Digital Business Trends 2025

13 Jan 2025 • Technology and digital development, Trends & Signals

As we have turned the page on the calendar again, it’s the perfect moment to explore the key digital business trends for 2025 that will shape the industry in the coming year.

Looking Back at 2024

The year 2024 was marked by cautiously optimistic expectations of a market recovery, tempered by a healthy awareness of potential turbulence. Fortunately, market confidence steadily grew throughout the year, buoyed in part by interest rate cuts. This optimism translated into improved profitability and stronger financial stability, though businesses maintained a cautious approach to investments. As a result, 2024 was relatively quiet in terms of groundbreaking developments.

However, two significant trends stood out:

• Generative AI goes mainstream. Much like in 2023, the most prominent topic in digitalization was generative AI. Whether you were a tech enthusiast or simply engaging in casual conversations over coffee, AI was nearly impossible to ignore. Corporate boards universally analyzed the implications of AI for their businesses, while everyday users integrated it into their lives. A notable moment for Finland was the acquisition of SiloAI, highlighting the global impact of the country’s AI innovation. AI also brought extremes closer together: while some companies debated whether to adopt AI to boost productivity, schoolchildren were already replacing search engines with ChatGPT — a shift evident even during our “Bring Your Kids to Work Day.” The numbers are telling: 93% of SMEs in the Nordics using AI reported increased revenue. AI’s rapid adoption made it the fastest-commoditized technology in history.
• Sustainability reporting gains momentum. Another prominent topic for businesses was the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD), set to take effect in 2025. This directive will expand reporting requirements to include a wider range of companies. While only larger organizations face direct reporting obligations, the effects will ripple through value chains, influencing smaller businesses. This development sets the stage for sustainability to become an even more integral part of digital business operations—a theme that will feature prominently in the digital business trends of 2025.

Digital business trends 2025 seem familiar

The cautious optimism that characterized 2024 carries into 2025, though significant growth investments remain restrained. This careful approach continues to slow the adoption of innovations in business operations. However, two dominant megatrends — AI and ESG — are driving much of the momentum, making the forecast for digital business trends 2025 feel both familiar and essential.

What to watch in 2025:

Here are the key trends shaping digital business in the year ahead:

• Improving data infrastructure. The EU Sustainability Directive’s requirement to collect a wide range of metrics from diverse systems places unprecedented pressure on companies to upgrade their data infrastructure. In 2025, businesses will find an excellent opportunity to audit their data sources and assess their usability from ESG, AI, and automation perspectives. Strong data management will no longer be optional but a competitive necessity.
• Security and resilience of systems. Our dependence on networks and digital services, and the evolution of tools, have made cyber-attacks from the government level a business headache. For those still hesitant about auditing and developing their own company’s security: here are a few findings from IBM’s recent Cost of a Data Breach 2024 report.
  • The average cost of a data breach rose to $4.88 million in 2024.
  • Cyber-attacks accounted for 55% of all data breaches.
  • Nearly half of breaches involved customers’ personal data. If your company’s systems aren’t regularly audited and updated, 2025 could prove challenging.
• AI-assisted self-service. AI-driven self-service solutions are transforming customer support. By 2024, Forrester estimated that 50% of first-tier customer service would be managed by AI. Imagine a world where every support response is accurate, immediate, and helpful. The technology to make this possible already exists, and 2025 will see its broader adoption, streamlining customer experiences while reducing costs.

What won’t happen in 2025

While some trends will generate buzz in 2025, their practical applications may remain limited for now. Here’s what to keep an eye on:

• Agentic AI. Now that generative AI is being adopted surprisingly quickly and widely, the next big wave of intelligent agents is on the horizon. The boldest predictions foresee the eventual decline of websites and SaaS platforms as this technology becomes more widespread. An AI agent acts like an autonomous assistant powered by artificial intelligence, performing tasks you assign it as if it were a human. Need movie tickets? Put an agent on the case — it knows you prefer back-row seats in the middle, checks when you and your spouse are both free, and even pre-orders your favorite snacks and drinks. The direction is clear, but interfaces, services, and supporting infrastructure still need to evolve to fully unlock the benefits. The first step will likely involve integrating agents into existing services. For example, today’s AI-powered chatbots can already recommend the best washing program in natural language, but a future version with agent capabilities could take it further: submitting a fault report to the manufacturer, attaching the necessary RMA information, and booking a service appointment at a nearby location.
• Disinformation security. The rapid advancement of AI is making it increasingly difficult to distinguish between real and fake content. From text and images to videos, AI can now generate highly realistic fakes capable of undermining digital trust and even bypassing biometric identifiers. Gartner highlights this alarming trend, predicting that AI will soon enable fake content to breach security systems at an unprecedented scale. Imagine having a video call with someone, only to later discover there was no real person on the other end. This capability is driving the emergence of a new field: disinformation security. Its focus is on verifying authenticity and protecting businesses, individuals, and systems from these advanced threats. As AI-generated disinformation continues to evolve, organizations must adapt quickly to mitigate risks and safeguard trust in a world where truth and fiction are increasingly hard to separate.
• Responsible AI. Responsible AI means developing and using AI in a way that is ethical, fair, safe and transparent. It aims to ensure that AI systems work for the benefit of human welfare and society, and do not cause harm or discrimination. While AI is being harnessed as a tireless tool for everyday life, the pace of development is so rapid that responsible training and regulation of AI is becoming critical. Indeed, Gartner predicts that by 2026, 50% of governments will force AI through responsible regulation. Responsible AI will become as self-evident and important as cybersecurity.

Despite the mildly dystopian mood, we believe in the development of responsible AI and wish everyone a great New Year 2025!