Shivam Singh, Digital Marketing Expert: 2021, The Year of the True Digital Revolution

Shivam Singh, CEO of the TechGrits, an expert in digital marketing and digital communication for companies, a specialist in digital transformation, analyzes the situation of companies in this year of the true digital revolution and how it will affect them in their adaptation processes to a new socio-economic environment.

The year 2020 turned out to be unprecedented in many ways, a year in which technology confirmed its increasingly crucial role in everyone’s personal and professional lives. The pandemic has pushed users to adopt even more digital habits, and organizations have had to adapt, modifying their business processes to ensure their operability and competitiveness in the future, and on many occasions relying on digital marketing agencies for advice.

What will the year 2021 hold in this regard? What are the main trends in digital marketing for the next twelve months?

Increasingly clear and defined business objectives
Throughout the year, a series of analyzes have been carried out on clients that have identified the importance of digital marketing and through it a series of important trends, already seen in 2020, that They will probably be confirmed in the year 2021.

Organizations strive to achieve their goals through initiatives aimed at:

– Innovation in the company, not only at the level of products or services but above all at the level of operational processes.

– Gain market share by improving the customer experience and taking advantage of digital channels, increasingly used by customers;

– Defeat the competition of the so-called “first digital companies”, taking advantage of their wealth of skills.

– Drive the automation of processes towards new frontiers, not only to reduce the time and cost of repetitive activities but also to guarantee business continuity and create smarter interactions.

– Reduce time to market, to bring products and services to market more quickly.

It should be noted that these initiatives not only pose difficult challenges on their own but even become almost divergent when more than one is pursued.

The role of information technologies in achieving these objectives
For its implementation, IT is increasingly considered a strategic element and not just a provider of business support services.

The year 2021 will bring a new acceleration of the digital transformation processes already underway, marketing and the new normal, promise to radically change the very essence of business structures, adding dynamism, flexibility and resilience.

It is no coincidence that almost two-thirds of European companies maintain, or even increase, their investments in information technology and digital marketing after COVID-19, despite a macroeconomic situation that is anything but favourable.

The technological enablers that drive digital innovation
At a time when companies are clear about the need to continue innovating to maintain marketing trends – or improve – their competitiveness, and the fundamental role of technology in this broad process of digital transformation, careful attention must be paid to the technology enablers who will play the most concrete role in this transition.

Interactions with customers have shown that there are certain paradigms that companies cannot ignore to design their future more effectively:

– Multi-Cloud, together with Containers: To guarantee greater flexibility and agility in the development and delivery of applications and services.

– Big Data, Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning: To transform the enormous amount of data that organizations continuously produce and collect into useful business information, to create efficiency and competitiveness.

– Programmable Infrastructures: The possibility of being able to program and reprogram the components of the Data Center to be able to offer everything in as-a-service mode, in a more timely manner and closer to the real needs of the users.

– Edge Computing: The ability to transfer computing power and, therefore, the provision of services as close as possible to its use, saving time and performance.

– 5G: with its benefits and capillarity, it will be the support framework on which all the aforementioned technologies will be grafted.

Critical factors to take into account
The matrix formed by the business objectives and the enabling technologies is completed with a series of critical factors, which must be taken into account to guarantee performance by the expectations and needs of the companies.

– Security: the need to always be up and running and always connected will bring with it the need to review the processes themselves with a view to security by design, that is, with security at the base, now more than ever with computer infrastructures more and more dispersed and remote and therefore, even more, subject to attacks and possible operational criticalities.

– Portability: the possibility of being able to transfer a workload or an application from one specific platform to another, regardless of its type, at any time and without any loss of service.

– Multi-cloud Management: The more organizations choose different cloud providers and hybrid architectures, the more critical it is.

– Extensive Automation: the ability to automate business processes, not just low-level repetitive operations.

– Fast and efficient integration of data and processes to multiply the positive effects of automation at all levels.

However, the elements mentioned so far may not be enough for a true digital revolution in the organization. In fact, technology alone may be insufficient if it is not accompanied by an evolution in terms of corporate culture, greater collaboration between IT and the business and the adoption of more agile practices. Hence a heightened awareness that the benefits of digital transformation can be amplified by equally significant organizational evolution.