Embrace the tech trends of the future today

The business world has been transformed by technology over the past decade. Advances in software, web-enabled communication, mobility and the cloud have all left their mark and changed even the everyday activities of CEOs, employees, and the business as a whole.

As technology continues to evolve, tomorrow’s business leader will look and perform very differently thanks to tools and applications involving artificial intelligence (AI), the Internet of Things (IoT) and automation. Not to mention the technology that is yet to be developed.

Even if we look ahead just a few years, we can begin to see some of the impacts technology is likely to have on the business world.

The cloud

While many business leaders have already embraced the cloud, the use of cloud will continue to expand as leaders seek to have more of their business operations and applications hosted in the cloud. This move is being driven by the need for greater cost efficiencies and simplified IT infrastructure.

Cloud-first approaches are becoming more popular and with all IT hosted in the cloud, businesses will no longer have to worry about hosting, maintaining or backing up their IT environments.

The choices in cloud providers will also continue to increase across public, private and hybrid options. To date public cloud has been the fastest growing cloud segment, mostly thanks to large players like Google, Microsoft and Amazon.

However, private cloud providers are starting to make ground, particularly in the SME arena that are drawn to the option because of the more personalised and customised service on offer.

Hybrid cloud is also growing in popularity, more so at the enterprise level. Firms use a combination of public cloud and in-house private cloud to quickly expand capacity. However, this option can be expensive to set up and run

Automation

Automation has already begun to reshape financial services. Especially in the areas of regulation, financial risk management and compliance, automation is going to have a big impact. Imagine an automated program that could identify and explain alterations in risk exposure and calculate business-related and data-related causes for such changes.

As the result of this increasing automation across the business, enabling certain time consuming tasks to be completed at high speed and with consistent quality, we’ll continue to see increased productivity and cost effectiveness. It will also mean advisors will be able to add value in other areas or develop new offerings.

Data security

With many buisnesses holding sensitive data as well as increasing regulation around the security of customer data and communicating breaches, maintaining data security will remain a growing priority and focus.

According to the 2016 Ponemon Institute Cost of Data Breach study, the average cost of data breach to a company is $2.64 million, with the biggest consequence of data breach being lost business. The 2016 Ponemon Institute Data Protection Benchmark Study showed that organisations around the world deal with an average of 20 data loss incidents every day.

Businesses will need to implement robust procedures and processes around data security, while at the same time keep up with changing regulations to adequately manage data security risk. This may involve assessing where critical data is stored in regard to security, reliability and accessibility and whether it’s stored in data centres or on-site servers.

Robo advisors

Robo advisors have had a contentious start in Australia, though they’re unlikely to fade away as technology advances. In fact, according to BI Intelligence, it is predicted that by 2020 robo advisors will manage around 10 per cent of the total global assets under management, equating to around $8 trillion.

Robo advisors are likely to become more adaptive and intelligent and put pressure on the traditional role of advisors and fund managers, although not completely replace them. While startups will gain ground, it will also be the large incumbent firms that will embrace this technology and launch their own products.

Businesses are being disrupted by technology at an increasing pace. These are just some of the ways advancing technology is likely to impact the sector. It is certainly a space to pay attention to.