Why 2021 will be a year of digital resurrection

The year 2021 is the obvious successor of 2020 in the digital parlance. While 2020 was an ‘off’ year in many ways, 2021 has the binary 1 in it indicating ‘on’ or resumption of things. techARC – Technology Analytics, Research & Consulting, a new age technology market research firm, is calling 2021 as the year of ‘Digital Resurrection’, where organisations of every nature – for profit as well as others – will attempt to resurrect and resume like before leveraging the digital ecosystem.

According to techARC, digital will now be a systematic medium of businesses going forward. Organisations – business as well as others – will attempt to resurrect in 2021 primarily through digital mode. They will deploy and integrate digital technologies into business processes, which goes beyond using digital, including social media for marketing and outreach.

Primarily there will be three flavours of Digital Resurrection in 2021:

Resume: There are still some industries and sectors which have not been able to reopen their business operations. This is because they require large human gathering and is completely physical. For instance, manufacturing. Though many factories have reopened, they are not running at the optimal levels resulting in dis-economies of scale which is adversely impacting their cost management and profitability.

Digital ecosystem will see opportunities like smart factories which can fit in to the requirements of using lesser number of workers with increased output.  This way, factories could achieve the desired scales and adhere to the guidelines like maintaining social distancing.

There is also an increasing need for having an alternative home-grown supply chain which can add to the indigenisation endeavours like AtmaNirbhar Bharat initiative. Smart factories can help pace up this objective and give flexibility in terms of managing fluctuating demand and repurposing of factories as there will still be some perceived level of uncertainty regarding novel corona virus in 2021 also.

Rethink: A lot of sectors, especially in the service sector, jump-started their operations through digital. This was a contingency approach, where organisations got little chance to plan and think properly. They had to find solutions and tools which solved the problem, not necessarily being the right ones.

In 2021, these sectors will go back to drawing board and create blueprints of how digital solutions and tools can solve their requirements in the best manner. This would also mean customisation and bespoke development of solutions and tools for specific industries, sectors, and organisations. Sectors like education and healthcare will be the primary opportunities to look for.

Ramp-up: This form of digital resurrection will essentially involve scaling up of the digital technologies horizontally as well as vertically within organisations which have already implemented the best digital solutions available for their operations. However, these were implemented in a controlled environment with limited scope.

Now, after seeing the benefits in specific operations modules, these organisations will go for a complete digital solution across the setup. These opportunities are primarily in the domains of FMCG and BFSI, where large enterprises will adopt digital across several functions to evolve as digital first enterprises.

The digital technology value chain will have to offer deeper consulting services to businesses for ‘digital resurrection’, where the scope will not only be about designing technology but merging business processes with technology solutions.

Direct to consumer

Digital gives an opportunity for organisations to directly establish a relationship with its stakeholders, including consumers in case of brands. Even B2B brands are going for establishing direct connect with their end customers. In addition to increasing transparency between the customer cycle, brands are able to know more about their end-users through analytics which they generate out of the enormous data collected during interactions.

D2C has already started peeping in some sectors like FMCG where brands usually did not know about their customers. Now using digital channels, brands are directly establishing a connect with the customers. This is a huge opportunity for the digital ecosystem where they can create a seamless connect between a brand and its millions of customers across the country, and even beyond. In 2021, many brands will take a structured approach to implement D2C in their businesses.

In D2C, brands will primarily focus on 3Cs of connect, communicate and commerce establishing direct channel to acquire, engage and transact with end users. For the digital value chain this translates into big opportunities to deploy solutions through which brands could discover their potential customers, reach out to time to make them aware and provide them necessary information, and finally enable sales fulfilment using digital platforms.

In 2021, digital marketing will be much more than campaigns targeted at specific audiences. It will be business prospecting and engaging the potential customers leading to their desired action, which in several cases would be a purchase, through a digital medium.

D2C will lead to increase in adoption of cloud based solutions and services to offer seamless experience across the markets a brand operates, to make them anytime anywhere brands.

Digital as a service

Digital essentially has two sub-ecosystems of software and hardware.  With SaaS and other cloud led models, software has already moved to as a service model. However, hardware is still something which needs to be procured, be it equipment or the devices.

With the impact of COVID-19 on the financials of almost every industry, the ability to make capital investments in hardware will be less. As a result, the viable alternative for them to go completely digital will be to have complete package including hardware and software on, as a service model.

Digital as a Service has two elements of Software as a Service and Hardware as a Service, which will also stand independently giving the industry flexibility to pick and choose only the relevant segment as well as the sub-segments.

Many single location organisations have ‘dis-assembled’ to spread across several towns and cities as employees continue to work from home. It becomes very difficult for the IT function of such organisations to offer support, especially on hardware across these multiple locations.

Digital as a Service can be of great help to such organisations where an OEM can offer last mile services for hardware as well as the software. This is in addition to the advantage of companies being able to convert capital investment in to variable expense.

Digital infringement

Copyright and intellectual property safeguarding has been one of the most challenging objectives of every organisation since the inception of the Internet.  Not just content companies, even government and public figures find imitated over digital platforms. This has spurred since the growth of social media as well.

With very difficult law enforcement and complex tracing, the infringement is not taking toll on brands and causing a very big matter of concern posing as a threat to a brand’s reputation.

The earlier ramification of infringement was only to the extent of copyright and IP stealing. But now, it means resorting to fraud of several kinds in the name of any brand, of course without its approvals.

From the very basic issue of offering fake jobs, the infringement is now also becoming a cause of counterfeit products and services which are being delivered over digital platforms as it is increasingly being used for trade and commerce as well.

With D2C (direct to consumer) growing as a strong trend and consumers expecting discovery as well as fulfilment of many services and products over digital, the fraudsters have their ‘eureka’ moment in 2021 to trick several users who could fall prey to baits offered in the form of jaw-dropping promotions in the name of reputed brands.

In such a scenario, not only will users be duped of money, brands will also find themselves in the midst of controversies and often confront with aggrieved consumers. The reputation crisis on digital is very difficult to manage as it wildfires in no time and can harm the image built by a brand over several years.

In 2021, brands shall have to be extremely cognizant of brand infringement issues and keep a tight vigil on the entire digital ecosystem to manage its reputation effectively.