Top 10 Industry Trends to Follow

 

There are consistently new technologies, changes in consumer behavior, economic influences, and innovations that have an effect on diverse industries in the business sector. The topics are very relevant because it is important for companies to pursue continual improvements, which, in turn creates competitiveness, productivity, market access and in the process provides customers with products and services that meet their needs as depicted in the topics. This article gives information on the ten most important emerging industry trends in the major sectors of the economy which business executive across industries should track in 2024 and beyond.

1. Sustainability Makes Its Way into All Areas of Business:

Sustainability is not anymore merely a moral imperative or the ability to appeal to environmental friendly consumers. Consumers also expect brands to be environmentally, socially and governance sustainable going by the current trends. Today, everyone longs for environmentally friendly investment opportunities. Worldwide, the rules concerning gas emissions into the atmosphere, industry water usage, and recycling are undergoing a tightening process. Operational agility and management of climate change risks remain the most significant board leadership priorities. Companies in the auto industry, energy and retail, consumer product goods industries have stepped up efforts towards sustainable use of power, resource efficiency and responsible sourcing of materials.

2. HealthTech and the advances in Digital Healthcare take off:

The pandemic has forced people to rely on telemedicine and remote patient monitoring as never before. AI and ML and data are increasingly being applied to enhance the decision-making on the kind of treatment to offer, to diagnose clinical conditions and for population health. And there’s even more opportunity in gene editing, robotic surgeries, biosensors and nanotech, for example. HC providers continue to seek the shift from traditional systems that are fee based, to a value based care system. All players in the insurance value chain are improving digital and personalized services. For the pharma players, particular interest goes to biologics, targeted therapies and preventions. In general, technology-driven, patient-oriented and, as a result, personalized healthcare is a top industry development priority.

3. Changing the Face of Manufacturing Industries with Smart Factories:

The industrial IoT, AI, AR/VR, additive manufacturing, autonomous robots, and the 5G connectivity integrated into Industry 4.0 are reshaping manufacturing floors. This trend of smart manufacturing allows to gather and evaluate the production information, improve and automate the process, improve quality of output and speed up innovations, and decrease the costs and time of operation. They commit to improved user control utilizing features such as 3D printing “on-demand”. Smart factories will become strategic imperative for competing manufacturing firms on the back of consumers’ increasing quest for customized products.

4. Card switch/digital payments:

Online banking, banking through social media, digital accounting, robo-advisors, and automated trading using artificial intelligence, these innovations leaped from the fringes to the heart of economic activity. 

In banking, insurance and investment industries there are giants who often struggle with providing traditional services as new fintech startups propose new, technological, and mobile solutions. Incumbents are therefore reinventing customer interfaces with applications from digitization and automation, such as self-service interfaces, robo advisors and automated underwriting models. Preliminary use of mobile money among the financially excluded population is rapidly growing. open banking expanding various ecosystems, hyper personalized AI-driven propositions, process automation, use of blockchain also on the rise. In business, with managing data and analytics transforming into a competitive advantage, old-style companies are trying hard to achieve a swift digital transformation.

5. Logistics and Supply Chain Improvements Become Inevitable:

Disruptions arising from the pandemic caused managers to identify gaps in their supply system such as geographical concentration risk, monetary loss due to delays in shipping and the fact that supply chains are intricate. But stresses also precipitated long overdue innovation and investment in the logistics resilience. Collaborative, physically and financially linked omnichannel SCs, deployed with IoT, predictive analytics, cloud computing and control towers as the best practices in mitigating for disruption risks. RPA of warehouse management and last-mile delivery through the use of drones or self-driving cars are improving. While being driven due to the margin pressures which force a more even increased strategic outsourcing of Logistics Industry, service expectation is escalating exponentially throughout the Industries.

6. Flexible and Hybrid Working Arrangements Attract Top Priority:

With technology enablers such as SaaS apps for video conferencing, remote and hybrid work culture is seen to come up as the preferred model giving a better choice in work-life balance. Employers implementing flexible models have an edge in attracting and retaining their talent during the talent crunch and the ongoing Great Resignation period. At the same time, various data security risks evolve further with an expanding mobile working force connecting to the cloud using alternating devices and locations. Zero Trust security model for proprietary data can become the focus while maintaining compliance with private data regulations usually put in place. Maintaining and promoting cooperation, creating, responsibility, and meaning in virtual teams also assumes critical importance for leadership. 

7. The Need for ESG Measurement and Reporting Increases:

Keeping up with increased stakeholder demand, the regulators are offering more precise definitions and standards for the firms’ environmental and social reporting. Even Moody investor rating agencies have included ESG scores in their credits risks ratings admitting such considerations affect business sustainability. This is causing public companies in all industries to approach the measurement of ESG issues via corresponding metrics as a trend of considerable importance. An example of this trend is the globally dispersed obligations such as science-based emission targets, getting board oversight for actioning ESG strategies, linking executive pay to suitable KPIs, and developing specific disclosures following TCFD guidelines.

8. Traditional and emerging e-commerce business models continue to grow:

Bearing the brunt of the pandemic restrictions consumers started to rely on online purchase of goods compelling traditional physical stores retailers to opt for e-commerce solutions to sustain business viability. Most young, first-party digital-native brands with mainly D2C propositions that operate through social commerce are now valued preposterously high. Rise in streaming entertainment also created direct to consumer new products which traditional distribution channels. As stated earlier, Gen Z consumers also readily engaging with social and influencer commerce. Many organizations have started to blend physical touchpoints with digital ones in customer experiences, whether the firm is traditional and established or born digital and spanning industries such as retail, media and telecoms.

9. Automation Becomes The Norm:

While factory floors were the initial targets of RPA and AI-based process automation, this integration is now going broad and deep across a company’s operations – in areas such as HR, finance and accounting, compliance and reporting, IT service desks, and so much more. In areas where standard processes are followed, with increasing regularity software robots are being employed to remove paper work, to speed up processes, to reduce errors and to allow human personnel to get on with high-skill work requiring problem-solving using their emotional intelligence and domain knowledge. The service sectors that sanctions to high automation are financial, healthcare and pharmaceuticals while the pilot automation sits in all sectors including manufacturing, retailing, hospitality, and professional sectors.

10. Having Competitions Defined by the Experience:

Lack of product or service differentiation or the ability to easily imitate it has led to the realization that in the global market customer experience is the only clear point of differentiation. Moments are the collection of all customer experiences such as easy initial contact, personalization of the customer service, integrated online/offline communication, clear and comprehensible information, timely and self-sufficient handling of issues and making the customer feel special. User experience (UX) then is key to technology-based interfaces and on the other hand, Human experience (HX) directs people relations. Leaders dedicate significant budgets towards the curation and providing of customer experiences, something which they often have CXOs to manage.