Emerging Technologies for Mid-market and Enterprise in 2020

Want to know which technologies are going to help your business gain strides ahead of the competition in 2020? You’re likely already invested in or investigating automation, cloud services, and various SaaS platforms, but getting in on emerging techs before they blow up can give you a considerable business boost.

This week, we’ve put together our top three emerging trends for mid-market and enterprise that are applicable for businesses everywhere and that you should consider looking into in 2020.

Virtual assistants get smarter

With plenty of people now asking Siri to set appointments and Alexa to play their favourite playlist, we are seeing virtual assistants get smarter and smarter. Now that Siri is almost 10 years old, we see the average person on the street using this kind of tech to help their lives.

In the corporate environment, C-suite and company heads still need personal assistants to help keep their work lives in order. Administration tasks are still massively overseen and managed by admin staff. However, instead of asking an assistant to book a whole trip to X meeting or conference, being able to use virtual assistants to do the same task, almost instantaneously, that an administrative assistant may take 30 mins to an hour to do, will save both time and human resources.

While we’re not yet at the stage where we can rely on virtual assistants for these complex tasks that have many different choices to arrange, they can and should be used more regularly. Check out Alexa for Business to see how it can help your organisation.

Tracking trust

In ‘these trying times’ it is becoming more apparent that consumer attitudes towards a company can turn around just like that. In Australia, the Edelman Trust Barometer for 2020 indicates decreasing trust among all consumers, at just 48% trust overall. For those with a global presence, in most markets, this is fairly comparable.

Globally, only 55% of the general public ‘trust’ businesses, as opposed to 70% of the informed public – with income inequality now affecting trust more than economic growth. This growing distrust means that companies need to work harder and smarter to manage trust of their businesses. Rather than investing only in crisis management, this means that tracking trust, and trust management, are far more important (and achievable using technology) than a reactionary approach.

So, what are businesses doing to manage consumer sentiments? Sure, you could get in consultants, however, utilizing AI platforms like Signal.ai to see media and consumer sentiment will include more data and be able to synthesize it better than non-AI services.

Sustainable supply chains from source to end-point

The trend towards consumers demanding more sustainability from their products isn’t going away any time soon. We are seeing a shift away from throw-away, as-cheap-as-possible culture to people realising that this is not good for the earth’s future. This is resulting in a shift in purchasing power, and it’s only gathering more steam.

What does this mean for mid-market and enterprise businesses? It means that you have to think about sustainability from source to end-point throughout your supply chains, and the technology used to verify it. 

An easy example to demonstrate how tech can be used to improve sustainability within the supply chain is the Nike acquisition of predictive analytics and demand sensing company, Celect. What this means for the company is that they are better able to predict how much of a certain product to produce, thus reducing waste with surplus stock that may lose the company money when discounted.

How we can help

At A1 Technologies, we help companies strategise and implement new technologies, keeping an eye on what’s important for businesses right now and in the future. We can help create plans and recommend the best technologies to help achieve your goals – or analyse your business to suggest where technology can optimise your operations.

If you are interested in any of the above emerging technologies, or would like some assistance with any of our services, including managed IT services like cybersecurity, business internet, DevOps and automation, and cloud migration, then make an appointment to have a chat – let’s talk! We love technology and helping our customers roll out solutions to enhance their business.

Julia Sinclair-Jones

Tech writer and ex-software developer with a penchant for travel, techno, and data. Spreading the word of secure, manageable, optimised IT solutions for everyone.