Five trends for the digital economy

Chatbots will be increasingly used in 2017.1. digital is everywhere - people, things, infrastructureWhile the internet was initially intended for people, the focus is now increasingly shifting to intelligent things. In the future, it will be cars, entire cities or even the entire infrastructure. The result: all areas of life are being digitized. This means that every analog area has a digital counterpart. In the near future, for example, football clubs will set up their own e-sports departments and traffic lights will communicate with cars.2. chatbotsAnother example of comprehensive digitalization is Chatbots. In the coming years, they will be increasingly used by companies to directly serve individual customer needs. User behavior will also gradually change with the increasing integration and acceptance of chatbots: While it is still close to how we use the web today in the first stage, there will be completely new ways of interacting with chatbots in future expansion stages. In addition, by the end of 2017, bots will be so advanced that we will no longer be able to consciously distinguish whether a human or a machine is behind the solution to a problem.3. marketing technologyHow can companies further optimize their media budgets in the future and increase their performance at the same time? The answer is programmatic advertising - a combination of artificial intelligence (AI) and real-time bidding (RTB). Currently used primarily in display, video and social media advertising, these measures are also finding favor in TV advertising. With current market shares of nine percent in Switzerland and 13 percent in Germany, these are expected to double in 2017. This will also have an impact on services in this discipline, which will also increase.4. from personalized offers to personalized servicesAnyone who hesitates to make personalized offers to their customers in 2016 may not develop any in 2018. More and more companies are therefore working on their Personalization strategies. However, these primarily focus on offers, such as promotional campaigns, which are specifically tailored to the respective, segmented target group. In the future, however, it will primarily be about personalized services and products that are tailored precisely to the individual customer. Hardly any company, whether B2C or B2B, will be able to avoid this development.5. cyber security - until someone steals the cloudNo question: cyber security will be on the board agenda in 2017. Cyber threats have always been dangerous. In the meantime, the methods but so sophisticated and business-criticalthat they could soon be considered the greatest threat. Their impact may be even more serious than the economic development. One current example is Telekom. This clearly shows that it is no longer just software that is under attack, but the infrastructure. It can even be assumed that a company will have to file for insolvency in 2017 because it has lost data or money as a result of cyber attacks. As a result of the new position on the board of directors, previously wrongly located in the IT department, cyber risks are also increasingly becoming the subject of annual reports - at least for corporations.