Welcome to a new year of hope and opportunity
It's been an exciting year at Augeo. A year filled with growth for our people and our company–fresh thinking, new products, stronger relationships, expanded teams and greater opportunities. We look forward to the future and hope our paths with colleagues, clients, partners and friends intersect even more often in the coming year.
As 2019 comes to an end, we invited our teams to help us understand what the coming year might bring. A few consistent themes emerged.
The influence of data will shift. Our ability to collect, collate and synthesize massive amounts of data in mere seconds has lost its novelty and now begs the question, "What do we do with all this information?" How will knowing so much help us to do so much more? Machine learning, AI, quantum computing will enable ordinary people to make smarter decisions, faster than ever before. In 2020, we will likely spend less time deciding and more time doing.
Alicia Schimke, Vice President, Information Technology
The speed of communication, AI and quantum computing will profoundly transform the cybersecurity landscape and companies that don't invest to neutralize attacks will be in for a rough ride. The industry standard 2-factor authentication could shift to 3-factor, or potentially move away from password authentication altogether replacing it with advanced biometrics.
Boris Kopilenko, Chief Technology Officer
From a technology standpoint, I see companies adopting microservices to enable them to be more agile and move quicker. Distributed networks, faster processing, 5G and faster connectivity will provide more immediate user feedback to instantly solve even very complex problems.
Personalization will become more human. For decades we have categorized people into groups to make marketing more effective. First, we used demographics-age, sex, income, etc. Then, we added psychographics-preference, inclination, mind-set. Next, we took into account the influence on decisions created by context or situation-at work, on vacation, at home for instance. It's likely that in the coming years we will have new information processing agility that enables us to account for ever-evolving preferences. Technology will enable marketers to consider the multiple roles people play every day-spouse, parent, employee, customer, friend, colleague and many more. In 2020, marketing will become more agile, able to understand and leverage ever-changing influences on human behavior.
Mitch Hislop, Director, Marketing Technology and Digital Strategy
We're going to see advertising shift away from highly targeted ads towards more context-based and generalized advertising, in the name of consumer privacy.
Tim Miller, President, Member Engagement and Benefits / Chief Revenue Officer
Engagement marketing will be focused on the experience and emotional impact. To engage the individual, you must "know" the individual and then provide a highly personalized, low-effort and memorable experience. Anything short will not resonate or fulfill the required "need".
Meaningful experiences become the currency of engagement. It's been building for the past several years. Customers are shifting purchasing patterns to better align with personal values. Employees rank "working with friends" and "doing meaningful work" above the need for higher salary or benefits. Membership organizations are creating new ways to deliver excitement, information and entertainment to members other than the annual event or monthly meetings. Engagement involves impact. Marketers will focus on creating interactions with elevated impact to make each engagement experience more memorable. In 2020, "meaning" becomes money and drives value.
Erik Sorensen, Chief Operations Officer
We will see a resurgence in the importance of core human emotions–how we feel at work, at home, in social settings and even online. Physical and digital interactions will increasingly become "experiences" that create a memorable, emotional impact such as joy, happiness, satisfaction, security or trust. That last one, trust, might be the most elusive but likely the most important–today and in the future.
Joseph Keller, President, MotivAction, an Augeo company
Leaders will embrace the Business Roundtable's broadening definition of a corporation's reason for existing–moving from principally serving the shareholders to a more holistic view of serving customers, engaging employees, respecting suppliers, participating in communities and generating long-term value.
Amy Murphy, Chief Development Officer
Entertaining forms of engagement will become more prevalent as the youth that grew up on SnapChat, Instagram and TikTok enter the workforce. Companies will ramp up real-time, visual, social interactions to attract employees and connect with customers. Elevating entertainment value will create a greater sense of connected, cohesive community.
To close out the past year and welcome 2020, a few quotes to put our predictions in perspective.
"I never think of the future-it comes soon enough."
― Albert Einstein
"The future you have, tomorrow, won't be the same future you had, yesterday."
― Chuck Palahniuk, Rant
