Forrester, the global market research company, has launched its predictions for 2020.
This look at next year identifies key market dynamics to impact company growth.
Next year will be one which moves leaders’ attention to adaptability: the ability to understand and anticipate market dynamics and rapidly exploit opportunities, both big and small.
Factors including heightened values-based consumer activism; the lack of clarity around Brexit; automation, Artificial Intelligence (AI) and robotics moving deeper into the organisation; and recessionary fears due to sociopolitical uncertainty will make 2020 a raucous year, forcing leaders to embrace adaptability.
In 2020, Forrester predicts:
- Consumers will search for deeper meaning. Companies will pay careful attention to authenticity, both in the values they choose to express and how they express them. More than 55% of consumers will consider company values when making a buying decision.
- CMOs will rally around customer value. To establish a successful ecosystem, CMOs will thread the needle between employee experience, customer experience, brand purpose, creative, and technology, imbuing all these crucial areas with customer obsession. The top 10% of CMOs will broaden their role.
- CIOs will focus on people. Smart CIOs will become a trusted advisor and partner to employee experience and HR teams to help with changing workforce dynamics, including working with new emerging technologies or interacting with robots.
- Immersive, adaptive IT will take hold. IT will follow the broader organisational future of matrixed, shape-shifting organizations that form and morph to changing priorities. CIOs will automate 10% of their IT tasks and look to upskill everyone.
- CX will continue to bifurcate. Firms that have made the least headway will cut their programs in frustration. Meanwhile, companies that have started realising the benefits of CX will double-down, simultaneously shoring up their fundamentals and innovating. The number of CX executives will grow by 25%.
- Data strategy. Advanced firms will double their data strategy budget. 2020 will be a wake-up year for many, as the total cost of getting data wrong will become apparent.
- Data and AI will get weaponised. In 2020, ransomware incidents will grow as attackers learn that holding data hostage is a quick path to monetisation. Privacy class-action lawsuits will increase by 300%.
- Group-targeted experiences will supplant personalisation. Marketers will move away from laborious and often-unwanted personalisation efforts. Instead, they’ll seek to authentically connect with customers through group experiences.
- Automation will reshape the work force. It will change the composition of the job market and raise global economic issues of income distribution and wage stagnation. Anti-automation backlash will cause a PR nightmare.
- Regulation will make and break markets. Regulatory bodies will gain steam, impacting and shaping markets in a very real way. Regulation will upend two major areas of the marketing ecosystem: third-party data and adtech.
- For venture capitalists, profitability will become the new unicorn. In 2020, venture capitalists will increase their scrutiny of startups. Overall VC funding will plateau, but not every market will fall flat.
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