As we welcome a new year it’s a perfect time to reflect on the trends that will impact us and our businesses. Team One Accounting has compiled a list of trends in 2020 for your consideration and reflection:
Trend #1: Sustainability
Concern for the environment has made the list for core values by many companies. The way businesses run can have a huge impact on the environment. While we hear a lot of stories about large companies impacting sustainability, we can also do our part as small businesses. In the accounting profession, many firms have gone paperless. Transitioning the use of staplers, paper clips, and filing cabinets to digital storage which greatly reduces their footprint.
Trend #2: The Gig Economy
Young workers often have multiple jobs instead of the 9 to 5 jobs of their parents. This means there is more flexibility than ever before when it comes to hiring and retaining young workers. They can be employees, contractors, outsourced solutions, remote, local, part-time, full time, temporary, or permanent. Sub-trends in this area include more virtual workers and many more opportunities for veterans.
Trend #3: AI – Artificial Intelligence
This trend is affecting the accounting profession in a big way via smart data entry, smart document fetching, and even smart bookkeeping. Marketing has also been impacted tremendously through online ads, customer service solutions, and marketing technology. In email, Google is finishing our sentences for us while chat and other technologies are also having fairly effective conversations via bots.
Trend #4: Stories
Storytelling is huge everywhere. People want to know:
- The story behind your business and why you do what you do.
- The stories about your customers and their experience with you and your services.
- The stories from your employees and what it is like to work at your organization.
Digital communication has moved from text to graphics to video as bandwidth improves. Video makes stories even easier to share. Smart companies will leverage both stories and videos going forward to get their message out.
Trend #5: Diversity Expanded
The conversation is no longer about race, gender, and even sexual preference. It’s now about authenticity and being the same person at work and at home. No one is “normal.” It takes courage to reveal our differences, especially if they are outside the “standard.” Your courage is more likely to be honored in 2020 than it has been in prior years.
Trend #6: A WOW Customer Experience
We’ve moved way past the time of “infotainment,” yet the concept is parallel. As businesses, the challenge is how we can deliver an entertaining, positive, and memorable experience while producing the outcomes the client desires.
Trends #7: Drones
So far, drones have made appearances in photography, special effects at conferences, as toys, in movies, and of course, in war. We see them in use for safety reasons, going where people shouldn’t or can’t. They will become more pervasive in 2020 and there will be more rules, protocols, and court cases on their use.
Trend #8: User Interface
The move from desktop to mobile is nearly complete with only the laggard portion of the population remaining. The move to voice is still a work in progress and it will steadily continue to gain traction in 2020.
Trend #9: Actionable Analytics
Capturing information digitally gives businesses a huge amount of data to utilize, but small businesses have barely scratched the surface of this profitable information. Now, in 2020, it is time for small business to get familiar with these platforms. Your Favorite Orange County Bookkeepers can help you!
Trend #10: Pace of Transformation
New business models in companies like Tesla, Uber, Google, and Facebook will continue to show up at a rapid rate. The business that is most nimble will be the one that changes the game or at least stays in it without folding.
Which of these trends impact your business the most? Which ones speak to you? Feel free to reach out to your Favorite Orange County Bookkeepers to discuss any of these ideas.
