Pfizer has just announced that their COVID-19 vaccine is 90% effective according to preliminary tests.
With this news in mind, the future is starting to look brighter, especially for the distraught global economy. Innovative companies can look forward to better business conditions that will allow them to reach their near-maximum potential as they deliver solutions that address real-world problems.
Here’s a look at seven of the most noteworthy tech companies that are set to make a splash in 2021. Offering excellent distinctive solutions, they are arguably leaders in their respective fields of expertise.
Cybersecurity – Cynet
Cybercriminals are set to become even more aggressive as businesses slowly resume normal operations. A reliable cybersecurity solution for enterprises is a must, and this is what Cynet offers with its XDR autonomous breach protection. The company developed a cyber defense system that guarantees consolidated security, which includes the capabilities of a next-generation antivirus, endpoint detection and response, user behavior analysis, network analytics, incident response, as well as protection from ransomware and advanced threats.
Cynet provides a fully automated security solution that covers all workflows across the entire cybersecurity lifecycle, from proactive breach tracking to incident response. This ensures complete visibility to detect and stop threats as they emerge. Also, Cynet developed a system that supports seamless deployment and is extremely flexible with its on-prem, software-as-a-service, and hybrid deployment options.
Ecommerce – Dialogue
Even as the end of the pandemic appears to be near, e-commerce is expected to remain as a preferred mode of doing business given its convenience. Digital commerce is one of the business shifts that will continue to be relevant in the next normal, McKinsey says. For this, companies can greatly benefit from Dialogue, a system designed to harness artificial intelligence to boost sales.
Dialogue provides an autonomous e-commerce personalization platform backed by machine learning. It is a results-oriented system that features a customization engine capable of automating marketing and sales campaigns, boosting customer conversion rates by up to 25 percent. It generates tailored messages for different potential customers based on specific preferences and sales patterns to achieve the best possible outcomes.
With the multitude of businesses going online, competition in the e-commerce field logically becomes steeper. Companies need to find ways to distinguish themselves, become more efficient, and attain higher customer conversion rates. These are things nowDialogue.com is designed to tackle.
Customer engagement – Hyro
Hyro is a conversational AI solution that boosts customer engagement for enterprises. It is designed to create context-elastic experiences, which makes it suitable for different kinds and sizes of organizations. With natural language processing technology, it simulates conversations with real people to capture critical customer insights.
Many companies already use AI-powered chatbots, but only a few are capable of achieving the kind of natural conversations Hyro delivers. Hyro is built not only to say prepared lines in response to certain keywords; it also incorporates contextualization. It attempts to anticipate and comprehend what customers really want. At the same time, it collects and organizes information in real time to discover trends and identify possible issues before they aggravate.
Hyro works not only on ecommerce sites. It can also be integrated in smart speakers, call center platforms, apps, and ordinary web pages. It comes with a plug-and-play interface that guarantees quick and seamless integration. Even better, it is built as a zero-maintenance solution, so users don’t have to worry about having to update or upgrade anything.
Israel Krush, CEO of Hyro, wants to emphasize how easy it is for different kinds of organizations to deploy Hyro. “Our zero-touch solution uses a website’s existing data to generate conversational AI agents that can be deployed within a week — but most importantly, achieves high quality through a pioneering linguistics approach,” Krush says.
IT and digital transformation – WalkMe
As we move into the fourth industrial revolution, every business must ‘go digital’ or face extinction. The process of undergoing digital transformation is complex, requiring in many cases an overhaul of systems, processes, and infrastructure throughout the organization. A robust digital transformation initiative also helps ensure a businesses’ scalability, flexibility, and resilience in the face of unforeseen challenges. It is this undeniability of the importance of digital technology that makes WalkMe one of the most noteworthy innovative companies to watch in 2021.
The company offers a digital adoption platform (DAP) that helps facilitate digital transformation for organizations of any size across all verticals. WalkMe’s DAP simplifies the process of training employees in using software, websites, apps, and other digital solutions, alongside providing management an end-to-end view of usage and adoption analytics. Likewise, it offers solutions for specific enterprise needs such as customer relations management, human capital management, and enterprise resource planning. WalkMe takes pride in a 368% ROI based on the findings of Forrester Research.
Business intelligence – Sisense
Optimism in the eventual defeat of the global coronavirus outbreak is driving a sense of urgency for businesses to contend with the competition, difficulties, as well as opportunities ahead. Preparations can become considerably easier with the help of a dependable business intelligence solution like Sisense.
This company’s software empowers organizations to harness the power of business intelligence and data analytics to produce fast, actionable insights that benefit all areas of business.
Beyond business intelligence gathering, Sisense enables data professionals, developers, product managers and line-of-business executive leaders to work with reports and interactive dashboards that ensure more effective information processing and data-driven insights.
Sisense also offers a powerful embedded analytics solution for product teams, enabling app creators to integrate interactive data components in their products using APIs, developer tools and code libraries.
Having earned the approval of Gartner and Dresner, the Sisense‘s innovative approach in business intelligence and analytics will be useful to businesses as they paddle their way into new opportunities and challenges past the COVID-19 pandemic.
Healthcare – Shape Therapeutics
Who wants to have another economy-debilitating global health scare? The answer is certainly nobody. That’s why the promising solution offered by Seattle-based Shape Therapeutics is gaining attention among investors. The company is in the process of developing a biological technology that can alter human RNA to get rid of diseases or correct mutations.
Shape Therapeutics is not exactly a new company. It was founded in 2018, but the viability of the concept the company has been working on only became clearer recently. In November, the company raised $35.5 in a Series A round funding. This amount is set to be used for the opening of a satellite office in Cambridge, Massachusetts and the hiring of more staff.
The Shape Therapeutics biotechnology development project is based on the groundbreaking work of Professor Prashant Mali, a renowned bioengineering researcher from the University of California – San Diego. This biotech work is described by some experts as more precise than Crispr-Cas9.
FinTech – Better.com
Better.com is not some personal development or productivity solution, although what this NYC-based service does is somehow related to helping individuals financially. The company tries to improve the antiquated mortgage application process by bringing it to the internet and simplifying everything. With automation, it shortens the weeks of mortgage application waiting time to minutes.
What makes Better.com innovative is its entire business model. Instead of charging fees or commission for transactions, the company focuses on interest. The company says it has already extended more than $4 billion to homebuyers in 2019. With the global economy set to improve in 2021, Better.com is looking forward to serving more customers. The company has already received approval to operate in 44 states across the USA and is set to cover all territories soon.
5G – Movandi
Geopolitical tensions may have sidetracked the widespread deployment of 5G technology, but at least one startup is working on making this tech more accessible. Movandi is a California-based startup that seeks to solve real-world problems associated with 5G millimeter-wave deployments. The company has developed a technology that expands the reach of 5G spectrum bands by enabling the bending of signals around buildings and other significant obstacles.
Movandi has attracted $30 million in funding to continue the development of its technology. The company has a diverse portfolio of IP assets that play important roles in the establishment of the 5G ecosystem. Movandi says it is in the process of forging deals with major wireless providers that are interested in using their technology.
Innovating for the next normal
The companies featured above are not that different from the companies that would have also taken the spotlight at the height of the COVID-19 outbreak. After all, the next normal is largely about changes that are set to become permanent or indispensable even as the world completely crushes the pandemic. Companies involved in the internet, software, finance, e-commerce, and business intelligence will play a big role in the upcoming economic recovery everyone is hoping to see soon.
