Every technological innovation brings with it the potential to disrupt. While some long-standing technologies will always be around, there’s no way of knowing when a challenge will come along that will necessitate an operational pivot.
To stay on top in an unpredictable market, it’s vital for leaders to monitor even the smallest of business and industry changes while also maintaining a finger on the pulse of new technology. Here, 15 members of Forbes Business Development Council share insight into which emerging technologies are changing and will continue to alter how the business development industry currently operates.
Members of Forbes Business Development Council share examples of emerging technology that are predicted to impact the industry.
Photos courtesy of the individual members.
1. Communications Tech
Solutions like Slack, Teams, Miro and Asana have come a long way since pre-Covid days, and it’s fundamentally changing operations. Over the last year, their value has been made abundantly clear. When it comes to sharing information quickly—and collaborating within teams and with customers and partners—these tools help executives accelerate growth and improve communication across the board. – Yash Prakash, Saviynt
2. HR Operations Automation And Digital Brainstorming
Remote work popularized two trends: automation of HR operations and digital brainstorming. Brought together, both will change the ways biz dev teams work. The first brings transparency, speed and efficiency in the HR needs of sales teams. The second makes it easier to collaborate remotely, thus greatly improving sales performance and flexibility during chaotic times. – Wajid Mirza, Arthur Lawrence
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3. Collaborative Tools
Business development starts internally. Technology that supports collaboration to create a plan for reaching the right market with the right messages, services and/or products keeps the whole team focused. A tool like Klaxoon helps spark creativity and captures ideas from brainstorming sessions with simple drag-and-drop functionality. The ideas then easily get organized and a plan comes to life. – Ellen Williams, Orion Global Solutions LLC
4. Industry 4.0
Industry 4.0 will continue to allow for increased communication and data collection thanks to connected technologies. This added visibility throughout an organization will allow business development leaders and their teams to gain more insights into where efficiencies lie and what optimizations are necessary to increase productivity in an operation. – Jim O’Brien, The Raymond Corporation
5. Technology That Supports Employees
Any tech that supports the employee community, collaboration, onboarding, training and continued engagement with a workforce is top of the list for me. These solutions must be more scalable than ever with companies making the decision to be remote-first or remote-optional to support employee efforts to continue contributing while working from wherever they are. – Anastasia Valentine, Wagepoint
6. Cognitive Technology And Capabilities
Growth is a function of our ability to understand and solve customer problems. Cognitive technology and capabilities are increasingly capable of analyzing patterns from big data, getting trained to make predictions and generate customer insights. They will also get better over time. Business development executives can embrace AI to improve performance and productivity. – Chor Meng Tan, Wiley
7. Connected TV
With consumers watching less cable and more content on streaming platforms during the pandemic, teams should be embracing connected TV (CTV) as an alternative for traditional broadcasts. Given its greater variety of content, enhanced viewing experience and advanced targeting approaches, CTV represents a huge opportunity for brands to reach targeted customers at scale while optimizing business outcomes. – Kenneth Suh, Tremor International
8. Artificial Intelligence And Machine Learning Tools
I’m bullish on artificial intelligence and machine learning tools analyzing customer behavior. Customer preferences shift rapidly, especially in digital touch points like online commerce. Predictive algorithms notice shifting demand patterns that marketing and sales teams may miss. I expect an emergence of business development digital assistants to guide sales teams on the next actions with customers. – Tamas Hevizi, Automation Anywhere
9. Rapid Prototyping
When clients can get instant rides home or have their meals delivered in minutes, they too expect instant prototypes. Rapid prototyping like 3D printing will soon become mainstream, where clients can be discussing a concept today and have the prototypes delivered to them tomorrow. This reduction in time will significantly accelerate growth and enable the fastest adopters to thrive. – Gabriel Tan, GUAVA Amenities
10. Conversation Intelligence Platforms
From an additive perspective, sales operations can be substantially more effective by utilizing a conversation intelligence platform solution like Tethr or Gong. These platforms use AI to effectively increase deal momentum and provide meaningful insights CRM technologies are not able to provide effectively. – Jonathan Mills, EPIC Strategies
11. First-Party Cookies And Cookieless Ad Platforms
With the changes in advertising privacy across the internet and the upcoming removal of third-party cookies, biz dev needs to be aware of emerging technologies that work around these new limitations. It’s time to develop processes on using first-party cookies (the data you collect on your site) and how to increase them. There are also many cookieless ad platforms. Learn them now so you are ready. – Janet Waring, ArtForm Business Solutions, Inc.
12. Smart Technology Community Integration
Smart cities or intelligent communities should be on everyone’s radar. Nations are competing to win a race to a technological podium in this space. It will bring blockchain to the doorstep, enable everyday cryptocurrency exchanges and enable fiscal efficiency. However, it will also introduce more privacy, cyber and data management and protection concerns as data monetization truly take shape. – Jim Vint, Breakwater Solutions
13. Low-Code Development Platforms
The use of low-code development platforms (LCDP) is significantly increasing. In the banking industry, we’re observing organizations gain instant market share by implementing LCDPs that provide rapid and seamless application-building capabilities in half the time. LCDPs also encourage the democratization of application development beyond IT while enabling increased automation across business verticals. – Omar Arab, Veritran
14. Self-Service Data Analytics Tools
Self-service data analytics tools will help biz dev execs find new insights in the heaps of customer-related data they already have in their hands. But that shall need to be coupled with discipline. There’s no point in doing sales data analyses if the sales records do not reflect the real reasons why deals were won or lost. – Gregory Lipich, InfoSec Global
15. Conversational Intelligence Tools
Conversational intelligence tools will be as much of a sales default as CRM in less than five years. The ability to auto-record all meetings, transcribe, analyze and apply AI to patterns of speech, talk times and talk tracks are huge level-up opportunities for salespeople. Further, the training and coaching opportunities afforded to organizations adopting this emerging tech make it an absolute must-have. – Eric Quanstrom, CIENCE
