In 2024, business leaders should watch these 7 tech trends

Gen AI will continue to roil the business world, creating new opportunities in all industries.

Generative AI upended 2023 in ways we could never have predicted. As we anticipate the major tech trends that will define the year ahead, IT leaders will continue to grapple with the opportunities and challenges gen AI has ushered in—from the way we work to how we value talent and how we service customers.

Cognizant’s leadership, along with its more than 350,000 associates worldwide, are working closely with thousands of clients across industries to help them intuitively navigate this new reality and come out ahead. In this blog, Cognizant’s leaders across human resources, technology and industries outline the top trends that will define IT investments and talent in the year ahead.

1.    Traditional hierarchies decrease, giving talent more potential to lead and grow

As a universally available technology, gen AI levels the playing field. People will become more valued for their skills than their seniority. The right mix of skills for a project can be found in any business echelon, and leaders will need to reach across the top, middle and lower rungs of the organization to assemble teams that are fit for purpose. “Hierarchy in this scenario decreases as skills—not job titles or seniority levels—determine an individual’s value on the team,” said Cognizant’s Chief People Officer, Kathy Diaz.

2.    A new talent war will emerge

“We’ll see the war for cyber and software development talent grow more contentious as a result of major privacy concerns and savings-driven budget reallocations born from the generative AI boom,” said Babak Hodjat, CTO of AI at Cognizant. A more diverse workforce will emerge as well. “In a recent Cognizant survey of business and IT decision-makers, nearly all (92%) execs say gen AI will require companies to create more diverse workforces, while 94% say the democratization of tech via gen AI will increase employment opportunities for under-represented communities,” Hodjat added.

3.    Soft leadership skills will grow in importance

As the AI technology landscape morphs, leaders and employees will have to embrace the unfamiliar, evolve with it, and recognize the synergy between human intuition and machine intelligence.

4.    Specialized and orchestrated AI agents will start to pop up everywhere

In the year ahead, a wave of AI systems based on a variety of agent architectures will emerge. These systems will be heavily customized to specific industries and domains and will be focused on executing tasks and streamlining workflows.

“We’ll see more of these agents deployed to perform critical, specialized tasks—like updating CRM systems, analyzing and responding to audio recordings from customer service calls, enabling a conversational interface for an ERP system, sustainable land use management, or augmenting and improving marketing budget decisions,” Hodjat added.

5.    Across industries, gen AI will improve customer satisfaction and personalization

In financial services, to take one example, generative AI will enable more personalized and efficient customer experiences by accelerating how institutions can analyze individual preferences. “By automating the time-consuming processes of discovery, gen AI will reduce the time required to review bank loan applications, helping people gain access to money significantly quicker than before,” said Cognizant’s Nageswar Cherukupalli, Senior Vice President and Banking and Financial Services Head. And in retail, shoppers will have access to more personalized experiences, enabled by AI-driven insights as well as interactions. AI is enabling adaptive business architectures to deliver new and rapidly scalable solutions that make omni-commerce, marketing, and customer service more intuitive and personalized. “Shoppers, for example, will get personalized product recommendations based on their own prompts, product search will become more targeted, and shoppers will interact with content tailored to their tastes and preferences,” said Sushant Warikoo, Head of Cognizant’s Retail Industry Business Unit.

6.    Gen AI will improve how regulated industries manage fraud detection and regulatory compliance

Companies are going to use gen AI to augment current fraud and compliance tools and techniques by leveraging its strengths in the areas of anomaly detection (such as identification of suspicious activity or gaps between new policies and current policy implementations) and “explainability” (such as generating documentation needed for audit trails.)

7.    Gen AI will free up clinicians to focus more on the patient care experience

In 2024, gen AI will be put to increasing use by clinicians to create clinical and billing documentation, enabling them to focus less on administrative tasks and more on interacting meaningfully with their patients. The benefits of freeing up clinicians is pressing, as patient satisfaction remains low, according to recent data. “The clinical documentation burden on practitioners is significant, but with generative AI, the role of the clinician will effectively shift from creator to validator of these documents,” said Craig Mengert, Chief Executive of TriZetto Cognizant Healthcare.

To learn more, visit the Generative AI section of our website or contact us.