, mass manufacturing and a one-size-fits-all attitude to serving customers ruled, the contemporary manufacturer now wants to leverage technology to give the customer custom products that serve bespoke needs even as the process of mechanization and automation continues to surge with the adoption of concepts like machine learning and artificial intelligence. While there are hundreds of technologies that are innovated every year, not all of them are relevant to the ever-changing consumer needs, and fewer still have disruptive potential. Some of the technologies that experts think have the maximum potential to impact on our world in the next five years:
5G Technology Will Enhance the Customer Experience
Technologies enhance and simplify the customer experience. With the super-fast speeds of data access ushered in by 5G, customers will be able to do many things at lightning speed that has hitherto been painfully slow. While being able to download a 4K movie in seconds may seem fun, the real impact of 5G is in its ability to connect customers with brands in real-time. This means that there will hardly be any delay in service delivery. What can be potentially transformational is that the superior speed of data transfer will speed up the pace of innovation and permit products to be designed, developed, and brought to the market faster. 5G technologies is expected to touch all industries regardless of whether they are B2B or B2C while IoT will permit machines and appliances to communicate directly with each other and permit matchless convenience to users. It is expected that 5G will become an integral part of all critical infrastructure and have a significant impact on manufacturing, healthcare, defense, and many more sectors.
Unsupervised Machine Learning Will Provide Insights till Now Not Possible
To make predictions regarding the outcome of anything, data is a prerequisite in supervised learning. However, in unsupervised learning, there is no data that the intelligence system can use as an input and the outcomes also are unknown. The machine depends on logical operations performed without making mistakes for guidance. The entire conversation of machines teaching themselves is what unsupervised machine learning is all about, says Jonah Engler. The advantage of this system is that it can overcome the restrictions imposed by the availability of knowledge about something or any associated human bias that is often very difficult to prevent coloring of results. Employing unsupervised machine learning does not need any existing information and can make more accurate predictions because it does not require any terms of reference. The use of this technology will permit us to gain insights into matters that were till now impossible.
Robotic Automation Will Change the Nature of Employment
Already employed in select roles in the manufacturing and service delivery industries, robotic automation is possibly the biggest game-changer involving the employment of human beings in both low-level repetitive jobs as well as tasks that need to be done with mathematical precision. The biggest driver will be human intelligence-based robotics that will rule in areas as diverse as driverless cars, medical surgery, drone delivery, to name just a few. While there is some justified fear of automation replacing unskilled manual jobs involving repetitive, mundane, or laborious tasks, the advantage is that there is likely to be more focus on jobs involving higher-level skills like innovation, creativity, as well as tasks that require empathy or complex decision-making.
There Will Be More Dynamic Response to Online Security
Artificial intelligence and machine learning type of intelligent technologies are already permitting us to respond in real-time to sharing information over email. These technologies make it possible to detect when a mistake is about to be committed or even when there is risky behavior by intent such as data exfiltration. The online security solutions sector will come up with a large number of products aimed at predicting security holes and taking action automatically and immediately after any lapses or breaches.
Telehealth Solutions Will Become More Pervasive
Even as the coronavirus pandemic has outstripped the capabilities of the national healthcare infrastructure, there have been multiple indications for some time now regarding the emergence of the widespread adoption of telehealth services. The first challenge of aggregating medical records of individuals through robust electronic health record systems is already more or less in place. There are already multiple apps that are capable of being used by both service providers as well as patients that can provide consultation services on multiple platforms of engagement. The deeper penetration of HER is expected to result in a paradigm shift in the way caregivers and patients interact with each other and healthcare is delivered round-the-clock in a seamless manner without needing to take into account constraints of location. According to https://www.forbes.com, telehealth has enormous potential to address some of the most difficult challenges facing healthcare, including cost, accessibility, the severe shortage of trained physicians, and the inefficient delivery system plaguing both patients and caregivers.
Augmented and Virtual Reality Is Likely to Be the New Face of Reality, Observes Jonah Engler
From being complex toys that techies used to play with, augmented reality and virtual reality have progressed a long way to become far more affordable and useful. They are projected to be the new techniques of interaction between co-workers and also between companies and their customers with the VR steam becoming more plausible and providing a richer quality of interaction. VR is likely to emerge as a potent sales tool in the hands of marketers to provide an online experience to customers that is more real and immersive than anything earlier.
Conclusion
Progressive technologies have always shaped the expectations and experiences of customers. The technologies discussed here are considered to have the maximum power to create a disruption of existing practices and to create new dimensions in customer experience.