2021 Predictions For A (Hopefully) Better New Year with Talend’s Lauren Vaccarello

Executive Producer Ben Wilson sits down with Lauren to discuss her predictions for 2021, including the evolving interface between digital and brick and mortar, how to connect when in-person meetings aren’t possible, the future of data  and what some of her personal predictions will be in what we all hope will be a better year than 2020.

Key Takeaways

• Data trust will become increasingly important in 2021. It will be vital for organizations to know where their data is coming from, how much they can trust it,  and what systemic errors might be present in their data sources.
• Brick and mortar retail isn’t going to return to the pre-pandemic way of doing business. A new hybrid model is emerging that will likely continue going forward. 
• Digital events are going to be with us for a while – if they are done the right way. Digital events that can offer meaningful, high-quality interaction or access to valuable people and information will still be valuable, even as in-person conferences make a comeback.

Quotes

“ This was the forcing function for every single business to lean into digital. I even think about, all of the restaurants and there’s so many restaurants that are impacted by this. I was speaking with a friend about this who had worked for software companies specifically for restaurants, and what they had mentioned to me was sales are up and I went, how are sales up? I thought the restaurant industry has taken such a big hit, and it was well now all of these restaurants that never really had to care about digital, they didn’t really have to think that much about takeout or touchless ordering. That has to happen.”

“It’s really similar on the marketing side, both marketing professionals and IT professionals have had to adapt more quickly this year than probably any other profession. And it’s this idea of don’t rely on your laurels, adapt pivot as fast as possible for marketers, especially enterprise marketers who really heavily relied on in-person events, field marketing, that one-to-one interaction that’s gone, but I don’t know a single marketer who had a quota reduction because this year we all had to keep driving demand.”

“I want to say in 2021, it’ll be a little bit lighter, it’ll all be easy. It hasn’t happened yet in 2021. Maybe it will, but it’s just going to keep going, and the added complexity that’ll happen in 2021 is optimistically the second half of the year we’ll be able to see each other in person again. So now IT professionals and marketers now have to go, ‘we knew the old world we pivoted and made this new fully remote world work. Okay. Now you have to make both work and they have to work together .’”

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