Are you planning to set up a new business in the near future?
The business sector is a risky field, and one has to keep their eyes and ears open to perceive the changes in and around the industry.
What we look for, depends on what we think, and what we think, depends on what we discern. Similarly, what we discern determines what we believe – and what we believe determines what we take to be true, until it becomes a trend.
Therefore, it is extremely important that we get prepared for the upcoming business trends. After all, they are today’s toys or tomorrow’s tools. But you don’t know which toys become tools, until you play with them.
The following are massive business trends that may shape not just 2018, but also the years ahead. You must consider these in order to keep up with what is going on in the business world:
1) Trends In Technology
Keep your eye on tech trends in 2018 to make whopping gains. The following are the biggest sectors that you should be aware of:
Artificial intelligence: According to AI experts, artificial intelligence has the potential to go into the field of creativity. AI already has a toehold in a variety of products. Many companies already infuse the artificial intelligence in their products, and are expected to keep doing so.
Algorithms: In 2018, many companies will write highly advanced algorithms to compete for the race of the ‘hall of fame’ algorithms. Google is already known as the algorithm hall of fame.
Chat Bots: There is always a scope for the future to unfold unpredictably. In my opinion, 2018 going to be the year of bots. Many companies already embed the messaging bots to develop the customer-facing team.
2) Trends In Human Resource
2018 going to be a path-breaking year for the HR field. The HR’s critical role is to drive digital transformation. The HR field will have a better workplace in 2018. These are the major upcoming HR trends made with the power of people and employee intimacy:
People Analytics: In 2018, people analytics will evolve in the organisation structure. The people analytics team will be answerable for the development of the organisation, and bridge the gap between team leaders and the top management.
Gig Economy: The workplace is going to be redefined with the gig economy. The ‘Gig Economy’ represents on-demand hiring with lower costs, but simultaneously creates competition for talent. This flexibility in work provisions will expand the talent pool and retain highly valued employees.
Digitalize HR: Upcoming HR trends will digitalize the HR organization, instead of buying digital products. Digitalisation always improves the sector is an important corollary.
From ‘pleasing the boss’ to ’employee intimacy’: Primitively, the HR has been focusing more on pleasing the top management, instead of developing other key roles. But now the tide is turning slowly from PTB to EI.
3) Franchising Trends
The franchising industry has been growing over the years. Initially, franchisees stuck to just owning one location, but now, they build their own mini-empire, especially in the food and beverage businesses. It will be a good time/the right time to own a franchise, as the upcoming franchise trends for 2018 is going to be vast.
Multi-Brand Franchisees: Franchisees with two or more brands, i.e. multi-brand franchisees, are going to be the trend in the future.The multi-brand franchisee will cover all your bases by increasing the cash flow and providing protection against the ebbs and flows in the businesses.
Restaurants: The fast-casual restaurant is a new type of restaurant, which is going to capture the franchise market in 2018. This is the perfect fusion of fast food, with casual dining and that too at the lower prices.
Health and Personal Care: This sector includes fitness centres, personal care and beauty services and health. This field has been booming and is expected to see continual growth in 2018. Health and fitness franchise is likely to be popular among people.
Own product franchise: Personalised services are the future of the franchise business. Customers like the things in their own ways. They want the customised order with the exact specifications. The fast-food franchisee already took the path and allowed their customers to customise their food the exact way they want.
4) Trends In The Sphere Of Product Testing
According to statistics, the testing industry has evolved in the past few years. The rise of the testing market is expected to grow over the upcoming period. So, this is the right time to recap all the testing strategies and set the goal to focus the areas for 2018. These testing trends will define the 2018 testing strategies:
DevOps: Development (Dev) to operation (Ops) practices introduced for automated testing and continuous integrations. The tools are created to emphasize the automation and integration which reduces the time from development to operation with the protection of software quality.
Test Automation: Most of the companies have automated test coverage, but automation is not always the answer. You need to learn a few methods for easy application, better control and accelerated functional testing. According to the world quality report, automation accounts for only 20% of software testing activities.
Integration: Integration testing allows you to make a decision concerned with the software testing and quality. The original software is integrated and tested in a group to isolate the errors easily.
Combined Testing: Although automated testing conquers manual testing, it is still dominating in the testing industry. The upcoming future of the software testing will take the advantages of both manuals and automated strategies by combining them.
5) Trends In How You Use Search Engines
These are some must know SEO strategies to gear up for 2018:
Link building: Links are one of the most trusted signals for search engines. They are not going to disappear even in 2018. The new SEO strategy for the upcoming year is not only to aim the popular sites for backlinks but also seek the referral traffic to contribute your website’s organic search rankings.
SERP: 2018 is most likely to be the year that enhances the SERP (Search Engine Results Page) features. Do you think that you will get the traffic to your website only through the organic ranking? If so, then you are wrong. Rising SERP features are going to steal the searchers’ attention.
Featured Snippets: Initially, Google introduced featured snippet with an aim to provide the rich answers via text, image, videos to the users’ simple queries. According to STAT research, 30% of featured snippet URLs rank organically.
Voice search: This new technology changes the way of performing search queries, and its ease would make it very popular, very soon. The rising trend of voice searches is setting up a new SEO strategy. According to a Google report, every one out of five searches comes from the voice search. The ratio of using voice search daily between teens and adults is spreading faster than the other searches.
Technology is on its way to bring many changes, and these trends will ensure that you stay in touch with them!