Customer experience (CX) is an integral part of a brand today – and excellence in CX is a moving target (think how tools such as ChatGPT can revolutionise communications and CX). Organisations will find themselves aiming for personalised CX across channels of preference, with convenience, empathy, and speed at the core.
Here are the top 5 trends for the Experience Economy for 2023 according to Ecosystm analysts Audrey William, Melanie Disse, and Tim Sheedy.
- Organisations Will Focus on Building a “One CX Workforce”
- AI Will Lead Voice of Customer Programs
- Metadata Will Become Important
- The Conversational AI Market Will Mature
- Organisations Will Go Back to Focusing on Web Experience
Read on for more details.
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With organisations facing an infrastructure, application, and end-point sprawl, the attack surface continues to grow; as do the number of malicious attacks. Cyber breaches are also becoming exceedingly real for consumers, as they see breaches and leaks in brands and services they interact with regularly. 2023 will see CISOs take charge of their cyber environment – going beyond a checklist.
Here are the top 5 trends for Cybersecurity & Compliance for 2023 according to Ecosystm analysts Alan Hesketh, Alea Fairchild, Andrew Milroy, and Sash Mukherjee.
- An Escalating Cybercrime Flood Will Drive Proactive Protection
- Incident Detection and Response Will Be the Main Focus
- Organisations Will Choose Visibility Over More Cyber Tools
- Regulations Will Increase the Risk of Collecting and Storing Data
- Cyber Risk Will Include a Focus on Enterprise Operational Resilience
Read on for more details.
Download Ecosystm Predicts: The Top 5 Trends for Cybersecurity & Compliance in 2023 as a PDF
Organisations will continue their quest to become digital and data-first in 2023. Business process automation will be a priority for the majority; but many will look at their data strategically to derive better business value.
As per Ecosystm’s Digital Digital Enterprise Study 2022, organisations will focus equally on Automation and Strategic AI in 2023.
Here are the top 5 trends for the Intelligent Enterprise in 2023 according to Ecosystm analysts, Alan Hesketh, Peter Carr, Sash Mukherjee and Tim Sheedy.
- Cloud Will Be Replaced by AI as the Right Transformation Goal
- Adoption of Data Platform Architecture Will See an Uptick
- Tech Teams Will Finally Focus on Internal Efficiency
- Data Retention/Deletion and Records Management Will Be Top Priority
- AI Will Replace Entire Human Jobs
Read on for more details.
Download Ecosystm Predicts: The Top 5 Trends for the Intelligent Enterprise in 2023 as a PDF
In 2023, organisations will continue to reinvent themselves to remain relevant to their customers, engage their employees and be efficient and profitable.
As per Ecosystm’s Digital Enterprise Study 2022, organisations will increase spend on digital workplace technologies, enterprise software upgrades, mobile applications, infrastructure and data centres, and hybrid cloud management.
Here are the top 5 trends for the Distributed Enterprise in 2023 according to Ecosystm analysts, Alea Fairchild, Darian Bird, Peter Carr, and Tim Sheedy.
- Deskless Workers Will Become Modern Professionals
- Need for Cost Efficiency Will Stimulate the Use of Waste Metrics in Public Cloud
- The Climate & Energy Crisis Will Change the Cloud Equation
- Industry Cloud Will Further Accelerate Business Innovation
- The SASE Piece Will Fall in Place
Read on for more details.
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2022 was a year of consolidation – of business strategy, people policy, tech infrastructure, and applications. In 2023, despite the economic uncertainties, organisations will push forward in their tech investments on selected areas, with innovation as their primary focus. Successful businesses today realise that they are operating in a “disrupt or be disrupted” environment.
Here are the top 5 forces of innovation in 2023 according to Ecosystm analysts, Alan Hesketh, Alea Fairchild, Peter Carr, and Tim Sheedy and Ecosystm CEO Ullrich Loeffler.
