The 2020s are (almost) here. Is your business fully prepared?

It’s almost 2020. Can you believe it? Time seems to fly faster than ever – including the accelerating pace of business. Ten years ago, the majority of Americans were just beginning to send and receive email (and everything else) on our phones. Today our devices act as our televisions/radios, newspapers, ma?tre d’s, maps, time pieces  and so much more. In a way, it’s odd that we still refer to them as phones.

Across industries and businesses of all sizes, we’ve seen so much progressive development, as well as innovative disruption, transpire over the past ten years. This begs the question, as we embark on a fresh decade what technology and solutions should businesses be prioritizing?

Here are five areas where I feel we’d all be wise to concentrate our collective energy.

1.    Cybersecurity will continue to be paramount

The tech revolution has been awesome but has brandished a double-edged sword. Every innovation correlates with new threats, as evidenced by the fact that security breaches have increased by 67% over the past five years, according to a survey by Accenture. Every new device or service which uses our information – from electric scooters to ridesharing apps to connected TVs to our phones – is in the crosshairs of online evildoers. This is especially true for those responsible for the digital security of an enterprise.

According to Forrester’s 2020 Predictions, enterprises in particular are at risk because of the depth and breadth of their technology. Why? Three big reasons:

·     As enterprises have grown to be data- and insights-driven, a data breach now has a more disastrous effect.

·     As businesses increase their operational efficiency through the Internet of Things, many IoT devices are built with minimal security measures.

·     Just as businesses are adopting more AI and machine learning, hackers are also beginning to use these tools against your customers. Dubbed ‘deepfakes,’ these advanced scams could cost incalculable damage.

While you may not know the total financial impact of a breach, we’ve all heard the news stories and seen the effect on Wall Street. A customer data breach brings with it more than damage in dollars – it causes a rift in customer trust. In addition to the cost of the cleanup, you must win back the confidence of your customer base.

As we move into the 2020s, cybersecurity should be your top business priority.

2.    CX will come of age

The 2010’s gave rise to the importance of customer experience (CX). The 2020s will make these experiences more intuitive and predictable. With companies battling for the loyalty of customers more than ever, we’ve seen the Chief Experience Officer become a position of greater significance.

In the next decade these CXOs must continue to leverage customer data to not only earn but to keep customers. Though it may seem Sisyphean, aligning your CX with your data infrastructure isn’t impossible.

To simplify the task look to the conclusion of Deloitte who advises that, instead of abandoning your legacy technology stack, “your goal should be to integrate the technologies and processes that can make your existing systems smarter and provide real-time seamless interactions with customers.”

This is the future of CX. And I believe that AI and machine learning, along with near real-time inventory management, will help take us further than we can possibly imagine. As you develop and deploy new customer-centric solutions, an AT&T Business network consultant can help you accelerate and de-risk your strategies.

3.    Staying online will impact the bottom line

Having your internet go down is simply unacceptable these days. Precise statistics are hard to come by but one source points to downtime costing $5600 to $9000 per minute, or more than $100,000 an hour. And if your business relies directly on the internet for its revenue, it could cost even more.

Moving into the next decade, having connectivity that stays online will have a huge and growing impact on every business’ bottom line. A simple, reliable, highly secure, versatile dedicated connection with 99.95% service uptime and 24/7 tech support can boost a company’s performance and efficiency in so many ways. It’s imperative that businesses of all sizes across all industries shore up their approach to network connectivity – customers, partners, and employees are depending on it!

4.    The best future employees? Your current employees

In the next decade, employees will need to broaden their skillsets. According to McKinsey, “As it currently stands, 25 percent of the global workforce will either need to find new professional activities by 2020 or significantly broaden their technological skills…”

The success of many businesses will depend on their ability to retain and reskill their own employees throughout the 2020s. As far as relevant technologies you can deploy to help, open access to learning tools will be critical. But even more important will be matching current employees with more ideal and future-ready positions. At AT&T, we’ve implemented two solutions to do just this.

·     Our Personal Learning Experience (PLE) is an online tool that allows employees to find jobs at AT&T based on their current skills and discover the training needed for their next move. They can then link directly to the training for that particular job. But are our employees using it? I’d say so. Last year, more than 200,000 AT&T employees logged in to PLE more than 7 million times.

·     MyCareer Profile (mCP) is almost like an internal LinkedIn page, where our employees highlight their job histories, special skills, and the training that they’ve had thus far. Managers can search mCP to quickly spot promising candidates who already work at AT&T for current job openings. We also utilize mCP to detect gaps that show the need for targeted training in specific hard-to-find skills.            

Does your business have robust reskilling opportunities available as we head into the future? 

5.    The good guys will win

Moving forward, it will be more important than ever that businesses are virtuous. In 2017, 52% of consumers said they actively consider company values when making a purchase. A number that’s been growing. It’s no surprise. Bombarded with negative news, today’s consumers are forever hopeful – and align their purchases accordingly. Moving forward into the next decade, it will be vital that businesses not only avoid bad press but use their technology to promote their authentic goodwill.

At AT&T, we’re helping customers use IoT for Good. We understand that IoT solutions have an ever-expanding reach, through which we and our customers can address global challenges and engage humanity for the greater good.

This is something that I’m so proud to be a part of -- that we are helping to build a better tomorrow by giving our customers the IoT data to enable them to reach sustainability goals or using connected health solutions to transform health care into human care.

Is your business prepared for the year ahead? I hope these 5 focus areas are a helpful addition to developing and executing your plan for a successful 2020 and beyond. Here’s to the dawn of the new decade!