The Covid-19 pandemic infected both people and businesses – owners have to face new challenges worldwide. According to Statista, 71% of U.S. companies stated sales decreased, and 75% of businesses had problems with supply chains. As for other advanced economies, most countries experienced an increase in unemployment rate(Canada – by 4%, UK – by 1.6%, Germany – by 1.2%).
Was the year 2020 the ill fate for business owners? Billionaires don’t think so. According to Forbes, the real time worth of top-5 world’s billionaires skyrocketed by $290 billion in 2020. Furthermore, the year brought 56 new U.S. billionaires. What is the reason for some getting rich, and others lose the lot? The pandemic is high time for business owners to welcome innovations and adjust their companies to new trends.
Everything seems entirely clear: when you keep up with the time, your business constantly grows. Which are the top-5 trends for a company to overcome the pandemic?
1. General workspace features: how to make remote working effective?
Since the pandemic has started, more than 62% of employees had to cross over to remote working. As such, the lack of coordination between different departments led to a decrease in a company’s efficiency in general.
According to analytics, United communications as a Service (UCaaS) platforms are the most effective instruments to get the highest employees’ productivity. As for the main benefits of such solutions, business owners name scaling, expenses decrease, and convenient administration.
Phone, email, and messengers are the three pillars of every company, but the collected information is hard to be stored in one place. Managers cannot control and analyze contacts effectively. As such, UCaaS platforms provide unification, saving time and making the interaction between teams more effective.
2. Predictive Analytics: be one step ahead of your customer needs
The sector of predictive analytics is among the most promising industries. The pandemic forces business owners to match customers’ needs and predict their changes. How can you understand the future preferences of your target audience? Such a sector is based upon Big Data technologies.
Predictive analytics helps business owners increase the efficiency of the target marketing and commerce. For instance, outcomes of the analytical department are used for pricing optimization. Moreover, a company requires effective software for customer clustering. The main goal of predictive analytics lies in the increase of profit margin.
What are the main stages of predictive analytics?
– Collecting of inside data (assortment of goods and services, sales turnover, pricing).
– Collecting outside data (diverse factors may impact a business – weather conditions, tourism development rate, etc.).
– Deep learning models are trained on the basis of obtained inside and outside data to provide business-owners precise predictions.
3. Virtual assistants and chatbots
Before the pandemic, customers understood “no service as the best service,” preferring to avoid consultations. Meanwhile, the year 2020 shifted the trend, and the number of customer contacts rapidly increased. COVID-19 interfered with the private life of customers, and people needed to get instant answers.
The Artificial Intelligence tools for customer support become among the most important components of interaction with customers. What if your company is not mature enough for the implementation of chatbots and virtual assistants? No matter what is your specification and volumes, AI-based assistants are something to help you cut costs and workforce. Analysts predict that 80% of businesses worldwide will implement different ways of chatbots automation by the end of 2021.
Getting a quick answer in an emergency is distinguished as the most frequent reason to use chatbots (37% of customers). Meanwhile, virtual assistants solve essentially more issues: resolving a complaint or problem, providing customers with detailed answers or explanations, etc. Source
4. VR solutions: a fresh approach to “need-to-contact” sectors
The pandemic impacted e-commerce positively – the U.S. e-commerce market shows 32.4% growth compared to 2019 ($794 billion). Meanwhile, sectors that require close contact between sellers and buyers undergo substantial decline.
For instance, the industry of real estate requires a potential buyer to inspect a house (apartment, office building) carefully to come up with the final decision. The pandemic and lockdowns shortened the number of contacts between buyers and realtors. As a result, the number of home sales listings decreased by 40%. The pandemic has changed the industry, forcing realtors to find the innovative solution. Virtual Reality technologies are ready to revolutionize real estate.
The year 2020 was the real boom for VR technologies implementation. Potential sellers have got an opportunity to inspect real estate property worldwide. The Goldman-Sachs study convinces that about 1.4 million realtors are expected to use VR technologies by 2025. Hence, a new trend provides companies with a chance to lay powerful ground for the future.
5. Innovation technologies to improve your voice, sound, and video
The world has suddenly become distant in every aspect, but our psychological patterns stay unchangeable. This said, the quality of your voice, sound, and video may impact the outcomes of negotiations. World-known corporations offer effective solutions for noise-canceling or sound improvement. The unexpected apartment renovation upstairs may spoil your project. Hence, don’t neglect this aspect.
On the other hand, this “pandemic trend” improves working conditions, and business owners are expected to implement the solutions in the future. Psychologists indicate that the quality of voice affects from 18 to 28% of the final decision made by a person you are communicating with.
Challenges or opportunities: the controversial impact of COVID-19
There is no doubt that the COVID-19 impacted the world economic situation negatively. 88% of people worry about the pandemic’s influence on economies (86% think about consequences for health). Meanwhile, the pandemic is somehow an instrument of natural selection. Business owners need to adjust their companies to future demands. Otherwise, they won’t be competitive.
Innovations may help businesses to enter a brand new level, while many owners have been ignoring them previously. COVID-19 opened the two ways for companies: either you develop and implement new trends or you run out.
Most instruments are hard for business owners to be implemented. When you need a company to develop, apply our experienced professionals who are ready to configure and customize technologies for your business. Contact us to get more details.