This year has seen a total flip in human interactions and the way businesses operate during a pandemic. The emergence of COVID-19 has seen an increase in the reliance and uptake of technologies to limit physical contact, ensure businesses continue to operate with a digital presence, provide a secure digital environment for working from the home workforce, and distance learning for students.

Here are Top 6 Technology Trends that we will see emerging in 2021:

5G To Go Mainstream

5G-enabled smartphones are slowly rolling out for consumers and enable 5G to be used in 2021. Especially in today’s environment, we require a reliable and fast connection for digital collaboration, telecommunications, and videoconferencing. 5G will also provide a more reliable connection for the Internet of Things devices that will constantly send data to provide real-time customer needs. 5G will enable businesses and local authorities to react quicker and enable a more connected workforce in 2021.

Cybersecurity

With the huge expansion of a remote workforce worldwide, cybersecurity will be an important focus to offer enhanced security to help with this new reality. An introduction of a cybersecurity mesh enables you to get any digital security asset regardless of its location. The main advantage of this technology is that it allows individuals to put the security divider around people instead of the whole organisation. Cybersecurity Mesh will enable security border to go beyond an organisation and covers people working remotely.

Blockchain

Blockchain technology has often been related to cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin but can be useful in other ways. Blockchains allow you to see a trial of transactions but with total restrictions on amending the history of the transaction. Each piece of data is a ‘block’ and the connection between every piece of data is a ‘chain’. Blockchains are consensus-driven so no single entity is in total control of the data.

Robotics Process Automation (RPA)

RPA is another technology that is automating our work much like artificial intelligence. RPA makes repetitive tasks automated such as interpreting applications, processing transactions, dealing with data, and replying to emails. RPA automates repetitive tasks that people do. This will save time and resources and enable the remote workforce to focus on tasks that will benefit the business significantly.

Internet of Behaviours (IOB)

Internet of Behaviours extends from the Internet of Things (IoT). User behaviours are collected from IoT devices such as smartphones. Companies will be able to know what your likes and dislikes are and use them to change your behaviour to achieve the desired goal. There are many ethical issues with how the data is used to change behaviour and as well as the desired result.

Working From Home

2020 has seen a huge influx of employees working from home due to the pandemic and we will see this continue into 2021. We will see a more cohesive experience between a remote workforce and customers. At the beginning of the pandemic, customer service sector response times were deeply affected due to isolated independent technologies. Integration of existing technologies will be more streamlined through robust customer experience, user experience, and employee experience. By having a more efficient business system, businesses will be able to have a remote workforce that can work as efficient or more efficient than a business operating from a physical location.