Enterprise digital trends for 2019 and beyond
“Strive not to be a success, but rather to be of value.” Said Albert Einstein. Technology changes in the past few years have been much more than we can keep pace with. However, technology on its own doesn’t create value. What creates value is the outcome it delivers to business when implemented well. A 2018 IDG survey indicates that the top objective of digital transformation initiatives (64%) was to improve process efficiency. Companies dreamed big to adopt the latest technologies that could be even costly to implement, but lacked readiness, thus leading to either aborted or stalled initiatives. However, technologies that drive efficiencies and cost reductions were adopted quite actively.
In 2019, enterprises will continue to focus even more intensely, to stay pragmatic in terms of their digital initiatives. This article explores the top 10 trends likely to shape enterprise investments in 2019:
- The path of 5G and its impact: 5G will open endless automation possibilities in an IOT and AI world. Numerous telecoms have promised super-fast bandwidth to ten times the geographic coverage. 5G connection speeds are expected to be over 10 Gbps, allowing for example a HD movie download in 10 seconds. There is still some time before 5G networks become widespread, let alone have a significant explosion in terms of solutions that leverage connectivity such as IOT, creation of smart cities, autonomous cars, wearables, AR/VR etc. However, the good news is that, there will be significant investments in cellular infrastructure, hardware and virtual networking stacks.
- More power to IOT: B2B applications of IOT will take a huge leapfrog in 2019. The focus will be on driving efficiencies, connecting the enterprise to drive process agility and deliver unique customer experience. The industrial IOT market is expected to reach 123 billion US dollars by 2021. More and more industrial and manufacturing firms are expected to adopt IOT in addition adoption from the transportation and logistics segment. Enterprises who have already been through a lot of initiatives in IOT, will start to leverage smarter IOT, where they could pull data for predictive use. There will be a major focus on IOT user experience, though it is still early stages given that the talent pool of UX designers is still relatively limited. IOT security will be of paramount concern as security takes precedence over innovation. 5G deployments will facilitate edge computing that will start to gain traction and awareness.
- Blockchain: There will be a significant shift in focus towards B2B initiatives in blockchain. Enterprises will be increasingly interested to identify the best use cases for blockchain. There will be roll outs of several POC’s and evaluation of several use cases. Use cases that transcends organizational siloes and encompasses ecosystems will be likely more useful. Peer to peer transactions through shared API’s and smart contracts is likely to bring innovation in business models where collaborations could also be explored with competitors.
- RPA and AI: RPA will see significant competition as the number of RPA firms grow together with increasing demand from enterprises to take on more processes for automation. Enterprises will start planning their RPA initiatives carefully to focus on activities where automation will provide maximum benefits. There will be an increasing focus on process optimization that’ll enable the bot to deliver maximum returns. There will also be focus on intelligent automation that delivers thinking and analytical capability to make operations smarter. A combination of cognitive, chatbot and RPA technologies will eliminate a significant component of service desk interactions.
- Focus on customer outcomes: B2B marketing that has been under pressure. A significant number of CMO’s will focus on initiatives that deliver customer outcomes. Marketers will find new ways to engage with customers, as customers get more sensitive to aspects of data privacy breaches and personalization. Customer experience will see renewed attention as marketers move away from technologies that just enable better outbound, to solutions that drive better customer outcomes. For instance, they will increasingly rely on data that helps them tailor personalized customer experiences, and offer timely promotions, services and products by predicting and anticipating their needs.
- Increasing focus on the power of Data: Data powering enterprise decisions will take the limelight more than ever. While we have created 90% of the data in the past one year, we are hardly utilizing 1% of it. With the increasing recognition that data is going to be the foundation to AI and ML, enterprises will focus on taking the data they’re collecting, more seriously to evaluate how they could make the best use of this data. Data preparation, data management, BPM, process mining, data analytics will all see focus to ensure that over a period of time their investment in AI and ML technologies will start to yield returns.
- Immersive experiences: Gartner predicts that by 2022, 75% of enterprises will have started experimenting with unique blend of conversational platforms and other interactive technology such as VR. Conversational and not command driven experiences will be the order of the day. Multi-channel, multi modal experiences leveraging human senses such as heat, humidity etc. will create unique experiences. Digital twins will drive efficiencies in business processes by creating a more dynamic and responsive organization.
- Real time risk and trust-based decisions: While cooperation on data will be critical to leverage and open the doors to huge opportunities, security related elements are also going to be indispensable to take care of. Data privacy will continue to be an area of concern. Cyberthreats represent a risk to all companies. The very technology due to which privacy is compromised will be leveraged to protect data and enforce privacy.
- 3D Printing: Enterprises have been investing in prototypes. In 2019, enterprises will start moving from prototypes to end use production. It is likely to bring about huge reductions in costs and increase the speed of product development. With 3D printers getting cheaper, enterprises will look to produce great quality products en-masse without necessarily incurring the costs for a traditional manufacturing process.
- Autonomous things: While the automotive segment has showcased self-driving cars, enterprises will offer an increasing range of autonomous things across the board such as consumer appliances, possibilities with drones, robotics and virtual agents. Virtual personal assistants and chatbots will support information exchange and enable automation in enterprise business processes and interact more naturally with people. There will be a swarm of connected things that work collaboratively with minimal requirement of human intervention.
2019 will see a combination of these multiple technology trends to produce new opportunities and drive increasing efficiencies for enterprises. CIO’s will be at the center of action as they support to address the long-standing legacy applications/system and data issues and how these new technologies could be set to play amidst all these challenges. The role of the CTO/CIO will get increasingly important as they support business to deliver its outcome, by combining the whole complexity of data governance, privacy, legacy systems and new innovations to enable the delivery of successful initiatives.
Enterprises will very carefully and pragmatically evaluate their choices and investment directions in 2019. It is no longer about just investing in technology for the sake of automation. Enterprises will be more cautious to ensure that it falls in line with the end stated desired outcome in terms of market opportunities or competitive advantage that they’d like to achieve. Like they say “Good enough never is. Set your standards so high that even the flaws are considered excellent.” Excellence in execution will be given importance like never before.
