Research and advisory firm Forrester released its Top 10 Emerging Technologies in 2023 report on Thursday. Findings from the research revealed how generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) would deliver returns on investment (ROIs) for businesses over the next four years.
The document also analysed how companies could navigate risks linked to the technologies. Concerns over building trust, outlining regulations, and intellectual property (IP) rights remain an issue for most enterprises.
Despite this, GenAI “remains a top emerging technology to invest in due to its breadth of impact and ability to accelerate many other top emerging technologies,” the report added.
Related emerging technologies included conversational AI and autonomous workplace assistants (AWAs).
Top Emerging Trends in Forrester’s Report
The report highlighted that GenAI had reached second in its list of emerging technologies for creating ROI for businesses. These trends would take place across verticals such as business-to-business (B2B) sales, eCommerce, customer service, and others to replace “increasingly complex but repetitive human tasks.”
Numerous other emerging technologies rapidly taking shape across global markets included:
- Decentralised Digital Identity (DDID), replacing physical proof-of-identity documents. Businesses such as governments, financial services, education, and others would benefit more from these integrations. Additional technologies such as zero-knowledge proofs and the blockchain would also complement them.
- Edge Intelligence, converting huge data sets into real-time action. Computer vision tools and sensors require edge computing-based software capable of operating at greater capacities and complexity. Analysts forecasted these to operate among customer digital experiences more than other verticals.
- ExplainableAI (XAI), allowing AI software to be both trustworthy and explainable. Finance and healthcare use cases — both high-risk and heavily regulated — would benefit the most from these technologies.
- TuringBots, coined by Forrester, are AI-backed, application-building software robots. Enterprises are set to leverage these technologies at an increasingly rapid rate over the next two to four years.
Emerging Technologies, Five Years Onward
Additional emerging technologies are set to gain traction over five or more years to create enterprise ROI:
Extended Reality (XR), benefitting enterprises with onboarding, upskilling, and training processes. According to the report, only 20 percent of US adults operating online were comfortable using it to receive information. This indicates a need for XR firms to improve hardware and, subsequently, consumer adoption rates.
Web3, which currently faces significant challenges in its adoption rates. Its goal of offering democratic web technologies for internet users has led to realities surrounding risky and scandal-hit virtual tools such as cryptocurrencies and non-fungible tokens (NFTs). Firms must also struggle with scalability, security, privacy, identity, and key management for many Web3 technologies.
Zero Trust Edge (ZTE), a security principle embedded into software-defined networks deployed to offices and physical environments. Centrally controlled in the cloud, these tools boost security, performance, and other metrics, but will take time to demonstrate their efficacy as networking and security vendors progress.
Brian Hopkins, Forrester Vice-President, Emerging Technology Portfolio, stated that, despite showing great promise, it was “imperative” for tech leaders to determine if these emerging technologies could “deliver value.” Businesses should also assess whether they could “navigate their associated risks.”
He concluded,
“This means side-stepping misinformation, mitigating poor decisions driven by a fear of missing out, and narrowing focus from the shiny objects down to the few technologies that have real potential. Firms must also ensure that their time frame for implementing these technologies is commensurate with their overall risk/reward tolerance.”
Forrester Report on Call Centre Management
The news comes after contact centre automation firm Cyara commissioned Forrester Consulting to assess how much time, resources, and processes its platform could save users.
Cyara’s contact centre solutions aim to solve complex challenges and identify real-time risks linked to call centre processes, allowing these facilities to operate seamlessly with minimal issues.
According to the Forrester report, Cyara’s CX Assurance Platform solution offered a massive 336 percent ROI for businesses. Across the company’s family of solutions, Cyara’s huge benefits helped enterprises to pay back their investments in six month’s time.
