The Digital Trends of 2021: how technology will affect several fields of business

Finally, the end of 2020 is near. And I say finally not because I’m glad I can add another 366 days (Leap Year!) to my record, but because the most challenging, uncertain, with more downs than ups and plenty of stress year, is finally over. It’s safe to say I am more than delighted to see it end.

Leaving the jokes aside, it’s safe to say that the Covid-19 pandemic was the biggest factor that influenced the way 2020 worked. Digital transformation was forced more than ever, and the businesses that managed to keep themselves afloat or to thrive were the ones who knew how to leverage the digital medium and the attached technologies.

Enough about 2020, now. It’s time to look forward, to 2021. We don’t know yet if it’ll be a better year from an economic perspective, but what is certain is that any technology or business trend in the upcoming years will be a direct consequence of our response to the pandemic.

Now, since my review of 2020 is over – you can read how we overcome the crisis and the leadership actions I took during the first lockdown on our blog, it’s time to focus on the digital trends of 2021. More precisely, on the predictions regarding them. Mine, personally and inspired by specialists who do this for a living.

The plan for this article is to structure the trends in several categories – the tech-focused trends, work trends and B2B. Let’s start, shall we?

1. The advancement of technology in 2021

Internet of Things will become Intelligence of Things
IoT devices became a crucial part of our daily lives. From smartwatches to smart homes, it certainly improved our lives. Now, due to innovations in deep learning and computer vision, industry dynamics and remote access demand, IoT software and hardware applications will get a total upgrade. Mostly it will be in the fields of smart manufacturing and smart healthcare.

Augmented Reality will connect to smartphones
Since the 5G network environment will become more mature in 2021, the integration of AR glasses with smartphones will enable AR apps to run smoothly and to fulfil advanced personal audio-visual entertainment functionalities by leveraging the computing power of smartphones.

For instance, the AR experience is already provided by large movie companies. Disney, in collaboration with Google, designed a Mandalorian AR experience. Moreover, Apple isintensifying its focus on augmented reality.

Seeing all these initiatives is safe to assume that augmented reality will become more important in the upcoming world, especially because of the limitations of a post-Covid world.

Driver Monitoring System
According to WHO, 1.35 million deaths occur each year due to traffic accidents. However, the automotive companies are looking into developing smart cars – fully self-driving cars are not a thing, yet. It is predicted that in the future, a smart car will have a driving status monitoring integrated – cameras, which will be able to monitor the driver’s status – the level of drowsiness through iris tracking and behavioural monitoring. The whole idea of a driver monitoring system is to detect in real-time the driver’s capabilities and to take over of the driving controls when and if necessary. Now, it’s uncertain if these will enter mass production in 2021, but they are expected soon.

Edge computing
The cloud is now omnipresent in our life. Everything is stored in the cloud, especially since the remote work became the norm. Experts assume that the next step would be edge computing. This is a concept that sprung from the telecom sector to all industries and it involves bringing computation and data storage closer to the location where it is needed, to improve response time and save bandwidth.

3D printing
With serious advancements, such as creating realistic human hearts so that future surgeons can practice on and to print car parts, the additive manufacturing industry will become more important in 2021. It is estimated than in 2021, this industry will reach $10 billion, having a high focus on biological engineering. Soon we’ll be able to print replacement body parts, such as heart valves.

2. The work trends of 2021

Digital collaboration – a must
This can’t be considered a new trend or something out of the ordinary, but rather an extension of 2020. However, since remote working would probably stay relevant, it’s vital to ensure a smooth digital collaboration, with and between your team and your clients as well.

This, basically will require Agile practices to emphasize the cross-function, co-located teams. There will be an increased need in finding meeting solutions, cloud office suites, digital whiteboarding and smart workspaces and to provide secure remote access with passwordless and multifactor authentication and secure access service edge.

Low-code platforms might become a thing
The organization of teams will change, due to the accelerated adoption of low-code platforms. Since during the pandemic there was an urge for fast digital transformation, plenty of organizations aimed for low-code platforms to build and deploy new apps fast. This will drive most development shops to adopt low-code tools and more. It is expected to appear more hybrid teams, where business users and professional developers will build apps together with low-code tools built on cloud-native platforms.

A shift for developers
These efforts of modernization will require developers to master new skills. Since almost three-quarters of infrastructure and operations professionals report that migrating existing apps to cloud platforms is a priority for their enterprise’s cloud strategy. To take full advantage of these container platforms, developers have to master new tools, architectures and technologies to deliver modern applications.

Moreover, with the rise of AI, the development will become more automated. Forrester predicts that more than a third of developers will use machine learning to make test automaton smarter and NLP will be used to review test cases.

3. B2B trends in 2021

According to Cisco, consumers claim that they wouldn’t care if 74% of the brands they use would disappear. Which also applies to B2B businesses and not only B2C. Now, to ensure that this won’t happen, the 2021 trend is to have a customer-centric approach.

Data Science will have an impact in 2021
Every decision a company makes should be based on data. Otherwise, is just an opinion, as W. Edwards Deming observed. These being said, to make the best decisions and to create the right goals for your business, it’s important to use predictive analytics and data science.

Transparency
Honesty is the best policy and in the age of misinformation, might be the best approach. However, the best way to ensure you provide transparency is by:

• Create relationships with your customers on social media
• Communicate the privacy and data protection policies
• Be transparent with pricing and customer journey

As I mentioned before, we can’t predict how 2021 will look like. Maybe everything I wrote here will not become true. Or maybe just bits and pieces. Or it might be possible for everything to become true. What’s important is to keep an open mind and acknowledge that the world is changing and if you want to thrive, you have to stay relevant to the market.