Businesses across the world are coming to terms with the revelation that daily procedures are quickly changing as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. Whether your company has temporarily halted all business or has decided to implement a work from home routine, how you approach your digital marketing presence and whether you reduce your costs by cutting your digital marketing efforts, should be carefully adjusted in response to this current health crisis.

When our world shifts as dramatically as it has with COVID-19, it’s important that all brands address the issue with tact, empathy, and mindful marketing. That said, when it comes to current and planned campaigns, analytics, insights and results every marketing team faces several challenges during a crisis. While it’s still early in the quarantine, we’ve already been asked to help our clients adapt their digital approach to the NEW NORMAL. Now what does that really mean? 

Should we take it for granted that life as we knew it 4-weeks ago would continue to be the norm or could we expect that some things will change forever. What will the “day after” look like? Will we find ourselves in deep recession? Will the devastated airline and travel industries ever recover? Will people travel at the same rate as before? Will they attend as many sports events or concerts? Will people go back to working in offices or will the norm be to work from home? 

In 2019, businesses aren’t the only ones utilizing big data to boost performance markers: NFL franchises are looking far beyond the numbers on the backs of jerseys into the data that reflects team strategies, trends, talent acquisition, and play calling tendencies. It’s no longer enough to simply track trades, follow injury reports, and draft observational scouting reports on players.

The field of artificial intelligence (AI) experienced tremendous scientific advances in the last few years, from vast improvements in processing power and computational efficiency to new insights into object identification, language, and deep learning. IBM — a leader in AI research since its inception in the 1950s — helped inform many of these advances. And 2019 in particular was a watershed moment for IBM Research AI.

With the emergence of technologies such as big data, artificial intelligence, cloud, mobile, gearing up yourself for major digital transformation seems to be no longer an option; it seems to be more like a compulsion.

AI will transform BI and the way people make decisions and act. Rather than start with a hypothesis, data analysts will begin with an AI-driven insight. Instead of querying data to prove or disprove their hypothesis, users will query data to expand or validate a machine-generated insight or recommendation—or they might act on the AI-based insight at face value.