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Change in the digital age is commonplace and here are next year’s trends which fall under three themes: people, location and resilience.
Although the pandemic has changed how people work and interact, they are still at the centre of all business and they need digitalised processes to function in today’s environment.
COVID-19 has definitely changed where employees, customers and suppliers physically exist. Technology needs to support this new way of working.
Whether a pandemic or a recession, volatility exists in the world. Organisations that are prepared to pivot, diversify and adapt will weather all types of disruptions.
All the trends below build on and reinforce each other and we believe will help guide organisations in the next five to 10 years.
The IoB extends from the Internet of Things (the connecting of any electronic device to the Internet) and is about using data to change behaviours. The IoB can gather, combine and process data from many sources including: commercial customer data; data processed by public-sector and government agencies; social media; public domain deployments of facial recognition; and location tracking. With an increase in technologies that gather the “digital dust” of daily life (data that spans the digital and physical worlds), that information can be used to influence behaviours.
Total experience is when customer experience, employee experience and user experience combine to transform a business outcome. By linking all of these experiences businesses can differentiate themselves from competitors in a way that is difficult to replicate, creating sustainable competitive advantage.
If you’ve not heard of this before, privacy-enhancing computation comes in three forms that basically protect data while it’s being used. The first provides a trusted environment in which sensitive data can be processed or analysed. The second performs processing and analytics in a decentralized manner. The third encrypts data and algorithms before processing or analytics.
This trend enables organisations to collaborate on research securely and with competitors without sacrificing confidentiality. This approach is designed specifically for the increasing need to share data while maintaining privacy or security.
Distributed cloud is the future of cloud. It’s where cloud services are distributed to different physical locations, but the operation, governance and evolution remain the responsibility of the public cloud provider. This will enable organisations to have these services physically closer, will reduce data costs and low latency scenarios. It also means that organisations will still benefit from public cloud and aren’t managing their own private cloud, which can be costly and complex.
The model for anywhere operations is “digital first, remote first. This operating model allows for business to be accessed, delivered and enabled anywhere, vital for businesses successfully emerging from COVID-19. It also means customers, business partners and suppliers can operate in physically remote environments.
An example of an intelligent composable business is one that can adapt and essentially rearrange itself based on a current situation. As organisations prioritise a digital business strategy to drive faster digital transformation, they need to be responsive and make quick business decisions informed by currently available data. To do this successfully, organisations must enable better access to information, augment that information with greater insight and have the ability to respond quickly to the implications.
Whilst AI is better at predicting behaviour than the human mind, AI projects can face issues with maintainability, scalability and governance, which makes them a challenge for most organisations. AI engineering offers a pathway, making AI a part of the mainstream software development and IT operations process rather than a set of specialized and isolated projects.
Hyperautomation is the idea that anything that can be automated in an organisation, should be. Organisations that have historic business processes that are not streamlined create expensive and extensive operational issues. The acceleration of digital business requires efficiency and speed and organisations that don’t focus on business agility will be left behind.
Date: February 10, 2021
Author: Lewis
