Net Solutions' 2020 digital transformation report identifies eight key trends driving businesses in IT, healthcare, media, and manufacturing towards enhanced customer experiences and digital capabilities. The trends include data analytics, customer data platforms, digital security, connected clouds, artificial intelligence, the Internet of Things, connected supply chains, and a customer-centric vision. A significant portion of organizations plans to increase technology spending to adapt and thrive in the evolving digital landscape.

1. Net Solutions’ State of Digital
Transformation Report –
Top Trends for 2020
The 2020 Digital Transformation Trends are primarily based on a worldwide survey of more than a
hundred senior executives from the IT, healthcare, media, and manufacturing industry trying to stay
ahead of the game by sensing new possibilities, innovations and defining their strategic journey beyond
the digital frontier.

2. Looking back a decade, you will be reminded how, at that moment, which seems so far back in the past,
we were entering into an entirely new world — blurring the physical and digital boundaries. Since then,
savvy businesses have achieved competitive advantage by embracing digital transformation trends that
were underway.
Our 2020 Digital Transformation Survey presents the key eight digital transformation trends that will
shape the business environment and help leaders win in this new era, often called the Post-Digital Era.

3. 8 Digital Transformation Trends that will Steer 2020
Net Solutions’ State of Digital Transformation 2020 survey highlights that despite the uncertain business
environment, 68.3% of business leaders across the four industries are planning to accelerate their
CX-related technology spending in the next 12 months.
The research identifies eight digital technology trends for 2020, exploring their benefits, challenges, and
impact on the business landscape.

4. 1. Data Analytics
Data is an untapped goldmine since the advent of the digital landscape. Business leaders across all the
industries are trying to step into this goldmine to unlock its real potential, thereby laying the foundation of
their digital transformation strategy on ​data​.
Data, along with artificial intelligence — one of the eight digital transformation trends 2020 — will be the
mission-critical capability for businesses to thrive in this cut-throat digital ecosystem.
Our survey highlights that 51.4% of organizations recognize their capability of activating data to their
advantage as the key driver of their digital transformation success.

5. Data analytics is one of the key 2020 technology trends highlighted in our digital transformation survey,
but what are organizations planning to invest in as part of their data strategy? Let’s discuss it in the
following point.
2. Customer Data Platforms (CDPs)
Organizations have never been alone on their digital transformation journey; customers have always been
on the parallel road, embracing new technologies at break-neck speed.
Customers are getting smarter, and those halcyon days when businesses used to invest in just single
data management software — usually a CRM — are over. Data platforms like CRM, CMS, and DXP fail to
go in-depth and miss some essential digital signals provided by customers.
Platforms like CRM and DXP are no longer digital transformation trends. Organizations have started to
see the adverse impact of such fragmented customer data, thereby resulting in impersonal customer
experience.
Customer Data Platform (CDP), one of our 2020 digital technology trends, is an integrated customer
database that helps businesses in unified data collection, processing, consolidation, activation, and
execution from online and offline channels.
Our digital transformation survey showcases that more than a quarter of organizations are planning to
invest in Customer Data Platforms (CDPs) to supercharge profitable growth and advocacy, thereby
turning it into a “need-to-have” technology from a “nice-to-have” technology.

6. 3. Digital Security
The principle of DevOps is drastically changing the way digital organizations innovate. As businesses are
on the path of digital transformation — integrating development and IT operations under a “single
automated umbrella”— business leaders have realized that approaches to incorporate security into new
digital products and platforms do not keep up with the pace of technology innovation.
This has cemented the view that security is the biggest bottleneck that businesses face on their road to
digital transformation​.

7. What are the Biggest Challenges for Digital Transformation?
We asked this question in our digital transformation survey and found that 37.3% of organizations believe
that ‘digital security’ is the biggest challenge that they face on the road to digital transformation.
Some organizations have realized that digital security is a huge challenge and have begun embedding
security culture, practices, and tools into each phase of their DevOps pipelines. This new approach, now
a part of top digital business trends, is named as ​DevSecOps​.
If deployed strategically, DevSecOps can help strengthen the security and improve compliance maturity
levels of a company’s DevOps pipeline, thereby ensuring that every digital product/service released in the
market is tested, secure, and reliable.

