"What innovative tech trends is your business excited about for next year?"
Manchester Digital asked a selection of our members from across Greater Manchester's digital and tech community which tech trends they anticipate to be driving innovation within their businesses and across the sector in 2024.
Featuring Rdentify, RedEye, AJ Bell, Stribe, Unbranded Manchester, Door4 and GP Bullhound.
Part two of our 2024 digital tech predictions from some of Greater Manchester's leading businesses will be available next week.
Rdentify
As we venture into 2024, the technological landscape continues to evolve at an impressive pace, presenting both challenges and opportunities for businesses across industries. Rdentify is keenly monitoring these trends and are busy anticipating their impact on customer engagement and risk management strategies. One of the most significant trends emerging in 2024 is the increasing sophistication and adoption of Artificial Intelligence. AI is transforming various aspects of business operations, from data analysis and automation to customer service and risk management. As a company, Rdentify leverages its advanced ML algorithms to extract deep insights from customer conversations and provide real-time actionable intelligence and customer vulnerability monitoring.
As AI becomes more pervasive, governments are focusing on regulating the industry, this is receiving heavy coverage in the media. We envisage that businesses will focus on prioritising ethical AI development and implementation. This includes ensuring that AI systems are unbiased, transparent, and accountable, while also safeguarding data privacy and security. Rdentify is committed to responsible AI development, employing rigorous ethical guidelines as part of its governance strategy. Another key trend shaping the technological landscape in 2024 is the growing demand for personalisation and hyper-relevance in customer interactions.
Businesses are seeking ways to tailor their offerings and communications to individual customer needs and preferences, creating more meaningful and engaging experiences. Rdentify's conversational analysis technology plays a crucial role in enabling this level of personalisation. We have also been intrigued by recent improvements to conversational interfaces, such as chatbots and virtual assistants which have massively improved, we believe this will continue to transform customer engagement in 2024. These interfaces offer convenient, accessible, and immediate support to customers, enhancing their overall experience. Rdentify's Safebot technology seamlessly integrates with websites enabling bespoke interactions at the opportune time. We foresee a busy 2024 full of innovation and change. Exciting times ahead. - Danny, Chief Executive Officer.
Click here to find out more about Rdentify.
RedEye
It’s almost impossible to answer this question without using the letters ‘AI’. Custom GPT’s like those of Open AI and AWS represent a real step forward in reducing barriers to entry for no-code users to automate and ultimately optimise their processes. The fact that this will shortly be followed by official GPT App Stores puts us right on the brink of mainstream adoption.
For a marketing automation platform like RedEye, generative AI represents a huge opportunity to streamline key features such as documentation, in-app task automation and general content creation. User questions or actions that are traditionally managed either in the office or virtually over software like Slack or Teams can suddenly be delivered using custom bots in seconds, which will be a game changer for how we optimise time-to-value and enable our users to move onto more exciting, strategic tasks. We’re already exploring how to build this into our product’s UI and I can’t wait to see how users engage with this sort of AI enhancement.
The ever-increasing contextual settings we can apply to GPT’s is where this starts to get really exciting for me. Adding ‘knowledge’ to a GPT will allow us to cover the basics such as copywriting style guides, custom fonts, company branding and much more. This will ensure that every user gets an experience that’s relevant to them, while minimising the amount of data entry needed every time to train the model. Throw Actions into the mix; albeit more ‘low-code’ than ‘no-code’ at this point, and we can start to turn insight into action.
Broadening the user base for AI-based tech was always going to be a big hurdle, but it feels like we’re right on the edge and I can’t wait to see what happens next. - Mark McGrath, Head of Product.
Click here to find out more about RedEye.
AJ Bell
As one of the largest online investment platforms in the UK, AJ Bell is gearing up to embrace several key technology trends. In the coming year we will be working to deliver change faster and gain a deeper understanding of our staff and customers. In 2024, we'll be focused on adopting Generative AI solutions across the business, gaining insights with modern data engineering, and empowering our development teams through increased self-service.
Generative AI: We are keenly adopting generative AI solutions from AWS and Microsoft, aiming to expand the capabilities of our staff in both technology and broader business domains. Tools like AI pair programmers, notably Copilot, are set to transform our coding practices. Beyond technology, we'll use generative AI applications to augment the skills of our wider workforce, enhancing productivity without losing crucial human elements in our operations.
Data & analytics: With a modern data stack comprising technologies like Snowflake and dbt, our goal for 2024 is to leverage this further to improve our decision-making and streamline internal efficiencies. We are committed to democratising data analytics, enabling various teams to harness the power of data through user-friendly tools and platforms. This approach fosters a data-driven culture and contributes to more informed strategic decisions across AJ Bell.
Developer self-service: In 2024, we'll enhance developer autonomy with more self-service templates. These templates will empower our development teams to take greater control of their solutions while incorporating essential controls. Self-service templates allow us to improve developer efficiency under a governance and best practices framework.
