Recently, Gartner released their report on technology recommendations and predictions for 2023. The top 3 takeaways given our experience in the industry working with our customers are:
- Emerging technologies are driving innovation including AI Chatbots, Machine Learning, Data Analytics and other AI/ML backed technologies
- Technology leaders will increasingly look for efficient business automation tools with low or no code solutions and fast delivery
- Businesses will increasingly look for deploying disruptive technology solutions
Machine Learning and Data Analytics
Businesses are deploying machine learning backed solutions to better understand their customers and gain actionable insights to gain a competitive edge in their respective industry.
As an example, Steel Archer worked with one of our Real Estate brokerage customers to mine MLS data to find who is buying in their markets and what types of single family homes. Using AI/ML we helped them deduce institutional single family rental (SFR) buyers and predict their buy boxes and buying habits. These insights helped our customer determine optimal markets for their own investor clients.
Efficient Business Automation
Business automation solutions like Salesforce have been around for over 20 years. In some cases Salesforce implementations have not changed significantly in the last 10 years despite significant changes in the underlying business. These companies are revisiting their automation suites and refining and upgrading their internal processes and customer interaction patterns. Important to this process is reducing costly development cycles by using no code approaches to automation such as Salesforce Flows.
One of our customers moved from a custom built PHP application to an Enterprise implementation of Salesforce. The PHP application served the company in their growth phase but making enhancements and changes to the application became cost and time prohibitive. We performed the data migration over a 6 month time span across all offices successfully with zero data loss and minimal business impact. Salesforce enables the company to make faster changes some of which can be no code solutions.
Disruptive Technology Solutions
After the past few pandemic years, companies are more prepared than ever to apply technology to build solutions that are disruptive to their industries. Companies have 2-3 year time horizons to deploy these solutions which they see as mission critical in transforming their business to meet the post-pandemic world.
The interest rate changes that began last summer had wide spread effects across the SFR industry, causing all SFR Funds to halt buying. During this time, many of these businesses saw this as an opportunity to plan for technology and business process upgrades to prepare their business for the future when buying would be competitive again. Steel Archer helped several SFR Fund customers to plan and design a technology solutions to help them successfully adjust to the market conditions.