By Saurabh Kewlani – Head – IT | Hannover Re – India Branch
In 1960s, who would have thought that by the beginning of the 21st century, almost every single human being would have access to powerful computing abilities and tools literally resting on their fingertips! One of the perfect examples of Democratization of Technology is a Smartphone. The term ‘Democratization of Technology’ means that more and more people have access to technology, which in turn will lead to more rapid developments and innovations in the world. Advanced computing power brought down from room-size installations to the size of an A4 pad by increasing the processing power, costs spiralled down, storage capacities increased and the broadened reliability of software and hardware are some of the many advances in the technology.
As the transformational technology has progressed, so has its client base. Now, it is not only the IT department of the company that uses these advanced technologies, other departments utilize these as well. In order to achieve sustainable digital transformation, the company should make the efforts to involve every single employee of the organization and provide them with the required tools. Each department has its own unique obstacles and the team members in that department are the ones who understand the hiccup in the workflow. Equipping the experts in the team is the best way to solve the issue without wasting any time. With the right technology, even non-developers can design and implement processes and analyse the workflow in case of any issues. Some of the key points to keep in mind while adopting these transformations are – rely on low-code tools which will be easier for non-IT people to use and train the team members of the IT department to work collaboratively with the other department members. The adoption of ‘Democratization of Technology’ is important for companies or else, the IT department becomes accumulated with requests, the demand rises and the efficiency suffers.
Advancement through new technology is a critical driver of progress in the financial sector and this has prompted unlimited proficiency gains, despite the fact that these progressions can initially be accompanied by vulnerability and uncertainty. The insurance sector is no exception to such innovations, with possibilities of new methods of service provision as well as greater opportunities for data storage, cleaning and fraud detection. Although the core applications of this industry like claims filing, underwriting, policy management, etc. have been using the same system for years, the customer segment has undergone a complete overhaul. Many innovations have been introduced in the market like AI-based claims resolutions, peer-to-peer insurance and usage-based insurance and these novel technologies are being implemented in the insurance companies. This revolution in technology has the potential to affect the franchise of the insurance company and so, it is important for this industry to respond to the society-wide technological transformations and provide insurance processes and policies, which align with these changes to stay in the competition.
The impact of the Democratization of Technology can be seen as one of the most powerful things during the outbreak of COVID-19. This virus disrupted the whole world. Every activity performed by human beings like healthcare services, businesses, school education, etc. has undergone as drastic change. Especially in the case of this medical urgency, connectivity and access to accurate information became a number one priority. If we had not been able to track the movement of the virus and its spread using technology, the number of cases and fatalities would have been higher. With the onset of the pandemic, the government started using contact tracing in order to keep the people safe and used an online dashboard to keep track of migrant workers who were stranded and helped them. Every business employee was advised to work from home, which in turn increased the pressure on the IT infrastructure in organizations. This accelerated the growth and adoption of advanced technology & innovations in every industry and therefore helped the companies become agile, boundary-less and focused on building a robust infrastructure to enable the employees work from home efficiently. The implementation of cloud technology in many organizations helped provide cloud services to all the employs who were working remotely and gave a sense of security of both their health and the data of the organization. The COVID-19 pandemic may have caused a lot of disruptions to the economy but has also acted as a unique opportunity for industries to enhance their efforts towards the advancements in technology.
Leaps in technological innovations like AI, automation and cloud computing have allowed more companies to scale processes more quickly than ever and helped the companies reduce barriers like cost and infrastructure. With the help of AI-generated chatbots, even start-ups have been able to deliver exceptional customer service and personalised experiences. The purpose of the evolution of technology is not only to improve the business performance, but also to create a world where humans thrive. Even during the COVID-19 crisis, remote working solutions were possible due to the great number of communication apps and cloud systems that enabled people to access tools and services from anywhere using any device.
Technology has become such an integral part of our lives that nothing infuriates us more when it stops working due to some technical issue. We have become so dependent on machines that we do not feel the need to think or calculate. With everything being automated around us, companies have started relying on the efficiency of machines more and more each day and this in turn means that people might lose their job, which affects the economy. Another disadvantage of highly developed technology is that the mechanism behind the robots and machines is complex. Although there are some disadvantages of democratizing technologies, the advantages they provide to the human race outweigh the disadvantages.
Democratization of Technology has the ability to transform people’s lives. Advancements that had taken years to materialise can now be developed and implemented in a shorter span of time. It has been observed that companies that have taken advantage of this democratization have seen humongous growth is a short period of time. Businesses have started adopting the cloud model in order to save cost and increase security. Automation of daily manual tasks have helped the employees focus on other tasks and become more productive. There is no limit on what can be achieved through the advancements in technology and industries show no signs of slowing down in the adoption and development of new technologies that are being introduced in the market continuously.
