CIO's Guide for 2019: Technology is a wonderful thing. Isn't it? It is deeply embedded in everything we do today, from making a transaction online to sharing our feedback with an organization. It keeps improving the way businesses do and experience things. Enterprises witness a larger shift in the technology, every year and 2019 will be no different. As we move towards a new year, once again technology will change the way we do business and the way we treat our customers. Rapid technological advances, increasingly sophisticated customer needs and frequent new product introductions or enhancements in the market will challenge businesses to do better than others. They will look at adopting new technologies to meet critical needs, better customer experience and growth in profits.
Hence, just like any other year organizations and their CIOs must have begun to ponder the future of Digital Transformation in 2019. Where is the technology going? What will be the trends this year? While some of you are still figuring out what will be the future of technology, let us give you top 5 trending technologies that will rule 2019. Here's what you can expect this year:
A Guide to the CIO's 2019 Tech Priorities
Cloud
Cloud computing is no more a tool. It has evolved into a scalable service, businesses can't look away from. A majority of enterprises running on legacy IT infrastructure will make a shift to cloud services in the coming year to enjoy the freedom to store, manage, access and compute their data through programmes on remote servers. Hence, keeping up with the upcoming cloud computing trends in 2019, Solution as Service is likely to play a very important role in technology. Businesses in India will look at delivery and collaboration of software over the web. Cloud-based services and solutions will help enterprises to attain maximum agility while keeping the data secure and speed for their applications and operations. Another trend industry will move towards is ‘multi-cloud' which will become the new normal for all the big players. Now, businesses will compete on unique offerings rather than giving overall services. IT executives will also introduce automation, like Artificial Intelligence, to simplify their complicated hybrid cloud environment.
Mobility
Enterprise Mobility will keep the ball rolling in 2019. The technology will prove to be essential to the growth of the business. Workplaces will introduce new trends of mobility to transform employee efforts. Enterprises are going to face an increased demand for smart apps that will allow them to roll out business processes on a user-friendly mobile platform. A robust mobility framework will enable employees to gain real-time access to core applications, anytime anywhere. Leveraging immediate accessibility, it will help businesses attain a competitive advantage, customer satisfaction and higher revenue growth.
Adoption of BYOD or Bring Your Own Device to increase work efficiencies as well as productivity will become a hit in the coming year. The culture of BYOD, where employees can get their devices to the office, will lead to cost reductions involved in buying devices for the employees.
Robotic Process Automation with Business Process Management (BPM)
The Robotic Process Automation (RPA) market has exploded in the last few years. It is no longer a ‘new technology', it is the technology that is continuously changing workplaces by becoming a core part of the digital transformation. Hence, another key trend we will get to see this year in the market is the rise RPA. Ovum expects RPA software market to be worth at least $2.5 billion by the end of 2021.
Businesses will be seen leveraging the benefits of RPA with BPM to catalyse their digital journey. They will do this by achieving end-to-end automation, higher efficiency, lower costs, higher employee engagement and overall better customer experience.
Analytics
Smart Analytics has successfully been a business lever and its adoption will continue to increase at a rapid rate. It will act as a powerful catalyst driving positive organizational change. An increasing number of organizations are investing in building or sourcing analytical capabilities to collect customer data and improve their decision making. In 2019, Analytics will go beyond reports and trends, playing an active role for intelligent in-process decision making. This will help organizations in straight-through and automatic guidance to lend them more speed and responsiveness. It will help organizations to address customers in context for great customer experience.
Digital Sensing
Customer Experience is the fundamental expectations in today's digital world, especially with its fast-changing definition. As we move to 2019, customers will expect more from organizations and to stay ahead in the competition, they need a good Digital Sensing platform.
Hence, the adoption of Digital Sensing will continue to grow in the coming year. It will continue to offer enhanced customer experience across different communication channels, including emails, web, social media, etc. The platform will help organizations to continuously listen to their customers' conversations across all channels to discover context and trigger processes based on business rules.
The author is Senior Vice President – Sales & Marketing/Products at Newgen Software. Views are personal.
