V. Srinivasa Rao, Global Head, Digital Enterprise Solutions, Tech Mahindra spells out IT trends that will play an important role in 2014.
1. Emergence of digital business processes
In this hyper connected world, enterprises realize that the traditional business processes fail to meet the needs of digital natives and also fail to leverage the power of Internet of Things (IOT). Enterprises operating in high Process and Services verticals like Telecommunications, Retail Banking, Property & Causality Insurance etc., need to invest on digitising their business processes. These verticals are devising a strategy to embed real time communication, real time collaboration, real time insight and foresight within the business processes, which enable their customers, employees and partners to execute their job anywhere, anytime effectively.
2. Revising sourcing strategies to align with digital businesses
Technology landscape is changing rapidly and the adoption of social, mobile, analytics, cloud, Machine to Machine technologies are increasing. New roles, skills and governance are required to develop the Digital Apps (not applications) at rapid speed thereby aligning with needs of digital businesses. Sourcing/Procurement departments would revisit their existing sourcing strategies, supplier portfolio and outsourcing partners that would bring dramatic changes to prepare their organisation for the digital world. There is a paradigm shift expected in the whole RFP process as IT projects will be delivered with minimal scope and high turnaround time.
3. Customer experience management
Expectations of Digital customers’ are changing and are quite high. Today, Customers are expecting immediate and personalised response. They are purchasing Products/Services based on detailed online research. In 2014, enterprises would increase focus on designing customer journey maps and establishing technology support to analyse the behaviour of customers from multiple channels (Helpdesk for voice analytics, social media for sensitivity and behaviour analytics, Mails for text analytics and CRM systems). CMOs will devise strategies after analysing customer behaviour and better respond with personalised experience. CIOs would continue to struggle in aligning with the speed and expectations of CMOs in providing superior customer experience.
4. Enterprise architecture and infrastructure foundation
Business executives have been putting tremendous pressure on CIOs and are expecting hyper innovation and readiness for digital business. CIOs would need to re-invent the Enterprise Architecture and Infrastructure in 2014. Many initiatives would be triggered by CIOs to start building the technology foundation for Digital businesses. These initiatives includes re-architecting networks (Wired, wireless, M2M), building elastic super storage and computing, re-architecting data models to support convergence of structured, semi structured, unstructured data, APIs management, designing new user interfaces aligning with different devices, creating Omni channel architecture, etc. Business executives will demand CIOs to show the proof of technology readiness to embrace digital business strategy; else they may look for external partners.
5. High expectations from business intelligence and analytics
While technologies are emerging rapidly to capture and converge structured, semi structured and unstructured data; business executives are still unable to derive competitive advantage, generate higher revenue or provide superior customer experience by leveraging this Data. In 2014, more efforts would be put in by both business executives and CIOs on how the raw material (data) can be transformed to finished product (Insight and Foresight) thereby improving Business Performance. Holistic strategy and technology foundation will be established for transactional analytics, visual analytics and real time analytics. Technology foundation would be created to embed BI/Analytics wrappers over existing applications which may include Machine analytics, Business analytics, Social analytics, Voice analytics, Text analytics etc., Data machines and appliances adoption will be on rise in 2014.
6. Enterprise mobility on upswing with integrated analytics
Lowering cost of smart devices and availability of strong 3G & 4G ecosystems built by TELCOs in various countries are encouraging trends and most of the enterprises in 2014 would best leverage this opportunity. Enterprise Mobile Appstore Management strategies would be established by CIOs in 2014 to get best out of the mobile initiatives. Mobile apps development would not be just customer focused; they will spread into internal operational excellence, employee engagement and employee productivity activities. CIOs will identify and strengthen access management tools, controls to avoid / minimize any security and privacy threats from mobile usage for enterprise work. Mobile convergence with Social, Analytics, and Cloud (SMAC) will be on the rise. CIOs would also establish back office integration architecture, frameworks and tools to integrate mobile apps with already existing business applications. Adoption of Mobile Device Management (MDM) and Mobile Apps Management (MAM) would increase.
7. Adoption of Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) policy
Most of the enterprises in 2014 will implement BYOD policies. Adoption of BYOD does not limit to only policies rather it would tremendously impact the organisation culture. It will also impact the Technology foundation of an enterprise. CIOs would start re-designing their Technology infrastructure and applications to support BYOD policy. BYOD would allow employees to use multiple devices from anywhere and anytime, which would increase load on networks and other IT elements. CIOs will need to put controls and establish device management administration tools to counter security and privacy issues. CIOs could allow access of a few applications/Apps as per business needs to align with BYOD policy.
8. Embracing enterprise programmable web APIs
Consumer focused Programmable Web APIs have reached its maturity and developers have been developing many innovative apps. At present, more than 10,000 programmable Web APIs are available for developers to experiment and innovate with many new apps. In 2014, there will be increased focus on Enterprise Programmable Web APIs, which enable digitizing existing IT applications or building new digital apps. Enterprises will start working on devising Enterprise API management strategy in a holistic manner considering strict security controls, authentication and most importantly the cultural shift required in embracing these APIs.
9. Multiple devices, omni presence and similar experience
Most of the digital natives (customers, employees, partners etc.,) have been using multiple devices (laptop, Mobile, Tablet, TV etc.,). These digital natives expect to have similar experience while using these multiple devices from anywhere and anytime. Hence, Business transactions are expected to be done across multiple devices with seamless experience. For example customer may start a transaction on his/her mobile phone and continue the transaction on the laptop or tablet without losing the state where he/she left the transaction. Desktop virtualisation and Omni channel strategies will be adopted by CIO organisations in 2014.
10. Agile and DevOps adoption to accelerate continuous delivery of apps
In the apps economy the speed at which the apps are to be developed, tested and deployed will now be in hours, days and weeks. Antique application life cycle management and project management methods will fail to support this pace of development, testing and deployment of Digital Apps. Unlike in the past, the number of releases for an App in a year is expected to be very high. In 2014, CIO organisations would put high focus on re-designing their application life cycle and project management methods by embracing Agile, DevOps methods and relevant tools. CIOs also would start demanding the outsourcing partners to demonstrate their readiness for Apps economy which is very different from Applications economy.
