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Friday, January 10, 2020 / 05:51 PM / Pradyut Hande for Netcore Smartech / Header
Image: marketoonist.com
It would be no exaggeration if we say that the
capacity of technology to advance itself is proceeding at a faster rate than
our ability to process these changes all at the same time. This is both amazing
and alarming in the same breath.
And if there's one space in marketing where we saw
the most changes because of technology in 2019, that's data and
analytics.
Businesses are literally flooded with data. There's
so much of it that we struggle to know what's important, and what's not.
However, it still remains a "good-to-have" problem. The bigger challenges,
however, are presented by the increasing privacy and safety concerns. Data
scandals have opened a can of worms for the industry, which now everyone has to
deal with.
Much of the trends and predictions for 2020 that we
see are centred around dealing with these challenges. Some of them are
technology-oriented while others are non-technological in nature.
Let's talk more about them in detail.
Understanding Data Legislations and
Protecting Customers
2019 was an eventful year for data privacy. It
rained lawsuits. Consumer privacy concerns occupied space in both key courts
and state legislatures as well as in Silicon Valley. It all started with the
Facebook-Cambridge Analytica scandal in 2018 and soon other technology giants
like Amazon, Apple, and Google faced litigations too.
For the most part of 2019, big brands kept
galloping to pivot to the privacy-first model. With CCPA and GDPR coming into
effect, this has become a must for every business running operations online. If
you check your inbox, you will already find plenty of emails with titles like "Privacy Policy Updates", and "Terms of Services and Privacy Update". These are
businesses scrambling to safeguard themselves from heavy fines and potential
loss of reputation in the future.
In 2020, marketers will continue to re-analyze the
consumer data they already have. Everyone in the marketing team will need to
understand how their business collects, processes, and stores data. There was a
time when ignorance was bliss, but marketing in 2020 won't give you the same
luxury.
Besides, the current state legislations are
expected to evolve further as the technology companies and consumers will
continue the conversation in the courts. We will see different definitions of
privacy, private information, and privacy breach - each varying from one
legislation to another. For example, even if you are GDPR-compliant it may not
mean that you are covered for the CCPA too.
New federal legislatures may also come into being.
Staying informed about every single update would have never been as crucial as
it will now be. As for compliance, we will see brands spending a lot more than
before on consultants and systems. B2C businesses are likely to find it more
challenging and may struggle to retain user data for marketing and advertising
purposes.
As predicted by Forrester,
In 2019, as per an IBM research conducted by the Ponemon Institute, the
average cost of data breaches was around USD 3.92 million. In fact, the total
number of data breaches increased by 54% in the first half of 2019.
Forrester predicts that in 2020,
As the ramifications of data breaches become even
more serious, securing data against insider threats, exposed databases, phishing scams, ransomware attacks, and many more will become the ultimate
priority for businesses.
All this is set to keep marketing teams on their
toes throughout 2020. Brace yourself!
Natural Language Processing &
Conversational Analytics
If there is a trend that is going to be truly
revolutionary for data analytics, it is going to be NLP (Natural Language
Processing) and conversational analytics. NLP and conversational analytics
eliminates the need to program queries for advanced analytics. It now allows
humans and computers to interact using natural language, making data accessible
to a larger pool of users.
Natural Language Processing has always been one of
our science fantasies. Remember HAL 9000 from Stanley Kubrick's "2001: A Space
Odyssey"? To date, it's considered an iconic moment when HAL says, "I'm sorry Dave, I'm afraid I can't do
that." This was
in 1968. It definitely took us some time to reach where we are but NLP has
finally established itself as a developed branch of artificial intelligence.
Google is already using it to make the internet
accessible to everyone. Now the next is businesses that will find it easier to
ask questions about data and receive an explanation of the insights.
Conversational analytics will take it to a whole new level by processing
questions and answering verbally instead of using text.
Gartner is optimistic about its outlook on the
future. It foresees that NLP and conversational analytics will boost the
adoption of analytics and business intelligence among employees from 35% to
over 50% by 2021. Among those who will adopt it will be a whole new class of
users like front-office workers. Exciting times!
Augmented Analytics Making It Easy to
Understand Data
"The final goal of augmented analytics is to
completely replace this standard process with AI, taking care of the entire
analysis process from data collection to business recommendations to
decision-makers." - Kavita D. Chiplunkar, Head - Data Science, Infinite-Sum
Modelling Inc.
