4 fast-moving tech companies setting trends right now

The technology hubs of the word, from San Francisco to Tel Aviv and beyond, have produced several strong examples in recent years – many who are constantly challenged by competing technology. However sometimes, when a concept is simply amazing, it succeeds in changing the way consumers prefer to do business and that is what sets a new trend altogether. These new trends can become so strong that they make older solutions almost irrelevant.

Today I’d like to tip a few rising trends and some of the companies that enabled them. This, naturally make these companies very valuable in the world – if they can remain ahead of challengers:

Riding the WordPress trend: Envato / Themeforest

Themeforest is a marketplace that did two important things for SME’s: Firstly, it enabled site owners to pay much less for extremely high-quality code – and websites. Secondly, it enabled the best developers in the world, to bring their code into the sharing economy, moving away from “customization as standard.” Developers who could not hack it on the marketplace might not like it – as they’d prefer to charge $3K to $6K per site. But those who succeeded – might charge only $30 per site or “theme,” selling it to hundreds, sometimes thousands of site owners, often earning upwards of $20K per theme. The same goes for plugins – which are sold/promoted in the same way as themes.

To date, the only viable way for commercial WordPress theme developers to bypass the Themeforest market – was to develop freemium models released via the WordPress platform as free, with an upsell. There is no other marketplace that can compete effectively with Envato, which no pulls in more than 40 million visitors monthly.

Not only did Envato come along to ride the WordPress trend (as most of its revenue comes from WordPress related tasks) – but it managed to disrupt the industry by changing the way people pay web developers, and how they sell their services in a key market. After all, a whopping 34% of the websites in the world now runs on WordPress – that is a sizable opportunity.

Making the most of trends in AI, RPA and chatbots – evolution in the fintech market

Now, Chatbots and AI improve credit card security.AI specialists like Avi Benezra and his team at SnatchBot have released some of the most futuristic chatbots to take reduce human intervention during credit card processing, even by phone. This is a major leap in credit card safety and thus a contribution to the fintech sector as a whole. It is also vendor neutral, hence the appeal among retailers and service providers. Industry experts are lining up to speak out on the success of chatbots and AI when it comes to fintech solutions. As Roland Bleyer, the inventor of an AI-driven credit card comparison engine said: “In the war against credit card fraud, tech is continually being improved to make credit card use safer. Why? First up, tech is smarter that your average human, so it tends to be better at sniffing out fraud as – or before – it happens.” He went on to credit chatbots for countering unreliable behaviour found among human operators.

People like Avi Benezra and his brother Henri, who is the CEO of SnatchBot, went beyond the point of attracting attention from financiers and big banks: they are even changing how militaries and governments use technology, given their wide range of AI-powered chatbots. As for credit card security: the introduction of chatbots to process transactions over the phone is a major contribution to fintech.

Reservations.com – The fastest growing travel platform disrupting the entire travel industry

Reservations.com is the fastest growing online travel agent (OTA) in North America. This phenomenal result is thanks to tech specialists with an in-depth understanding of an industry, who blend unique components of technology, process and people to disrupt an entire industry. The CEO and co-founder, Yatin Patel was recently recognized at the 2019 Outstanding 50 Asian Americans in Business awards.

The most disruptive aspect is that it has redefined the market, not through price cutting and specials, but through human touch and personalization – aided by technology and humans. It succeeds at taking even satisfied customers away from other platforms and retain them by delivering far more unique experience. A new segment of travel consumer is now emerging those who require more than just a cheap, standard experience.

Users also switch over to the R-Club loyalty program after some time, which brings more personalization and price benefits. Another huge “ace” up their sleeve is the value it brings to hotel owners: it provides world-class technology and great inventory management without hurting them on price and profitability.

Actifio: Riding the wave on big data and visualization

These days, the ability to present digital marketing data to stakeholders is assumed. The challenge however is that this can be incredibly time consuming when conventional methods are deployed. Actifio helps to visualize the most important data to any business. The company says that it helps companies to outperform their competitors by becoming truly data driven. Well, in doing so, it has secured a rather substantial share of the global market already – and is growing rapidly.

As more data piles gather and the majority of organizations tap into cloud-enabled data-driven models, Actifio has a good outlook in the medium term: serving a rapidly expanding sector that is no longer a “nice to have”. This company is likely to change the way in which slow-moving teams used to deal with data, to a way that is rapid, efficient and fast becoming an industry standard.

Conclusion

In every industry there are fast-movers and rising stars. This article may have touched on some really important businesses, but it is certainly a non-exhaustive list of what is happening in the tech sphere. I predict that the next industry in which we’ll see disruptors improve the way we buy services will be in cybersecurity: an area where WordPress site owners face a real challenge.