Business-to-business (B2B) is forecast to be become more prevalent in 2014, along with big data and wearable devices, according to research firm Frost & Sullivan.
The report, "Top 14 ideas and Innovations for 2014," note that while e-ommerce has recently grown tremendously through B2C retail, there has also been a massive upturn on B2B online retailing in the past few years, contributing more to the e-commerce market than B2C.
"Electronic B2B that was traditionally comprised of conventional Electronic Data Interchange platforms with minimum choice of vendors and a costlier implementation system, is moving to the wider web of the internet toward online platforms that offer more choice, flexibility and price options," said Vidyasekar."These online platforms provide instant quotes, thus offering quicker responses and much more agile procurement and supply services," said Frost & Sullivan’s Visionary Innovation Team Leader and Senior Research Analyst Archana Vidyasekar.
Meanwhile, big data is is growing at a rate of 40 percent annually generating a massive pool of data offering valuable insights and opportunity for predictive analytics.
Frost & Sullivan believes that this year will see even more increased activity for offering personalized, customized and intelligent services.
"Virtualization of data and analytics will become imperative to businesses," said Vidyasekar. "Online retail giants, such as Amazon, have already launched interesting services, such as Amazon Kinesis, that analyzes data in the real-time to offer customized services."
Lastly, 2013 saw the launch of wearable smart gadgets, such as smart watches and Google Glass that emulated functions of a smartphone perfectly. While there is skepticism and hype surrounding this market, its potential in regards to new services, such as undisputed monitoring of health, has propelled these gadgets to the forefront of products to watch in the wellness industry.