Gartner included Augmented Analytics in its Hype
Cycle for the first time in 2017. In its report, it described Augmented
Analytics as "the next wave of disruption in data and analytics." Inarguably,
it turned out to be so and dominated the data landscape in 2019.
Augmented analytics has proven to be a remedy to
the time-intensive process of analyzing and interpreting data. The technology
is essentially aimed to empower non-technical/non-data scientist users to be
able to perform analysis on their own. It also relieves data scientists from
having to choose the right algorithms and write a code to get the data.
It combines both the power of machine learning and
NLP (Natural Language Processing). Augmented analytics tools are capable of
handling large sets of data and are able to integrate well with analytics
platforms, saving a lot of time. The interesting part is that these systems will
be able to interact with data organically, on their own. They will also surface
any unusual trends and report them to businesses.
Gartner predicted in its 2019 report that, "By
2020, augmented analytics will be a dominant driver of new purchases of analytics
and business intelligence." Grabbing the top spot in several industry trends
reports, augmented analytics is sure to make waves in 2020.
Unified Data to Connect all the Dots
Businesses run different applications and use
varying technologies for different business purposes. All this has resulted in
a massive amount of data that can be structured, unstructured, and
semi-structured. Since this data is siloed across a diverse set of data
sources, it also causes silos in teams and different business units.
Without having a central system to manage all the
data, you can't have accurate insights. And this often results in uninformed or
poorly informed decisions. But when you are able to unify your data, you become
better equipped to plan, forecast, budget and build products and
services.
Last year, we saw Google coming up with a unified data solution for
app and web analytics. The company combined the capabilities of Google
Analytics and Google Analytics for Firebase (for mobile apps). It was a
much-needed solution. More and more technologies are expected to crop up to
help businesses build a single source of truth for all functions.
In 2020, you will see more and more businesses
using technologies for breaking data silos. In fact, most of the marketing in
the future would require businesses to have a unified view of their customers.
More than ever, it has to be seen more like a 'must' rather than an 'option'.
Innovation in Data Storage and Management
Technologies
Up until a few years from now, most companies
stored and processed their data using their own captive data centers. This changed with the onset of cloud services
and thereby, resulted in hyper-scale cloud companies. These solutions allow
businesses to not only reduce costs but also increase profits.
The public cloud market, comprising of cloud
applications (SaaS), development and data platforms (PaaS), and infrastructure
(IaaS) services combined, is predicted to grow to $299.4 billion by Forrester.
We will see a slow but healthy CAGR of 21%, and this growth will lead to more
demand, spending, and development of enterprise data solutions.
Globally, 2020 is set to see an increase in
deployment of the grids by all major hyper-scale cloud companies. As per Forbes,
We will also see artificial intelligence and
machine learning increasing their penetration in enterprise-level data
management solutions. Quoting Gartner, "with technical skills in short supply
and data growing exponentially, organizations need to automate data management
tasks. Vendors are adding machine learning and artificial intelligence
capabilities to make data management processes self-configuring and self-tuning
so that highly skilled technical staff can focus on higher-value tasks."
The trend is set to give rise to augmented data
management and impact the complete ecosystem such as "data quality,
metadata management, master data management, data integration, and databases."
Conclusion
It surely becomes overwhelming if you think about
the mere scale of challenges in front of us. But there's always a way
out.
For businesses to be able to take steady steps
towards growth and right decisions, a clear vision that is both meaningful and
actionable is needed. This will be required to view the ecosystem as a whole
(both the technological and non-technological aspects) that we have in place
right now.
Gartner's Neil Osmond also cautions us to the
overuse of the word "change". He advises businesses to avoid falling into the
trap of "transformation fatigue". Quoting him, "People come to work to
deliver, not to change. If you're forcing change on them, it can be really
tiresome."
Start with talking to your teams first. Help them
understand your vision and connect with it. To build trust and confidence and
drive actual change, create a clear plan they are able to understand.
'This post originally appeared on the Netcore Smartech blog'.
About the Author
Pradyut Hande - A data-driven marketing strategist with a
hard-nosed penchant for frugal innovation, Pradyut is the Senior Growth
Marketer & Product Evangelist at Netcore's Smartech.
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