Our approach to emerging technology trends involves initial trials on simple, low-risk use cases. This strategy lets us quickly understand the benefits, risks, and necessary controls, setting the stage for broader adoption and scaling up as we continue to innovate and grow. - Mo Tagari, CTO
Click here to find out more about AJ Bell.
Stribe
In 2024, the landscape of work will continue to evolve, driven by a range of factors such as the enduring effects of the pandemic, the entrance of Generation Z into the workforce and the introduction of AI into many industries.
One of the most notable trends shaping the future of work is the continued rise of remote and flexible working arrangements. As teams become more dispersed and employees seek opportunities to work from various locations, the need for innovative HR technology has never been more important.
At Stribe, we are particularly excited about several tech trends that are emerging as a result of the changing dynamics of the modern workplace.
Wellbeing and mental health support platforms
Attention on employee wellbeing has heightened, particularly with the rise of remote work. HR tech trends in 2024 will see the integration of wellbeing and mental health support platforms into HR toolkits. These platforms offer anonymous employee feedback and surveys and proactive wellbeing initiatives, ensuring employees feel supported and engaged, regardless of their physical location.
Advanced employee engagement analytics
Enhancing employee engagement will continue to be a top priority in the era of remote work. In 2024 we’re predicting a surge in the adoption of advanced analytics tools that provide deep insights into employee sentiment, wellbeing, and engagement – which will empower HR professionals to make data-driven decisions to increase team satisfaction, improve culture and productivity.
Global talent management systems
The move towards remote work is breaking down geographical barriers, resulting in a more globalized workforce. To address this, HR teams will need to turn to global talent management systems that facilitate recruitment, onboarding, retention, and talent development across borders. These systems will be pivotal in streamlining administrative processes and promote cultural diversity within organisations. - Jade Madeley, Content Manager
Click here to find out more about Stribe.
Unbranded Manchester
As a team specialising in platform development MVP’s and API integrations, we're very excited about the evolving role of artificial intelligence in amplifying the efficiency and effectiveness of the work we deliver for clients.
We’ve always put a focus on automating manual processes within organisations, from sales through to user onboarding. With the precision and accuracy of AI being integrated into these automations we can significantly optimise the overall user experience. Whether it's fine-tuning content for search engines, tailoring user experiences based on behaviour, or automating user onboarding, AI will act as a robust mechanism to ensure consistently reliable and high-quality outcomes.
From an internal perspective, the swift execution of tasks that were once time-consuming, is a huge benefit of integrating AI into our workflows, allowing for quicker completion of critical processes and trimming associated costs linked to previously manual, time intensive work. This efficiency boost will help to empower us with the agility needed to promptly respond to market demands, strategically accelerating the progress of both ourselves and our clients. - Hamad Mian, Managing Director
Click here to find out more about Unbranded Manchester.
Door4
Google changing will be a massive change in how people experience websites - Even if they visit at all. For example, Search generative experience. That's probably going to be the future sooner rather than later, narrowing it down to less scrolling and more 'here's the answer right in front of you'.
This will have massive repercussions for how websites look and feel, and how we do general marketing. Search ads, shopping ads, top-of-funnel awareness, etc, will all change in some degree. Basically, in the next 5 years, the world will completely change.
We also look at chatGPT, but we always say quality over quantity at Door4. People pump out large amounts of content but they tend to fade away quickly, too. We stick to our guns and say this method is the best approach, and luckily, we're yet to be proven wrong. - Tom Morton, Head of Activation.
Click here to find out more about Door4.
GP Bullhound
At the end of each year, GP Bullhound releases its Tech Predictions report in which we set out what we believe some of the most interesting technology trends are going to be in the upcoming year.
Whilst the optimisation and specialisation of Ai technology will form the basis of many predictions for next year, another area of development which we find extremely exciting is the revitalisation of the space industry, spearheaded by the private sector.
Historically, government-backed programmes in the US and Soviet Union were at the forefront of driving space innovation. More recently however, companies such as SpaceX have made significant technological advancements to reduce the cost to launch payload into Low-Earth Orbit (LEO). SpaceX’s Falcon programme has already reduced the cost from $12,600 / kg with Falcon 1 to $1,500 / kg with Falcon Heavy and the company’s highly anticipated Starship spacecraft is expected to reduce that cost significantly more.
These efficiency gains have enabled a wide range of private companies to deliver products and services in a way that has never been possible before.
Starlink, OneWeb, Amazon and others have deployed thousands of satellites to provide internet access to remote and conflict-stricken areas;
Planet Labs, Maxar and BlackSky use satellites to collect high-resolution imagery of Earth to aid with disaster response and monitor climate change; and
Axiom Space, Voyager Space and others use the microgravity environment of space to conduct lab research and experiments that are impossible on Earth.
Going forward, we expect a significant acceleration in the private sector trying to leverage space to build commercial opportunities. The UN expects the number of satellites orbiting Earth to increase from 8,000 today to over 100,000 in the coming decade and this will bring with it innovation that many of us cannot even imagine. - Javed Huq, Executive Director
Click here to find out more about GP Bullhound.
Thank you to all members that participated!