8. 4. Connected Clouds (Public, Private, Hybrid)
Rather than a digital transformation technology trend, consider this as the continued evolution in the field
of cloud adoption. Organizations currently realize that just going all public clouds, private clouds, or only
data centers is not the best option. Their needs vary, and a single choice becomes increasingly restrictive
over time.
Thus, connected clouds are entering into the picture intending to meet companies’ evolving needs,
whether they need cloud-sourced storage, networking, or digital security.
Our state of digital transformation 2020 report highlights that close to half of the business leaders plan to
reach their digital transformation goals with SaaS transformation.

9. The goal is clear: no matter which workloads are being run in which cloud, the experience for IT and
those that are utilizing the applications need to be seamless, secure, and streamlined, thereby making
cloud one of the most important digital transformation trends of 2020.
5. Artificial Intelligence (AI)
The journey to becoming a fully autonomous artificial intelligence (AI) organization is part of a growing
digital transformation trend. This trend paves the way for organizations to make AI an integral component
of their ​digital transformation strategy​. It implies that all the core systems, processes, and business
strategies will be redesigned around AI and its possibilities.
The end goal of making a fully autonomous AI organization is to build a digital environment where
humans and machines will collaborate to harness data-driven insights.
Net Solutions’ Digital Transformation Survey highlights that 57.7% of business leaders from the
healthcare industry are planning to invest in AI to steer digital transformation.
6. Internet of Things (IoT)
Technology innovation has become one of the keys to competitive differentiation in today’s unpredictable
digital landscape. The pace at which technology is changing and evolving is high. Thus, more than half of
business leaders from our digital transformation survey plans to accelerate their technology spending to
boost ​digital transformation services​.
IoT is one of the emerging technologies whose relevance has increased with the knock of the COVID-19
crisis. Organizations across all the industries are planning to embrace the IoT as a digital transformation

10. enabler; however, the healthcare and manufacturing industry leaders have shown more interest in IoT
than the other industries.
Healthcare Digital Transformation Trends
IoT is the essential digital transformation trend of the healthcare industry, as highlighted in our state of
digital transformation 2020 survey. 84.6% of healthcare industry leaders are planning to leverage IoT to
deliver a connected experience to their patients.
7. Connected Supply Chains
The expectations and behaviors of the customer are changing dramatically. They are becoming smarter
and challenging the established supply chain of leading organizations.

11. Today, they perform thorough research of products they intend to purchase across multiple channels,
where they expect not just transparency around order delivery; but are also concerned about the supply
chain sustainability. This is why the ‘connected supply chain’ is one of the key digital transformation
trends of our survey.
An end-to-end connected supply chain builds an integrated view across the organization, allowing
companies to reach 100% visibility in real-time. Our digital transformation survey highlights that 65.3% of
manufacturing industry leaders believe that ‘Supply Chain Collaboration’ is the key initiative that drives
the Digital Factory strategy.

12. 8. Customer-Centric Vision
All the seven digital transformation trends discussed above aim to achieve a single goal: improved
customer experiences. The current business landscape is uncertain, and customers’ evolving demands
and expectations are creating challenges as well as opportunities for businesses.
The year 2020 will be all about knowing the target customers better and delivering them experiences,
driven by evolving and emerging technologies. Business leaders understand the fact that riding this wave
of customer change is extremely important. Thus, they are planning to accelerate their CX-related
technology spending in the coming year, as highlighted in our digital transformation survey.
It is high time for all businesses to redefine, revisit, and reprioritize their current business model based
upon their target customer expectations.
Conclusion
Digital transformation is moving at a rapid pace, and to catch up with it, all these mentioned technologies
are evolving themselves in an amalgamated manner.
The 2020 technology trends highlighted in the Net Solutions’ Digital Transformation Survey converge into
a single trend: the unceasing relevance of Customer Experience.
Are you planning to embark upon a digital path? Or are you already on the digital route? No matter where
you are in your digital transformation journey, Net Solutions’ State of Digital Transformation 2020 report
will share some useful insights that will help you win this digital transformation race.

13. Source: ​https://www.netsolutions.com/insights/digital-transformation-trends/