As a startup, you should focus on putting something innovative to the market. Being a trendsetter is certainly a huge advantage. But there are a lot of different trends and you can’t set them all.
You can, however, keep up with the most important trends that affect your industry and especially your niche. How to do that? By taking past knowledge and using it to your advantage for the future.
You can’t afford to be unprepared. You can not predict the future, but you can play safe and use startup tech trends to get the best results possible.
Here is a list of 8 emerging tech trends worth following in 2020:
AI (Artificial Intelligence) Technology
AI is more than just a sci-fi possibility. It is more than just a theory, it is our reality. This is not about robots going around doing our everyday tasks, the technology is already here in the devices we use daily.
Al is a part of our system, making processes faster and more effective, taking things to the next level. The purpose of Al is to do things humans do such as decision making, planning, customer onboarding, and organizing, but without any human help.
Using Al in your company can only help you with your work. With only a few data points it can do anything you want it to do. However, in order to set trends and be on the top in your industry, you should consider investing in the best programmers out there, the ones who are capable of developing ultimate Artificial Intelligence experiences.
Hyper-Personalization
We live in a world where everything is on display. All information you might need is here. On the internet. According to that, it is expected that your customers would want you to know what they want and give it to them. Wait, how can you know such a thing? Well, that is when hyper-personalization comes to the rescue.
Hyper-personalization requires an in-depth analysis of customer data to provide the most accurate answers and messages for every scenario. Which gives comfort to the customer, letting them know that you as a company understand all their needs and wishes.
The Internet Of Things – IoT
Endless possibilities of IoT refer to systems of interconnected objects that have the ability to connect with the internet and transfer data using wireless networks, but with no human interaction.
Coming to a realization that IoT is indeed the future, you need to start with a platform that compliments IoT’s abilities (API). This, of course, depends on the industry in which you are operating, but it is good to have in mind that according to Forbes, the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) market is predicted to reach $123 billion in 2021.
The development of Cloud services and APIs, together with real time integrations between systems, fosters the success of IoT projects. It’s really worth the time invested in analysis of how you could incorporate this emerging technology trend into your business model.
Voice Recognition Technology
Voice Recognition Technology gives flexibility and productivity. It isn’t linked to a single device and it enables customers to multitask. Voice assistants and voice activated devices are a good example of how you should use this technology.
It isn’t all about making things easier using reusable data, it is also about our safety too, especially in the automotive industry.
In-car speech recognition is becoming a standard in many new vehicles on the market today, according to globalme.net and their article. Taking your eyes off the road increases the risk of accidents. And controlling calls, messages, or your maps app by voice, significantly reduces that risk.
Big Data
The list of data sources is practically endless, from posts and comments on social networks, over website analytics and product purchases, to different types of sensors and smart devices (IoT).
All the data is stored in a database, and the key to success is for you to act as an analyst, capable of determining the correlation between these different types of data.
The results of the analysis are actionable information that influences the decision making process in aligning your business to your most important goals and adjusting your actions according to your current performance against those goals.
This is not as simple as it seems, so you may decide to do the analysis alone (in-house), or to dedicate it to a third-party.
Biotechnology
The biotech industry deals with DNA coding, mapping and sequencing, processing biotechnologies, and many more…
By biotech, I am mostly talking about DNA analysis. Like DNA Nuges. This combined technology can be used to help customers when they are choosing the right thing to purchase. Telling them what is good for them and making it a fun experience.
The biotech industry is already valued at $295B, according to Global Biotechnology Industry – Market Research Report. That figure isn’t static of course, therefore the number will surely rise by the year 2021.
Subscription Services Will Continue To Sell Well
You have to take into account the great success of businesses which were the pioneers in Subscription Services. The trend of continually growing success of these businesses will not stop in the near future.
Building your business around a subscription service or services puts you on a similar path with giants who started the same way as you, with a great idea and limited resources. The subscription model helped them thrive.
You may look at examples of CRM software like HubSpot, or advanced dashboarding platform like Databox to better understand how they structured their services and subscription plans.
Extended Business Integration and Collaboration
Many of the successful businesses, especially in the SaaS (Software as a Service) industry, are connected in many ways. They connect through APIs to exchange data between their platforms, thus extending their portfolio of services and enabling their customers to have a much better experience and use of their services.
Zapier and Integromat are just a few of the platforms that enable a huge number of integrations between software that is very different by nature.
Partnering between companies of a similar size and structure is a great way of introducing each other to a wider audience. This way they can refer each other to their customers, decreasing marketing costs, and saving time on outbound sales activities.
I hope this list helped you get on the right track to understanding the importance of trends that influence startups, but not just them. However, you shouldn’t limit yourself to this, or any other list. Instead, always check for new and emerging trends and be among the first ones to set, or at least use them for your success.