When it comes to building brand loyalty, customers increasingly expect the retailers they shop from - whether that's online, in person, or via click-and-collect - to demonstrate tangible efforts to operate in an ethical, sustainable, and environmentally friendly manner in everything they do.

With lockdown restrictions finally easing, and the public looking forward to enjoying the different activities they have been deprived of for the past two years, it's certainly an exciting time for the UK's Hospitality & Leisure sector. But as hotels get ready to open their doors again, it is essential that hospitality professionals do not lose sight of the challenges that will be involved.

The past few years have been challenging for the global Manufacturing sector, with both Brexit and COVID-19 creating a wide range of operational disruptions whose impact is still being felt. Indeed, as recently as January 2023, we saw UK manufacturing shrinking for the sixth consecutive month¹.

Manufacturing workflows are evolving at an unprecedented rate, and the trend shows no signs of slowing down. The increasing effectiveness and affordability of 'smart' technologies and the Internet of Things means IT and OT are increasingly interconnected, with increasing volumes of data flowing between sites and devices on an ongoing basis.

Like many fixtures of our lives, Britain's pubs were heavily impacted by COVID-19, with their familiar patrons unable to come in for a post-work drink, or meet with friends at the weekend. But while it was undoubtedly a difficult period for the industry as a whole, this great British institution did as it has always done, and adapted to suit its patrons' evolving requirements.

The retail landscape has fundamentally changed in recent years, partly driven by the necessities of COVID lockdowns, and partly by ongoing shifts in customer preferences and behaviour. As we have previously explored on this blog, the familiar high street shopping experience is increasingly converging with online and click-and-collect shopping, offering a new breed of data-driven shopping experience.

With fundamental shifts in consumer behaviour, changing economic conditions, and a rapidly evolving regulatory environment, it's a challenging but exciting time for the UK's retail sector, and technology has a key role to play. In particular, advances in IT and networking solutions are empowering retailers to enhance their operational efficiency, improve the customer experience, and retain their competitive edge in an increasingly online and interconnected world.

Policymakers have now recognised that world-class digital connectivity and fast internet connections are as essential to the future of the society now as ports, railways, airports, and highways were throughout the last two centuries. Those systems transformed the way people lived and worked, irrevocably changing human conceptions of distance, speed, and time.

Achieving successful digital transformation across the Architecture, Engineering and Construction Sector.  

New technologies are transforming every aspect of how projects are brought from conception to completion across the AEC sector. As a result, numerous leaders across the sector are accelerating their digital transformation plans, embracing the Cloud, AI, big data, and IoT in order to both overcome their immediate challenges and bring their long-term business goals closer.

These state-of-the-art technologies are being used by architects to effortlessly showcase realistic project images to potential clients and stakeholders, enabling the latter to make any changes they want and give feedback on designs (or approval) in no time. 

But VR / AR / MR is just the latest flowering of Digital Transformation (DX) to be adopted by the industry - and depends upon the same underlying technology.

Digital transformation: opportunities and challenges

By nature, architecture is an industry defined by evolution, so its early adoption of DX should come as no surprise. In firms across the world, the design process has moved away from drawing boards and tracing paper towards computers. In turn, clients have become more demanding, making collaborative simulation and visualisation a key - almost compulsory - part of the design process.
Consequently, computers have had to become more powerful and graphics greatly improved to keep up with the rendering requirements; architects also require access to a centralised graphic store, and this access similarly requires a lot computational and networking power.

The Fourth Transformation: opportunities and challenges

As the Fourth Transformation takes hold - bringing forth advances in VR / AR / MR - technology is becoming increasingly immersive and collaborative. For the architecture industry, this means that seamless cloud-based collaboration between contractors, engineers and architects is both possible and highly desirable.

Such collaboration entails not only simple file transfers and data conversion but also, increasingly, the embedding of VR / AR / MR into business operations. The popularity of such technology has risen in the sector, thanks to its emerging value as an educational tool.

However, this brave new world of unified communications and virtual desktop infrastructure is powerless without the right network. Across the industry, gigabit requirements are becoming the norm; by contrast, only three years ago, 100mb would often suffice. In a bandwidth-hungry digital landscape, the network is the cloud - so it's easy to see why a cloud can only be as good as the network it traverses.

Conclusion

By harnessing the power of cloud computing and a robust, reliable network in tandem, architecture firms can set themselves apart from their competitors and respond super-fast to those last-minute emergency requests that can suddenly arise from contractors all over the world. By partnering with the right supplier as well, firms can stop worrying about business continuity, getting back up and running if their systems fail.