- The Gen Z Tsunami will force organisations to truly embrace the 21st century.
- “Big Ticket Innovation” will get back on the agenda.
- Over the Edge: The Metaverse ecosystem will take shape.
- Green Computing will drive tech investments.
- Organisations will harness existing tech to innovate.
Read on for more details.
Download Ecosystm Predicts: The Top 5 Forces of Innovation in 2023 as a PDF
ServiceNow announced their intention to acquire robotic process automation (RPA) provider, Intellibot, for an undisclosed sum. Intellibot is a significant tier 2 player in the RPA market, that is rapidly consolidating into the hands of the big three – UiPath, Automation Everywhere, and Blue Prism – and other acquisition-hungry software providers. This is unlikely to be the last RPA acquisition that we see this year with smaller players looking to either go niche or sell out while the market is hot.
Expanding AI/Automation Capabilities
Intellibot is the latest in a string of purchases by ServiceNow that reveals their intention to embed AI and machine learning into offerings. In 2020, they acquired Loom Systems, Passage AI (both January), Sweagle (June), and Element AI (November) in addition to Attivio in 2019. These acquisitions were integrated into the latest version of their Now Platform, code-named Quebec, which was launched earlier this month. As a result, Predictive AIOps and AI Search were newly added to the platform while the low-code tools were expanded upon and became Creator Workflows. This means ServiceNow now offers four primary solutions – IT Workflows, Employee Workflows, Customer Workflows, and Creator Workflows – demonstrating the importance they are placing on low-code and RPA.
ServiceNow was quick to remind the market that although they will be able to offer RPA functionality natively once Intellibot is integrated into their platform, they are still willing to work with competitors. They specifically highlighted that they would continue partnering with UiPath, Automation Anywhere, and Blue Prism, suggesting they plan to use RPA as a complementary technology to their current offerings rather than going head-to-head with the Big Three. Only a month ago, UiPath announced deeper integration with ServiceNow, by expanding automation capabilities for Test Management 2.0 and Agile Development projects.
Expansion in India
The acquisition of Intellibot, based in Hyderabad, is part of ServiceNow’s expansion strategy in India – one of their fastest growing markets. The country is already home to their largest R&D centre outside of the US and they intend to launch a couple of data centres there by March 2022. The company plans to double their local staff levels by 2024, having already tripled the number of employees there in the last two years. The expansion in India means they can increasingly offer services from there to global customers.
Market Consolidation Accelerates
In the Ecosystm Predicts: The Top 5 AI & AUTOMATION Trends for 2021, Ecosystm had talked about technology vendors adding RPA functionality either organically or through acquisitions, this year.
“Buyers will find that many of the automation capabilities that they currently purchase separately will increasingly be integrated in their enterprise applications. This will resolve integration challenges and will be more cost-effective.”
ServiceNow’s purchase is one of several recent examples of low-code vendors acquiring their way into the RPA space. Last year, Appian acquired Novayre Solutions for their Jidoka product and Microsoft snapped up Softomotive. Speculation continues to build that Salesforce could also be assessing RPA targets. Considering RPA market leader, UiPath recently announced that their Series F funding round values the company at USD 35 billion, there is pressure on acquirers to gobble up the remaining smaller players before they are all gone or become prohibitively expensive.
The cloud hyperscalers are also likely to play a growing role in the RPA market over the next year. Microsoft and IBM have already entered the market, coming from the angle of office productivity and business process management (BPM), respectively. Google announced just last week that they will work closely with Automation Anywhere to integrate RPA into their cloud offerings, such as Apigee, AppSheet, and AI Platform. More interestingly, they plan to co-develop new solutions, which might for now satisfy Google’s appetite for RPA rather than requiring an acquisition.
Here are some of the trends to watch for RPA, AI and Automation in 2021. Signup for Free to download Ecosystm’s Top 5 AI & Automation Trends Report.
