and what it’s including or excluding,” Robert Parker, CPA and tech futurist, warns. “It’s kind of a ‘buyer beware’ with digital assistants.” Additionally, they may eliminate some of the pleasures of traditional shopping, such as coming across an item in a store that may catch your eye. “Digital assistants take you right to what you ask for without letting you think, ‘maybe this will work,’ or ‘how would that go with this skirt?’ ” Parker says. “Sometimes the hunt is better than the kill.”
PREDICTION 2 By 2017, mobile commerce revenue will rise
to 50% of US digital commerce revenue as a result of US mobile customer behaviour. While the above prediction appears to refer to shopping
online only, mobile payment capabilities will also have a signifi- cant impact on brick-and-mortar stores. The launch of Apple’s Apple Pay has renewed interest in mobile payments, and online and big-box retailers are weighing the benefits and drawbacks of such payments. “The question is, ‘will people shop with me if I do not offer
mobile payments? Will they spend more or will they spend the same amount, and would I have to pay more for that same trans- action? Will I lose market share or gain market share because I have mobile payments?’ The jury is out,” Michael LeBlanc, senior vice-president of the Retail Council of Canada, says. Businesses also have to decide which mobile payment solu-
tion to support or whether to start their own. Besides Apple Pay, services such as Google Wallet and Samsung Pay exist, while others, such as Chase Pay, are coming soon. Some retailers, such as Walmart and Starbucks, also plan to launch or already have launched their own mobile payment solutions. Despite retailer interest, consumers shouldn’t expect to
immediately get the benefits of mobile payments. New forms of payment may take some time to be introduced because they may be a lower priority for some industries.
PREDICTION 3 By 2017, a computer algorithm will conceive
a significant and disruptive digital business that will be launched that year. Consumers won’t be the only ones to benefit from smarter computer technology. Businesses and investors will use
34 | CPA MAGAZINE | MARCH 2016
Very soon, we should be able to ask mobile digital assistants to do complex tasks such as arrange the perfect date night with dinner, movie and an Uber ride
artificial intelligence (AI) to get advice on financial products and to determine if startups will succeed or fail. “What we’re seeing is more and more smart advisers coming
into the workforce and coming into the world to help us do our jobs,” Daryl Plummer, chief of research and managing vice- president of Gartner, says. “We’re having more and more machines that are able to make decisions on their own in a limited scope.” Some machines or technologies may be names you recog-
nize. IBM’s Watson, which won a three-episode-long Jeopardy competition against two of the show’s greatest champions in 2011, looks at market conditions, events, client history and offerings to provide financial advice for Citi, the United Services Automobile Association and a number of other companies. There are many startups that exploit the potential of AI-based
business intelligence. A couple of examples are Path Intelligence and Qlikview,
which use AI to assist businesses in an assortment of sectors. Path Intelligence has provided a way to automatically identify how people move in indoor spaces.
PREDICTION 4 By 2018, the total cost of ownership for busi-
ness operations will be reduced by 30% through the use of smart machines and industrialized services. With everyone desiring to get better products faster and at
a better price, businesses will increasingly turn to smart ma- chines and other digital technologies to meet demand. As most soſtware can be used anytime and anywhere, quality soſtware that can easily replicate or surpass the jobs that humans can do may be in high demand. “Narrative Science and its Quill platform are developing the
area of narrative science, which is our ability to have a machine write things that are really repetitious and/or don’t allow a lot of creativity,” Plummer says. “Copywriters beware, because even the city of Chicago’s bud- get was written by a soſtware bot.”
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