One astute philosopher said that it’s a lot easier to predict what will happen ten years from now than what will happen next year or even tomorrow. One has to make predictions for tomorrow based more on reality, and that sometimes is not as attention getting. That thought does not lessen the fact that at CompassRed, we get giddy around this time each year. We thrive on the pursuit of the possible. As we begin a new year, we channel our energy into thoughtfully planning our focus, the trends we expect to emerge, the new challenges and opportunities we might face, the experiences new team members will bring, or (even better) how we will help change the world for the better.
At the beginning of this year, we looked back to reassess our dreams, our industry, and revitalize our vision for the future. We love reading the plethora of articles from those who are re-examining their predictions from last year and why they were “right on” or so far from reality. The year 2020 is extra special; we have the opportunity to look at the decade that’s passed and dream of the next one. Below are eight things we’re predicting for 2020:
1. 2020: Operationalization of the Model
Over the past 18 months, we have been asked by a lot of our clients to build models and help them interpret the results. Now the majority of our clients are asking us to operationalize those models to drive continuous results. As simple as it sounds, we see this as an important sign the models are building trust within our client’s business, informing their decisions and providing a tangible ROI. The need to operationalize models will continue and even grow even as Artificial Intelligence gets more ingrained into our clients everyday operations. For us this means that we need to continue our innovations in both data science and our technical capabilities.
2. Healthcare — Making Use of the Investment
During 2018 and 2019, we found ourselves using the expertise gained from our various industry projects and applying it towards advancing healthcare. This included the application of our work in demand forecasting to predict daily patient volume for an emergency room and taking the data strategies implemented at a large consumer organization and applying them to the way healthcare speaks to their patients. We are finding the methodologies and approaches we use in other industries to have applicability in healthcare. Over the past 10 years most hospitals and care providers have invested heavily in the systems that managed the electronic health care record. Now that these systems (i.e. Epic and Cerner) are in place — we expect healthcare clients to start demanding more out of them in 2020 and beyond.
We have seen the Chief Information Officer or CEO of our healthcare clients listing “Leverage Data Science and Data Analytics” in their top five initiatives and focusses for 2020. Major goals include: reducing the amount of medical errors, facilitating preventative care, and accurately predicting staffing needs. Regardless of use, our clients are telling us that quantitative measurement and tracking of ROI will be part of every initiative.
3. Automation of Business Processes.
One of the largest costs of any Artificial Intelligence (AI), Machine Learning (ML), or data initiative is the cost to acquire, clean, and transform the data to support the decision making process. This is by far the least sexy work, the most important piece of the process, and the most overlooked budget item. In 2019, we began hearing more about the need for “Data Engineering” which points to a greater investment in this area. New methodologies and tools are taking away the mundane tasks related to data cleansing, which streamlines the process.
4. AI Marketing
Many of our clients in the business-to-consumer world abhor the amount of investment being put into traditional creative development. This includes the cost for creating many variations on the same messaging and adapting to different advertising mediums. In addition to the development of creative content, marketers are trying to look at how the benefits of AI can be put to use to make a better consumer experience.
AI Marketing is defined as “a method of leveraging customer data and AI concepts like machine learning to anticipate the customer’s next move and improve the customer journey.” 2020, marketers will take everything from sales forecasting, the consumer context, consumer profiles, and real-time conversations into consideration simultaneously when marketing to the customer. AI Marketing will be a paradigm shift in the approach to supporting every step of the consumer journey.
5. Data Legislation
In 2019, most of our clients were trying to understand the impact of CCPA and GDPR, and implement the bare minimum required to comply with the legal requirements. Based on discussions with legislators, marketers, and marketing platforms, a focus on Consumer Privacy and the ownership of the consumer data will be a central focus of most CMOs. At the beginning of 2019, artist Wil.i.am kicked off the year with an article in The Economist titled “We need to own our data as a human right — and be compensated for it”. At the end of 2019, federal legislative moves were made to begin to explore the ownership of data. 2020 will be the year movements are made to make data ownership a reality.
6. The Demand Curve: We’re Getting a Lot Smarter
In 2017, CompassRed won a top honor for the demand forecasting models it developed for one of the largest beverage providers in the world. Though innovative and effective at the time, we know we can do even better. Matching supply with demand can save billions for any industry — especially when you apply Neural Networks, ML, and AI to the process.
For our global clients, supply/demand forecasting will take a new focus, looking to see not only how the forecasts can be honed, but also how it can be automated to enable machines to do the math and execution while freeing up humans do more thinking. Partnering with one of our clients, our team has taken a renewed focus on innovating in this space. Our success and learnings in this area will have an impact across industries.
7. Data Security and Data Governance: A renewed look
As more people become aware of the need for protecting their data, and as more companies get called out for data breaches, we see most of our clients investing in this space. The Data Governance team at any organization used to be the ones everyone kept out of the room — they asked too many questions and were friction to innovation. Now Data Governance is the team invited into the room proactively. They have the most awareness of the standards that the organization has adopted around the enterprise and the knowledge of what practices are being taken to secure the vaults that protect consumers and the intellectual property of the organization.
There are some complexities that are starting to challenge companies and consumers that will make security more difficult. Deep fakes or similar advanced capabilities can trip up even the most advanced organizations. Even though the consumer has become hardened to the fact that their data will be breached and shared, they expect organizations to give their best efforts in security and to have processes in place once their data is shared. Organizations with solid governance and security processes will not only reduce risk, but improve consumer perception and even loyalty. 2020 will continue to shine a light on this area.
8. The Fun Stuff: Consuming of Information and Advances in our Daily Life
Innovation is nowhere near slowing down over the next year. There were some amazing innovations that came along in 2019 that will continue to be built upon such as the release of the new Augmented Reality or upgrades to Virtual Reality that will give CompassRed clients another way to view and interact with data. This will reduce the time to insight and enable new and innovative ways to look at a problem. Advances in voice recognition capabilities will allow our clients to take advantage of new ways to ingest information and interact with customers. Couple these advances with improvements in Natural Language Processing, operationalization of models, automation of business processes, and so much more and the start of 2020 will be just as innovative as it was in 2010.
At CompassRed — our mission has always been to help our clients use data in a better way and make the world a better place based on our talents and curiosity. We are very fortunate to be in a space that allows us to work with some of the most promising advances since the industrial revolution. We do not expect to see 2020 as a maturing of these advances, rather a foundation to continue the pace of innovation.
Interested in learning more? Head over to CompassRed (www.compassRed.com) to see our most recent work or get in touch with a team member.
CompassRed is a full-service data agency that specializes in providing data strategy for clients across multiple industries.