Microsoft introduced a second Vertical Cloud offering, last week – this time turning the focus on Retail, after having launched Microsoft Cloud for Healthcare in October 2020.
The Microsoft Cloud for Retail aims to offer integrated and intelligent capabilities to retailers and brands to improve their end-to-end customer journey. It brings industry-specific capabilities to the Microsoft suite including Microsoft Azure, Microsoft Power Platform, Microsoft 365, and Microsoft Dynamics 365 – and is aimed at the growing need for “intelligent retail’. Microsoft’s partner ecosystem will also be involved in the new platform to address challenges in the sector and future proof the retail evolution.
In The Top 5 Retail & eCommerce Trends for 2021, Ecosystm notes that while retailers will focus on the shift in customer expectations, a mere focus on customer experience will not be enough this year. From the customer experience angle, they will strongly focus on omnichannel, catering to ‘glocal’ consumption, using location-based services, and improving both their onsite and online customer experience. They will also have to work on their supply chain and pricing capabilities, as distribution woes continue. These trends are seeing a deeper need for transformational technologies and leading cloud providers are introducing solutions targeted at the industry. Google has introduced its cloud retail solutions aiming to help retailers get more from data. Similarly, AWS has cloud offerings for the retail industry leveraging its retail domain experience and cloud deployment services.
Ecosystm Comments
“Global cloud vendors continue to “move up the stack” to provide more of the technology landscape for organisations. The focus of these tech giants is on adding unique value to customers by tailoring the combination of the different cloud services they can provide to specific industries. Providing the full-stack will mean higher customer retention rates – as the implementation time should be lower than traditional on-premises implementations. Microsoft has a diverse range of capabilities. Having a software company and implementation partner that can deliver the full stack of technology and business processes should improve the time to value for organisations.
But I see three key difficulties in implementing systems such as these:
- People adapting effectively to use the new processes
- Migrating enough high-quality data to leverage the new capabilities
- Integrating the new capabilities into an organisation’s existing landscape.
This is why it is likely that initial use will come from Microsoft’s existing Retail customers as they expand the range of services they use. New adopters of these Microsoft solutions will find that much of the complexity and cost of implementing a new business solution will remain.
However, these value-added cloud services open access to smaller organisations. If Microsoft is able to work with their partners to simplify the implementation of these capabilities, it will allow smaller organisations to access these complex capabilities affordably.“
“The Ecosystm Digital Priorities in the New Normal Study aims to determine how optimistic industries are about successfully negotiating these uncertain times (Figure 1). The industries that are rated the most optimistic fall into two clear categories. In the first category, there are industries, such as Healthcare that had to transform urgently – mostly in an unplanned manner. This has led to a greater appetite for change and optimism in these industries. Then there are industries, such as Retail, that had some time to re-focus their technology roadmap when the crisis hit. These industries have a strong customer focus and had started their digital journeys before the pandemic.
Microsoft’s industry focus appears to be spot-on. Their first two vertical clouds target enterprises that have had to – and will continue to – pivot. The ‘modular’ approach taken in the Microsoft Cloud for Healthcare offering allows providers to choose the right capability for their organisation – whether it is workflow automation, patient engagement through virtual health, collaboration within care teams or better clinical and operational insights. As healthcare organisations across the world negotiate the challenges of mass vaccination, they may well find themselves leveraging these industry-specific capabilities as they revamp their workflows, processes, and data use.”
Get to know the right research, insights and technologies for you to be one step ahead in this new world of retail in our top 5 retail trends for 2021 that represent the most significant shifts in 2021
As we move into a new decade, the Telecommunications industry is ripe for disruption, as it gets reshaped by bountiful bandwidth and software enabled flexibility. Several countries have spent the last decade building fibre access networks. 5G is expected to lower latency and provide greater flexibility. As virtualisation, AI and automation combine to make networks even more cost effective it will broaden use cases to include widespread adoption of IoT.
