What comes to your mind when you think of "digitalization"? Online shopping? Social media? Or perhaps the cloud? Most likely, what comes to mind is the specific set of convenient services that you've used for quite some time. That's more than likely because digital technologies have become integrated into every aspect of our everyday life. As a person enjoying a digital lifestyle in Shanghai, China, I'd like to talk about my recent experiences of the digital world and digital business trends.

There are many locations in Shanghai that men and women of all ages can enjoy and Shanghai Natural History Museum is one of them. But, the difference between Shanghai Natural History Museum and other museums is its unique app, which allows visitors to create a museum touring route of their own, book tickets for a 4D movie and get the inside stories of exhibits. It means that they can find information, fully learn about exhibits and have a much greater experience instead of skimming through the display of exhibits.

The app is like a free guide to the museum, isn't it? I personally hope that Shanghai Natural History Museum offers a more combined digital experience with real objects.

Burberry Group plc opened its flagship store in Shanghai's Kerry Centre in 2014, the largest of its kind in Asia Pacific. Yet, I was more interested in the accompanying creative digital experience than the luxurious showroom and bags of this world-famous fashion house. Burberry shared the story behind the opening of the flagship store through the mobile platform WeChat. It offers a virtual tour of the landmarks of London and Shanghai and a live broadcast of fashion shows using a 360-degree map. By simply adding Burberry WeChat account to your contacts, you can also get a taste of Burberry's digital innovation.

Burberry has brought an immersive digital experience into its stores. Burberry Beauty Box Makeup Store in Hong Kong offers a playful virtual experience that allows customers to virtually pamper themselves with selected nail and lipstick colors.

Digital technologies are being widely used by the museum and fashion house and many others. What then does the future of digital business look like?

The digital age brings benefits to consumers and sellers. Above all, digital technologies are a great asset to both. For instance, Alibaba Group collected over 100 PB of data from the Alibaba Data Platform in 2014 alone, which represents the data held in 58 billion books, or 40,000 times the number of books held at the Seattle Central Library. It built the foundation of the DT (Data Technology) age. Big data strategy is more than just a technology upgrade. It is a revolution affecting the competitive landscape and the capital market. Fans of American TV series like me take a great interest in whether their favorite series will return. And often the decision is made based on an analysis of big data. Before House of Cards' second season was released, Netflix analyzed the preferences of subscribers based on their feedback and improved the plot so that they could meet their high expectations for the next season.

When it comes to O2O, the global fashion brand Uniqlo is by far the most mature. In 2013, it released an app providing discount information to customers. As part of its sales service, it worked with Tmall to collect feedback from online customers, their various locations and their different needs in order to identify the best market and the perfect location for offline stores. As a result, Uniqlo has settled into China very well and became the best-selling fashion brand on China's Singles Day (November 11), also known as the Chinese version of Black Friday.

Bill Gates said that banks will be the technology dinosaurs of the 21st century unless they change. If you're Chinese, you must have used Alipay Yu'E Bao at least once. It allows you to put money into your account and withdraw it at any time. It also pays you interest on a daily basis and provides financial management tools, even if the account balance is CNY 100 (KRW 18,000). It is a financial innovation covering everything from personal finance to supply-chain finance. Digital finance has in fact already created an ecosystem connecting a variety of industries to provide more accurate and reliable financial services on the strength of big data.