Gartner has released their top 10 tech predictions that will shake up 2018 and beyond (something they do every year).
But what exactly are these predictions and will they affect your business at all?
Well, it’s hard to say for certain. However, there are three trends, in particular, that will eventually have some influence on your day-to-day operations (no matter what industry you belong to). So let’s take a quick look at these three tech predictions to help you better understand the impact they can have on your future business.
Voice Search
Echo and Google Home have had a huge impact on the average household. These gadgets are relatively inexpensive for what they are, and they can potentially provide a huge amount of value to the end user.
For example, you can use Google Home as a speaker, remote control, personal shopper, or helpful assistant. The same is true for Echo.
However, these gadgets can also be used for voice search — something we’ve already been doing with our smartphones for some time now. Gartner predicts that over the next few years, consumers will start to favor this method of search over others.
In fact, Gartner says consumers will favor this method so much that companies will experience a 30% increase in digital commerce revenue if they alter their website to support voice search.
But what exactly does this mouthful really mean?
Well, for starters, it simply means that you need to create your content strategy in a way that complements how people are searching. In this case, it’s not necessarily that people are using a different gadget to search for content. It’s more that people are using different phrases and terms to complete their search.
In other words, people speak differently than they type. And when it comes to keywords and the way search engines crawl websites, this slight nuance can have a huge impact on whether or not your content is found.
Fake News and Fake Realities
Fake news isn’t just a problem reserved for Americans. To Gartner, the idea of fake news extends past news outlets into full-blown realities. It is a fake reality that any country or person can experience (and rather easily).
By 2022, Gartner predicts that over 50% of the content people consume will be false. While this probably isn’t going to be as large an issue for countries outside of America, it is something businesses everywhere should watch out for.
If you get caught spreading false information, the consumer will view you as either unprofessional or manipulative. There will be no in between.
Tech giants (especially those within the realm of social media) will dive deeper into AI-platforms that can detect and minimize false content; however, they will be overwhelmed by the sheer quantity out there (which means stuff will eventually slip out). As a business owner or professional, you must be prepared to face this very real reality.
The IoT
By 2020, 95% of new products will be a part of the IoT. This means that anything from a sock to a toaster oven will connect to the internet and deliver real-time data to the end user in some fashion.
In the business realm, this matters quite a bit.
For starters, if you have all of these random gadgets connecting to your infrastructure somehow or other gadgets pulling information from your infrastructure, the security of your data comes into question.
How are you securing all of these gadgets and, ultimately, how are you securing your company as a whole?
At this point, whether or not it seems impossible to protect your data won’t matter. It will be your responsibility to figure it all out. And if you don’t, then your consumers will spend their money elsewhere. You can believe that.
Tech trends don’t stop here, and they most definitely expand past the predictions of Gartner. As a matter of fact, automation in the workplace is a tech trend that will most likely be picked up by many businesses over the next few years. Read our recent article, Workflow Automation Trends and Tips, to learn more about this exciting new change.