The Top 5 Telecommunications and Mobility Trends for 2020
Below are the top 5 Telecommunications and Mobility Trends for 2020. It is based on the latest data from the global Ecosystm Mobility Study and is based on qualitative research by Liam Gunson, Director, Product and Solutions at Ecosystm.
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50 Shades of 5G
In 2020, 5G will be a major step change in what a mobile network can do – in terms of capacity, efficiency, stability, and latency. The amount of money and investment associated with it will also keep it in the spotlight. The year will see 5G move beyond trials to actual commercial rollouts – but that will also mean more regulations and a competitive landscape. There will be multiple deployment models:
- In fixed vs mobile markets, the most obvious choice will be to take a share of the home broadband space first
- Markets with strong growth in data usage and higher ARPUs will evolve 4G to provide higher bandwidth while looking to 5G for their economic benefits in efficiently managing spectrum
- In other areas, operators will be forced to explore spectrum or infrastructure sharing to spread costs across lower ARPUs or align with regulators’ desire to limit licenses. This is likely to be more common in emerging markets and low-density areas.
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Enterprise Mobility Will Witness a Renaissance
Enterprise mobility will be back on IT teams’ agenda after having taken a backseat for a few years. Ecosystm research shows that over 72% of organisations have a Mobile First strategy. This is set to accelerate for a number of reasons:
- Companies are increasingly adopting agile or new ways of working to speed up innovation and delivery – and this includes working in new teams and activity-based working
- As more millennials and the Gen Z enter the workforce, there will be a steady rise of the ‘gig economy’ and a high percentage of contract, part-time and freelance workers
- As organisations become more agile and the workforce increasingly mobile there will be a bigger drive towards space optimisation, seeing a higher adoption of shared offices and co-working spaces
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The Future of the LAN is Cloudy
The next few years will see a re-think of the traditional LAN/WAN set-up, as user needs change with Digital Transformation (DX) initiatives, and new technologies such as GPON, 5G, Wifi 6, WiGig, and software-defined networking bring new capabilities and alter costs. Enterprise network will change in the following ways:
- Wireless connectivity will move beyond BYOD and guest access and become the primary connection type – the connection points will be sensors and access points, and not PCs
- AI, virtualisation and software-defined networking will bring more flexibility as they lessen the need for specialised hardware, centralise control, and speed up configuration changes
- Enterprises will stop thinking of their network as a physical space and start seeing it as a set of capabilities. Equipment will be increasingly centralised in data centres (possibly on the Edge) to allow workers to work from virtually anywhere.
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Intelligence at the Edge – from Connected Things to Conscious Things
We have moved past step 1 of IoT, where the focus was on making sensors and chipsets cheap enough to be incorporated in millions of different devices, as well as a to find cost-effective ways to handle the data requirements. 2020 will see IoT move to step 2 – from sensing to responding. AI will become easier to develop and use, while edge compute, high-bandwidth, and low latency networks will make it possible to be embedded into an expanding number of use cases where devices and processes need to make real-time adjustments.
This will become most obvious as we see an increased use of cameras as sensors. With their ability to capture details, they are the most effective sensors we can have. The challenge has been that high definition video is incredibly data heavy, creating issues when trying to transport and analyse it. Edge compute will help to bring the analytics closer to the source lowering the transport costs, while also lowering latency and increasing security.
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Expansion Drives Consolidation
Telecommunications operators have been evolving for a while now using measures such as acquiring new companies, establishing disruptive business units and so on. In 2020, these operators will focus on transforming the core – remove unnecessary costs, improve customer experience, capture new opportunities – and on building telecom networks with scalability, flexibility, efficiency and agility.
As providers become more flexible, they will not only be easier to integrate with, but will also be able to manage more products and niche requirements. Traditionally 80-90% of their revenues have come from consumers and Telecommunications providers own these relationships. Now they will have to start working on their B2B relationships.
