2023 Top 5 Business Trends

It’s a new world for 2023, with managers facing new challenges and managing traditional business issues. While the recent large wave of the ever-evolving disease seems to have passed, there are threats of resurgence and new strains. There are implications of war and regional conflicts on the horizon that could also impact businesses. The era of "free money" is now behind us all, while currencies seem to be adjusting to a tight capital plus uncertainty in most traditional and untraditional currencies. Investors, businesses, and customers will be much more careful in the future, implying an economic pull-back and more conservative investment. Even so, innovation will still be necessary to navigate through rather than being primarily aimed at "moonshots." What does this mean for business trends?

Managing Uncertainty

You can't manage what you can't see or measure. So organizations will double down on managing uncertainty. It means that on the reactionary front, businesses will focus on speed to respond with innovation, change, and faster digital technologies to assist management in observing, orienting, deciding, and acting. Proactively, businesses will bolster their corporate planning exercises to consider scenarios and use new applications of digital sentinels to sense emergent threats, opportunities, and unanticipated "black swan" events or event clusters. AI will likely play a more vital role beyond just operational machine learning.

Wrestling with the Cost of Doing Business

Businesses will try to lower costs on core operations without putting the burden on the backs of their employees, partners, and customers. It implies more intelligent automation and not just outsourcing costs to partners, making customers the data entry clerks, or putting more stress on employees. Capital expenditures will typically be observed as they progress to profitable results and in all tight money times. However, care must be taken not to use cost containment to choke off important innovation. The most intelligent organizations invest during down cycles to get momentum on the other side of a downturn.

Increasing Loyalty for Real

Clearly, businesses have taken customers and employees for granted in the past, and it is coming home to roost. Companies must be flexible with work models to stay competitive and offer upskilling opportunities, tailored benefits, and intelligent automation assistance for the higher-skilled workers who know the game is about skills. In addition, brand reputation will get technical assistance in measuring real-time customer satisfaction through voice, more intelligent natural language chatbots, and better interactions that are not only driven by rehearsed scripts.

Wrestling Change Through Focused Adaptability

Businesses have a hard time with change. Sometimes it’s the inflexibility of core processes and systems. Still, more than that, it keeps people engaged with the change so that they can contribute towards goals and have the change feedback on the progress of the resulting changes as they roll out. Technology systems need to be fitted and surrounded by flexible and fast digital technologies, and people need to be engaged frequently.

Focusing on Core Business Needs

Businesses should focus on core businesses and shed those activities that do not contribute to the core business unless it is an innovation that would distance your organization from future economic up cycles. Concentrating on the core will be essential to weather any storms that emerge. As a result, staff evaluations, technology redundancies, and vendor consolidation should be on the table in 2023. In addition, new methods for managing non-core activities will be aggressively pursued.

Net; Net:

While rapid growth is not expected in the economy, organizations will take bold steps to intercept and manage changing conditions. Organizations that leverage emergent management disciplines and technologies will be far ahead of those organizations that just play speed to reaction well. Any efforts to be on top of real-time observations, pattern interception, and critical actions will be paid back handsomely when conditions are emergent, as I expect going forward.