Five Mega Trends Businesses Must Watch Out For
Cos need to rapidly adapt to
survive
Just a decade ago,
driverless cars and intelligent clothing were the stuff of sci-fi movies. Now
driverless cars are all set to hit the road.These examples of breakthrough
technologies making quick progress from the laboratory to our workspaces, homes
and cars show how we as business leaders and consumers need to rapidly adapt
ourselves to fast changes.
In the next few years, we
will face five mega trends that will impact the way we do business and lead our
lives.
WEARABLES & CONNECTED ECONOMY
The trend of wearables or
internet of things (IoT) started with intelligent watches and wrist bands, and
now we have smart eyewear, clipon devices and helmets. Clothing brands and
electronics companies are now working on smart clothing that connects to the
cellular network and accesses or transmits data. IDC expects the worldwide
wearable devices market to reach 101.9 million units by the end of 2016 and
213.6 million units in 2020.
IoT presents a huge
opportunity for businesses across sectors -from the kind of new services they
can offer to ways of managing the data emanating out of IoTs.
NEW BUSINESS MODELS AND THE SHARED ECONOMY
Uber and AirBnB have shown
us that we don't need to own any assets to run a business. Uber doesn't own a
single cab and AirBnB does not own a single hotel but they have disrupted the
market like no other.Lyft, a company that provides appbased ride-sharing
facilities in over 200 cities in the US, expects carpooling to replace car
ownership, and become a major transportation trend. In a recent article, John
Zimmer, cofounder of Lyft, wrote about how car ownership is falling in the US
and by 2025, private car ownership in major US cities will “all-but end.“
People around the world,
including in India, are opening up their homes to holiday-makers through
AirBnb, thus forcing hotels to relook at their business strategies.
CONNECTIVITY BETWEEN DEVICES AND THE NETWORK ECONOMY
The network that connects
different devices, facilitates the flow of data, and allows individuals and
companies across the globe to access services is the nerve center of many of
today's new businesses. Cisco believes by 2020, 50 billion devices will be interconnected.
The possibilities that it opens up for businesses and consumers today were
unimaginable until recently. Riding on the network economy, Practo, a
Bengaluru-based company, is now believed to be the world's largest appointment
booking platform that handles over 40 million appointments annually.
NEW WAYS OF TRANSACTING AND ANYTIME, ANYWHERE ECONOMY
We have adopted new ways of
transacting and have long since forgotten how it felt to stand in a long queue
in front of a teller in the bank. ATMs, online banking and now increasingly
mobile banking have taken over the traditional ways of transacting.
The factors driving the
mode of transaction in eretail are transaction cost, speed, convenience and
security. With in-app payments such as Apple Pay , Android Pay and
retailer-based payment solutions coming up fast, retailers will have to look
for front-end innovations and robust back-end processes to allow customers safe
and seamless transaction options.
MACRO LEVEL CHANGES AND THE DISRUPTED ECONOMY
The fifth and the last
factor to watch out for are macro level changes that are beyond our control and
threaten to derail us from our stated objectives. In the past few years we have
seen how businesses have got impacted by geopolitical changes such as Brexit or
the continuing crisis in the Middle East, regulatory changes such as Sarbanes
Oxley or Solvency II or demonetisation or the proposed diesel cab ban in Delhi,
or natural disasters and diseases such as tsunamis, earthquakes or the Ebola
outbreak in Africa or the Zika outbreak in South America.
In today's globalised
world, businesses anywhere in the world can get affected and therefore, need to
stay attuned to market changes and align their models accordingly.
KESHAV R MURUGESH, Group CEO, WNS Global Services
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ET23DEC16
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