How Emerging Technologies Are Reshaping Businesses As technology continues to evolve at a rapid pace, embracing its transformative potential has become imperative for businesses striving to remain competitive in an increasingly dynamic global marketplace.

According to a report by Data Security Council of India (DSCI), a whopping 97 per cent of Indian organizations have invested in AI/ML technologies, while around 84 per cent of organizations surveyed had invested in cloud technology. The relentless advancement of technology is fundamentally reshaping traditional business models across industries-from e-commerce platforms revolutionizing retail to the integration of artificial intelligence streamlining operations.

Technological innovations like blockchain and cloud computing are also redefining supply chains and organizational structures, fostering unprecedented connectivity and scalability. As technology continues to evolve at a rapid pace, embracing its transformative potential has become imperative for businesses striving to remain competitive in an increasingly dynamic global marketplace.

During a panel discussion on The Burgeoning Changemakers Fueling Your Digital Engine: How Is Technology Transforming Enterprises? , at the Tech and Innovation Summit in Bangalore, organized by Entrepreneur Media, moderated by Priya Kapoor, Features Editor, Entrepreneur India, companies in the technology space came together and shared their thoughts on these evolving technologies reshaping businesses.

Aditya Garg, Founder and CEO, Centilytics said that the technology has become a key enabler to scale. "If you are running a small scale retail business, you don't need a lot of technology or you could not have a technology as it is not cost effective. When you have a POS being built centrally by a company, it automatically becomes cost effective, now the same retail store which could not have technology can be scaled. I think technology has become the key enabler behind anything that has to scale and beyond technology there is no scale," he added.

Speaking on the same, Harish Ramarao, Senior Vice President, Product Engineering, ACKO Technologies emphasized on the need of the data before stepping into a machine learning project for an organization.

He said, "We have to follow where the customers are going and not just because there is technology. You need a lot of data before you can imagine a machine learning project. In the context of how technology is shaping traditional business, AI and ML will take a lead as we generate a lot of data in India," he said.

Bringing efficiency

When it comes to discussion about technology in enterprises, the one question that is often raised is: will it replace people? According to Garg, technology will not replace people. Instead, it will make them more efficient. "If you are doing something on a daily basis, technology will make it simple and easy for you instead of replacing people. The technology will force us to become experts in individual fields," Garg added.

Concurred Ramarao, "The technology brings efficiency using fewer people to do the same kind of job and not just fewer people but with less system too."

Challenges

Garg said that one of the biggest challenges is how to keep up with the change.

"Our ability to unlearn and relearn is one of the challenges of this new technology. The biggest challenge is how to keep up with the change to do the same things but in a different way. The second major challenge is the risk that technology brings such as security, cause, performance but at the end of the day there are always two sides of the same coin. We have to also make sure that we get more good out of it than bad. If we add AI, ioT and 5G together, this generation will see Iron man movies becoming a reality., " he added.

Speaking on incorporating a particular technology in the organization, Jagannathan K, Associate Vice President, Hitachi Systems India suggested that one should always analyze the need of the technology, and identify which operations need to go on cloud and which can be done manually and need personal touch.

"The right decision has to be taken and look at all the operations which have to go on cloud in which customers are facing issues. When it comes to internal operations, there should be a study to identify the departmental work that needs a particular technology and could be shifted to a cloud platform. We have been able to achieve a combination of this technology and the existing one," Jagannathan said.