2024 predictions for digital products: the Inviqa team’s verdict
A selection of our experts have provided us with their 2024 predictions for digital products including the rapid evolution of composable commerce solutions, Generative AI agents acting autonomously and increasing external pressures leading more brands to adopt PIM solutions.
As the digital landscape continues to evolve at an astonishing pace, we spoke to several of our Inviqa digital experts for their 2024 predictions for digital products to help keep our clients ahead of the curve.
AI: A new era of innovation and creativity
Inviqa CTO Kaustav Bhattacharya believes that 2024 will bring about an explosive growth of Generative AI, highlighting its integration into digital platforms and services. He explains: “Generative AI agents will start to talk to other Generative AI agents to automate complex, multi-step tasks as opposed to simple request and response interactions. For example, we have already seen Open AI empower everyone with a ChatGPT account to create their own GPTs based on simple, natural language prompts. This sort of user generated GPT can unlock the creativity of employees and accelerate the pace of innovation within enterprises to a degree never seen before.”
He adds: “The power of autonomous Generative AI Agents will start to have a notable, positive impact on the ability of Direct to Consumer brands to react much more proactively to market trends, near real time competitor data in areas such as dynamic pricing, personalised digital experiences and significantly better customer servicing.”
The main driver behind the adoption of such tools, believes Kaustav, will be down to the big players in the space, such as OpenAI, Google, Meta and Microsoft, “offering Enterprise grade security and privacy protection to corporations in the form of adherence to compliance frameworks such as ISO27001 and SOC2 as well as legal support.”
Echoing Kaustav’s sentiment, Inviqa Creative Director Alex Blaney offers a creative perspective. He compares the transformative impact of AI in the digital sphere to a “juggernaut-sized spectre,” poised to redefine our understanding of digital creativity. He elaborates: “I like to think of AI as ‘C-3PO’ not ‘The Terminator’, and so I’ll be using this intelligent smart robot companion to improve upon what we do for our brands, like using a co-pilot to do the grunt work. Leaving our creatives to infuse the sparkle, the magic and the human element that makes brands meaningful.
‘Meaningful’ is the key word here - it’s a vision that Havas have had for many years, and something that we firmly endorse. Without a meaningful connection, you risk being overlooked or ignored. Artificial intelligence cannot create that bond with your customers - it can only improve upon it. The bond needs to be forged by humans for humans.”
Expanding on the importance of creating a ‘meaningful bond’ with customers, Alex goes on to highlight the results of Inviqa parent company Havas’ Future of CX report: “Only 40% of customers globally believe that a brand is centred on their needs. The fact that 94% of company executives believe the opposite demonstrates a startling disconnect."
He adds: “So, there is the scope and the desire. It’s now down to us as CX specialists to execute on this appetite. With the advent and evolution of our smart companion in the form of AI to assist us in this quest, we are better armed and better prepared than ever before to deliver on this mission.”
Composable commerce: The future of flexibility and integration
Looking towards other developments, Inviqa’s CTO Kaustav Bhatacharya describes the impending rapid evolution in the world of composable commerce solutions. Moving away from traditional, monolithic martech solutions, the industry is now embracing a more flexible and integrated approach.
He explains: “Big suite vendors as well as various new start-ups have begun to offer a more composable solution to building commerce experiences. This is enabled by opening up vendors’ solution via APIs and microservices, which gives brands the flexibility to procure best-of-breed solutions and integrate them to deliver business value and drive innovation.”
He adds that composability introduces its own challenges, notably the upfront work necessary to integrate disparate solutions together, but that advances in connecting technologies can make this simpler.
“For example, you may choose to integrate a headless commerce platform with a headless content management system and together they pass customer data to a best-in-class CRM platform to drive outbound customer communication across multiple channels. Binding these solutions together used to take a lot of upfront work, but recently a new class of commerce-focused iPaaS solutions have emerged, such as Patchworks and Alumio.
He adds: “These vendors enable brands to swiftly create connectors between disparate platforms and orchestrate data flows between them by harnessing low-code environments. We see these types of solutions as true business enablers as they help brands deliver complex technologies faster, better and with less technical debt.”
PIM: The backbone of modern retail
To finish off, Inviqa Business Development Director Richard Jackson notes the increasing requirement for product information management (PIM) solutions in the UK and Germany. He outlines several key PIM-related trends for 2024 such as a surge in online product assortments, requiring retailers to have efficient PIM systems to meet growing consumer demands for detailed and accurate product information.
Richard also emphasises the rising demand for highly personalised shopping experiences. “Consumers increasingly expect tailored shopping experiences, and PIM systems can help retailers combine detailed product data with behavioural data to provide more personalised, timely and relevant shopping experiences.”
As well as this, we can expect to see both channel and market proliferation. This means that “with the increasing volume and type of channels used for shopping, brands and retailers will need PIM systems to ensure their product data is optimised for every market and channel they operate in, as well as to be prepared for routes to market not yet adopted (e.g voice search).”
Richard believes that the ongoing global supply chain disruptions (such as the current Red Sea crisis) are likely to continue, “necessitating better product information accuracy.” He goes on to explain that “PIM systems can help sellers adapt quickly to supply chain changes by updating product information in real-time”, another big sign that we will be seeing more businesses adopt PIM solutions in the year to come.
