Gene Marks on Technology for 2021

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During the Main Stage presentation at Scaling New Heights on Monday (11/9) Gene Marks, a past columnist for both The New York Times and The Washington Post, who now writes regularly on technology for Forbes, Inc. Magazine, entertained and enlightened those in attendance with his 2021 Technology Forecast.

The following topical areas were addressed in Mr. Marks presentation1.

1) CRM is now a core database for all industries whether they are in sales, service marketing or field-service. Everyone needs access to same information, and everyone deserves up-to-the-minute information. Don’t try to configure it yourself, pay a little more and let the CRM company set it up for you.

2) HR Platforms are lowering overall business costs (especially when they are properly linked to your Payroll system).  They let your people access their own information so you don’t need HR people to simply pull information, they let your people change/update their own information right from their ‘smart phones’, and they provide HR resources to keep you out of trouble.

3) Hot Tech Apps for Employees:

  • Tuitition.io – helps companies manage student debt, or tuition assistance programs
  • Fond Perks – consolidates employee rewards into negotiated corporate perks like discounts or free passes
  • HelloWallet – financial guidance reliant upon behavioral economics to incentivize workers
  • ShapeUp – product development team methodology to address risks and achieve goals
  • CardCash – online gift card marketplace allowing users to buy and sell discounted gift cards
  • MDVIP – on-call physician for your designated team
  • Bonus.ly – team building recognition and reward system for employee engagement.

4) Virtual and Augmented Reality is Changing Work – affords real-time views of designs, 3D-graphics or drawings, and simulations beneficial in engineering and design work, manufacturing, and field-service applications as well as some advanced computing environments.

 5) Back Office Apps are cutting Overhead – apps like ‘Receipt Bank’ that make use of OCR (optical character recognition) to translate data and enter that data into computer applications like your accounting program are reducing the requirement for manual data entry. The quality of OCR is growing on an exponential basis and when coupled with artificial intelligence will be able to translate almost any data.

6) Fin Tech Apps

  • More banking data will be automatically integrated into your accounting without the need for manual data entry or validation, ‘automated reconciliation’. Artificial intelligence is able to look at patterns and determine the most likely probability of almost all transactions.
  • GenX/Boomers are going ‘totally mobile’, they want everything on their mobile devices are they are not going to accept anything less.
  • Financial lenders are becoming more ‘on-line’ geared and will use your data to drive almost every decision… for example American Express just purchased Kabbage.
  • Cashless Payments will soon be ‘the thing’, cash will become a thing of the past. You will pay using your ‘mobile device/signature’.
  • Digital currency is here to stay… PayPal has just started accepting Bitcoin.

7) Ransomware will continue as the Number 1 Cyber Threat for 2021 - it had a 7-fold increase in 2020 over 2019, and there is no reason to believe that it is going to get any less dangerous.  The best protection is to keep all of your systems current.

8) AI (Artificial Intelligence) will make companies more competitive for those that embrace it. You don’t have to do ‘AI’ yourself, simply find software/Apps that make use of AI and then use those in your own business. If you aren't using AI in your work, you can bet that your competitors will be using AI in theirs.

9) IOT (Internet of Things) is here and Robots are coming. Smart-things are here, we have them in our homes and offices, and in our cars.  They are in almost everything of any value; for example, Rolls Royce Aircraft Engines are full of sensors that transmit thousands of data points of information to not only onboard aircraft systems but to the airline and to Rolls Royce so they can continually monitor aircraft performance.  Before long, all major systems will have data sampling that is transmitted via the internet to a monitoring system somewhere.

About Gene Marks

A past columnist for both The New York Times and The Washington Post, Gene Marks, CPA now writes regularly for The Hill, The Philadelphia Inquirer, Forbes, Inc. Magazine, Entrepreneur Magazine and The Guardian. Gene has written 5 books on business management, specifically geared towards small and medium sized companies. His most recent is In God We Trust, Everyone Else Pays Cash. Nationally, Gene appears regularly on MSNBC and Fox News as well as  medium sized companies. His most recent is In God We Trust, Everyone Else Pays Cash. Nationally, Gene appears regularly on MSNBC and Fox News as well as The John Batchelor Show and SiriusXM's Wharton Business Channel where he talks about the financial, economic and technology issues that affect business leaders today.

Through his keynotes and breakout sessions, Gene helps business owners, executives and managers understand the political, economic and technological trends that will affect their companies and—most importantly—the actions they can take to continue to grow and profit. Gene owns and operates the Marks Group PC, a highly successful ten-person firm that provides technology and consulting services to small and medium sized businesses. Prior to starting the Marks Group PC Gene, a Certified Public Accountant, spent nine years in the entrepreneurial services arm of the international consulting firm KPMG in Philadelphia where he was a Senior Manager.

Footnote:

1-This article is not intended to be a 'factual word-for-word reporting', so in some instances I may have abbreviated some of, or elaborated on, points made in Mr. Marks' presentation.