Digital transformation & adoption continues to take big leaps: Prasad Shejale

With the year drawing to a close, it is time to recap the major developments across the industry. As in the previous years, Adgully reviews the year 2021 for M&E, Advertising, Digital, Marketing, PR & Communications along with leading names in the industry as part of the REWIND 2021 series.

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In conversation with Adgully, Prasad Shejale, Founder & CEO, Logicserve Digital recaps the trends and developments that dominated the digital industry this year, as well as his projections and expectation for the upcoming year.

Digital industry has always been very dynamic and the changes in this industry happen quickly. This year, the industry witnessed a huge transformation, something that was only expected to happen in the next few years. Right from the rise of new content formats, popularity of short videos, NFTs and cryptocurrencies sparking conversations about the future of finance, the big announcement about the phasing out of third-party cookies to the new identity of Facebook embracing the metaverse. A lot has happened this year and this trajectory of digital transformation and adoption continues to take big leaps, even as we read this.

Here’s a quick recap of some of the dominating trends of 2021.

• Customer Data Platforms (CDPs)

CDPs allow businesses to streamline their customer data and have an integrated database that provides all the necessary information about the users across channels. This year, CDPs have helped companies to adapt to the key challenges and achieve marketing success.

• Digital Security

With the digital revolution and the increasing adoption of digital channels across all businesses, security has been of utmost important to safeguard the data. As per the results of a poll conducted by The Pearson Institute and The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research, around 9 in 10 Americans were found to be somewhat concerned about hacking that involves their personal information, financial institutions, government agencies or certain utilities. Also, an article published by Cyber Magazine mentioned that IoT devices suffer an average of 5,200 cyber-attacks every month.

This concern and the rising number of cyber attacks have surely urged everyone to be mindful and have robust digital security measures in place.

• Artificial Intelligence (AI)

Artificial Intelligence has taken on a huge space in the digital industry this year as more and more people learned about the innumerable possibilities of using this technology to transform the way we work or live our daily lives.

• Customer-centric Vision

The pandemic brought around a lot of changes for all of us, individuals as well as businesses. It is critical for everyone, including businesses, to quickly adapt to the changes and the changing consumer preferences, habits, etc. to continue growing. This year, we saw many more businesses shifting their focus on this aspect and building truly customer-centric processes, platforms, goals and the larger vision too.

• Contactless solutions and digital payments

Now, I am sure we don’t need any details about this. All of us saw how the pandemic and the safety precautions around it, in a way pushed the usage of digital payments as well as contactless solutions. While people wanted to be safe and still needed to get the things they want, they have preferred the partners that allowed them to avail their services in a contactless manner and make the payments digitally.

These were some of the major trends we saw this year that have further driven the digital transformation wave that we are all witnessing.

Now, as we all gear up for the new year and start putting together our strategies in place for continued success in 2022, I would like to highlight a few expectations and the key trends that I feel will dominate in the coming year.

• 5G

5G has been making good progress and I am sure we will soon see it become mainstream in the coming year. It offers a wide range of benefits right from increased capacity for delivery of new content and services, and delivering unique experiences in unthinkable ways, that too at incredible speed.

The government of India also has been supporting the development of 5G technology in India and, I am sure, it will be one of the most important technologies that will drive the digital transformation journey in the future.

• Shoppable content

The pandemic has given rise to an increased reliance on e-commerce and newer ways of online shopping. E-commerce industry is gaining a huge traction and is predicted to be a $1 trillion industry by 2022.

In an effort to provide a seamless shopping experience to users, we have already seen some newer formats and channels for shopping come into picture this year. In the coming year, marketers will dive into the shoppable content space, which allows users to directly shop their favourite products without having to leave the platform or content they are consuming in a few easy steps. Brands will surely use this trend heavily in the coming year to revolutionise the way people shop.

• Visual and voice search

We have seen huge developments in the visual and voice technology. This will continue to grow and will push businesses to rethink their digital strategies and figure out ways to be visible when people search for them via visual search or voice search. Some reports predict that voice shopping is going to reach $40 billion by 2022. Brands definitely don’t want to lose on this opportunity.

• Short videos

This trend is already becoming mainstream as people are able to consume content in a quick and convenient way and, they also enjoy the short format of the content. Short videos are everywhere now right from social media to shopping platforms. Owning to the shrinking attention spans of new-age users, this format is very apt for these audiences and it will continue to help business connect and engage with their customers in the coming year. We will also see a combination of other factors that will help brands provide personalisation as well as interactive aspects to their content to make it interesting and keep the audience hooked to their brand. There are endless ways to incorporate short-form videos into your digital marketing strategy and businesses will embrace this trend in 2022.

• First-party and zero-party data

Data is extremely important for any business to service their customers better, understand them and continue enhancing their experience. There is a growing importance of first-party and zero-party data nowadays and, it is already urging businesses to change the way they collect information and use it mindfully.

Some companies have started directing their efforts towards finding solutions to safely collect first-party and zero-party data and use it for designing their marketing plans. We will see more companies focus on this area and be ready for a world where third-party data will be long-forgotten.