Technology Trends Set to Disrupt Canada

Gartner's Top 10 Strategic Technology Trends for 2019 is a list of new applications enabled by advances in raw computing power. Besides IT, they also drive innovation in engineering, design and medical research, to name a few areas.

For businesses, voice interaction, AI-powered services, data privacy and the ongoing shift to mobile should be key drivers in 2019. Read on to see how they might impact your business and to benefit from their use.

What are the technology trends set to disrupt in 2019?

2019, the year of autonomous things?

A year ago, GM announced its self-driving cars would operate transportation services in some US cities in 2019. Autonomous delivery programs are already disrupting local grocery and restaurant deliveries in several US cities. GM isn't alone. Ford and Toyota are in the game too.

Self-driving cars became more of a reality in 2019, at least on American streets. Last year, the US Department of Transportation (DOT) came out in support of fully autonomous vehicles. It outlined its vision of the US as a global leader in a 2018 report. Despite all the excitement, Consumer Reports takes a more cautious approach to the idea of the technology.

Google's self-driving cars had logged five million miles as of February 2018. And late in 2018, Uber got the green light to continue its autonomous testing program. Toronto is the only Uber test city, but the company isn't testing autonomous driving in Canada, and two people sit in the front seats, ready to take control of the vehicle.

Will all this matter if you operate a delivery company or a restaurant that dispatches orders with drivers? Not yet, although some Canadian businesses are secretly using Tesla vehicles to simulate driverless delivery. Here's an interesting question for Canadians: would the CRA allow a business mileage deduction if the taxpayer wasn't driving the car?

Smart speaker concept. AI speaker. Voice recognition.

Voice assistants

Major tech platforms (ecosystems) and e-commerce giants each have their own AI-powered voice assistants and devices, and they're getting smarter:

Windows has Cortana
Apple uses Siri
Amazon talks to us through Alexa and its Echo devices and also offers Alexa for business
Alibaba followed Amazon into the smart speaker race
Samsung launched its own Bixby voice assistant
Google's Android Assistant is at the top of the heap. It powers 80% of the world's smartphones and its family of Google Home speakers.

AI-powered voice assistants are changing how people search for products and services

Voice recognition accuracy should continue to improve in 2019 thanks to advances in natural language processing (NLP). Deloitte Consulting explains in its Technology, Media and Telecommunications Predictions 2019 that Google's English speech recognition error rate fell to 4.9 percent in 2017, which is similar to what humans experience. Google is using AI and NLP to further lower the error rate.

Personal productivity boost

Voice assistants understand human speech accurately, answer questions, provide information and execute commands on smartphones and computers.

Tech blogger Conner Forrest lists a few of the many ways voice assistants can change how you work in your office. These include converting voice to text for written communications and tasks and even participating in meetings and research projects. If you have a newer Samsung smartphone, you can also use Bixby, its voice assistant.

The number of people using voice assistants for advanced tasks on smartphones and smart speakers is still relatively small. But if you run a small business or are self-employed, any productivity boost can help.

A smartphone is a logical place for a voice assistant to call home. You carry your phone around wherever you go, it's always connected and can do so many things. Google's voice assistant can write an email and send it using your voice commands. It can also set up an appointment or a reminder, record your grocery list, call someone for you or send a text message. Check out this list of 35 Best Google Assistant Skills 2019 by Tom's Guide.

What are the top tech trends in Canada in 2019?

Businesses that adopt trends early have a first-mover advantage. In 2019, three technologies will be drivers of change for businesses:

Voice search is changing the way people find information online. New voice technologies enable conversational interactions in natural language.
Artificial intelligence tries to predict customer needs and recommend things based on previous behaviour. Amazon and Netflix are already there. 2019 should bring us more predictive recommendations and personalized online customer experiences.
Augmented reality is immersive for customers and brings them closer to your brand and your products with interactive imagery and live content.

Preparing for the new voice economy

D/SRUPTION's Laura Cox and Sarah Finch describe the voice economy as "an entirely new ecosystem of marketing, branding and consumer engagement with the voice." Natural language voice interaction is an easy way for people to learn about products and services.

Voice searches could become as common as typed searches by 2020, according to Chris Sherman, founder of Search Engine Land. He suggests businesses aren't prepared for the change. But taking a few steps to optimize content for voice search now will put you ahead of the curve.

How far has the tech come? In a 2018 demo, Google's next-generation Duplex assistant called and conversed with humans, without them ever realizing they were talking to a machine.

Young man with girlfriend sitting at sidewalk cafe and paying contactless using smartwatch

Payments: all the big tech players want a piece of the pie

Apple, Android, Samsung, Paypal, Alipay, Square. There's a huge battle underway to capture a slice of the gigantic payment processing pie. Visa and MasterCard are the incumbents. Paypal is the king of online transactions. Mobile phone and smart watch makers like Google, Apple and Samsung dominate the growing phone and watch tap-and-pay market.

All a business needs to accept card and device payments is a tap-and-pay reader with a credit card slot. Square's debit, credit and contactless device reader handle all types of payments, using your smartphone as a terminal. One day soon, we may no longer need wallets. Wave a smart watch over the payment pad and pay. And if your business takes tap-and-pay credit card payments, that means you're already set up for phones and other devices.

Cybersecurity risks for small businesses

The cost of cybersecurity breaches is staggering. Some estimates peg the annual costs in the trillions of dollars. If hackers can break into global corporations and governments, imagine what harm they can do to small businesses. And that's exactly what's happening.

According to Verizon's 2018 Data Breach Investigations Report, small businesses should "ignore the stereotype of sophisticated cybercriminals targeting billion-dollar businesses. Most attacks are opportunistic and target not the wealthy or famous, but the unprepared." Their data shows that cyber attacks on small businesses have grown to represent 75% of all attacks. An alarming statistic.

How do technology trends affect business?

Businesses can adopt trends early or take a wait-and-see approach, and in both cases, technology can have an impact.

You might need to change your processes and the way you do business

New marketing opportunities with AI can deepen and personalize customer relationships. But do you have the staff you need to create a plan and implement it? And what about the costs of using augmented reality to create richer shopping experiences? You'll need the skills to create new content and apply best practices to make your products and services searchable by voice.

You might need new investments

You'll want to know what the payback period is, and what can go wrong. And what might happen if you don't do anything? Will you lose customers or experience outages if your technology is outdated or incompatible?

Customer data and privacy concerns

Personal data and privacy are hot topics in 2019. If you run a small business and have customer data, you need to know where it's stored and whether you're protecting it properly. Data breaches can put you out of business. See the section above on Cybersecurity.