Ultimately the network game will be one of scale, and this will force operators to consolidate to survive. Nokia Bell Labs expects global operators to fall from 10 to 5 between 2020 and 2025, and local operators to fall from 800 to 100 – this looks completely plausible at the moment.
Download Report: The top 5 Telecommunications & Mobility Trends For 2020
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Financial institutions are being challenged by and collaborating with Fintech organisations in equal measures. As their focus on customers increase, they will collaborate and partner with these disruptors. Fintech is also getting attention from governments in both emerging and mature countries as a means to achieve their financial inclusion and digital economy goals. Fintech investments will continue to surge through 2020 across the solution areas.
The Top 5 Fintech Trends For 2020
The Top 5 Fintech Trends are based on the latest data from the global Ecosystm AI and Cybersecurity studies and is also based on qualitative research by Ecosystm CEO Amit Gupta and Principal Advisor Paul Gestro.
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One for All and All for One
Fintech will have a much greater impact than we realise, and we will continue to see it drive the induction of the unbanked into the mainstream economy. The growth in mobile phone penetration, however, continues to grow at a faster pace than banking accessibility across emerging economies. We will continue to see Fintech play a significant role in driving greater inclusion, especially to bring in the underserved in the emerging economies and reducing the gender gap when it comes to adoption of financial services – creating greater inclusion overall.
The democratisation and accessibility of financial services will also result in far greater uptake of the sharing economy and we will continue to see non-traditional companies enter the payments and financial services markets. Fintechs that have environmental and social impact, beyond financial impact, will also find it easier to secure funds from Impact Investors.
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The Year of the Banks
2020 is the year banks will need to embrace Fintech – fully. They know full well that customers are at the centre of their entire operation – and Fintech services can and will provide them with the solutions they need. They have been skeptical about adopting Fintech but as they begin their transformation journeys and face increasingly stringent regulations, they might no longer have the option of ignoring Fintechs.
Banks are already adopting, evaluating and developing strategies for AI, RPA, and Cybersecurity adoption – but they will feel the need for more innovation and speed in 2020.
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Asia Becomes Middle Earth
Asia has fast become the centre for both innovation and investment. Asia’s fast pace of urbanisation and the increasing prosperity of the middle class is attracting investments. Venture capital-backed Fintech companies raised more than USD 40B in 2018 – with the bulk coming out of China. Investments in Asia is expected to grow, and will benefit later stage Fintech startups.
These investments, a lack of strict policies (yet!) and the large number of unbanked and underbanked are also fuelling innovation in Asia. Several large financial institutions in Asia have already made public announcements of the Fintech investments and this will cause a ripple effect.
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Nothing Artificial About AI
AI sits at the heart of most Fintech solutions. And AI has slowly made its way in decision-making and process automation. The first step to AI is automation and robotic process automation (RPA) will transform customer experience and will allow integration of legacy systems in financial institutions. As IoT and Blockchain mature they will be increasingly integrated within AI solutions.
Another area which will see AI adoption in financial institutions is Cybersecurity – machine learning can predict the patterns of criminals (or rogue/irresponsible employees) to stop events before they start. Fintech solutions such as Regtech and Suptech has a definite play in this space.
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Regtech Will Take Centre Stage
In 2020, Regtech will take the centre stage as the emerging Fintech solution. Together with AI, a better ability to use data and predict trends, Regtech will be used to fight financial crime and reduce costly compliance-related mistakes.
The old way of just employing more people to run the compliance tasks is not sustainable. routine tasks such as KYC, AML and compliance verification are ripe for automation. Moreover, Regtech ROI is relatively easier to set and measure.
Download Report: The top 5 Fintech trends for 2020
The full findings and implications of the report ‘Ecosystm Predicts: The Top 5 Fintech Trends for 2020’ are available for download from the Ecosystm platform. Signup for Free to download the report and gain insight into ‘the top 5 Fintech trends for 2020’, implications for tech buyers, implications for tech vendors, insights, and more resources. Download Link Below ?
