With the ongoing pandemic disrupting work and life in ways one could have never imagined, it’s safe to suggest that the imperative to go digital has never been more for companies looking to serve their stakeholders. Understandably, the digital transformation era has arrived, and companies have shifted priorities to reinvent their businesses to cater to the digital era. The pandemic has demonstrated the need for companies to adapt and accelerate their adoption of emerging technologies. The old guard that hung on to old-fashioned business methods has fallen by the wayside.
To remain competitive in this rapidly changing landscape, organizations must quickly adapt their strategies and embrace the changes that are most likely to impact the customer experience significantly. This means staying on top of the latest trends in digital transformation. It's not always easy to predict what changes will stick and which will fall by the wayside, but several trends seem set to shape the future of digital transformation. From intelligent technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) to no-code application development platforms, these trends are already affecting how businesses interact with customers and each other.
Let's look at seven of the most exciting digital transformation trends shaping the future of business and how they can help your business grow in 2022 and beyond.
The shift in outsourcing relations: Strategic partners in digital transformation – Today, software outsourcing has become one of the most fundamental services of companies from Asian countries. With countless benefits, from cost reduction, access to top tech talents, and high production speed, this service has turned into an inseparable part of the client’s working routine. As a result, the outsourcing vendors’ role in the high-tech field has gradually shifted from simple providing development to top-level decisions on many important issues such as software architecture or full-cycle product development.
With such entrustment, software outsourcing companies are no longer considered ‘agencies for developers hiring’. From an IT Talent connector, many vendors have turned into full-on strategic partners for entrepreneurs, aiming at long-term partnerships, shared risks, and business alignment. This new trend of collaborative partnership is much more human-oriented. It focuses on cooperation and implementation quality, the process simplification but not the price. With such a strategic vision to help the reliable partner understand well their client’s processes, you can believe in the higher quality of the final product.
Business process automation taking the center stage – In 2021, companies, governments, and other organizations have put in place systems to automate tasks and processes: forecasting and supply chain technologies; systems for enterprise resource planning, customer relationship management, and HR; product and customer databases. Now, these systems are becoming interconnected through common standards for exchanging data and representing business processes in bits and bytes. What’s more, this information can be combined in new ways to automate an increasing array of broader activities, from inventory management to customer service. The rate of adoption disappoints the advocates of these technologies, but as the price of digital tags falls, they could very well reduce the costs of managing distribution and increase revenues by helping companies to manage supply more effectively.
Companies still have substantial headroom to automate many repetitive tasks that aren’t yet mediated by computers—particularly in sectors and regions where IT marches at a slower pace—and to interlink “islands of automation” and so give managers and customers the ability to do new things. Automation is a good investment as it not only lowers costs but also helps users to get what they want more quickly and easily, though it may not be a good idea if it gives them unpleasant experiences. The trick is to strike the right balance between raising margins and making customers happy.
2022-23 would continue to see companies looking to digitally transform and streamlining operations using process automation would inevitably be a good starting point to enable this transition.
The rise and rise of no-code and low-code development platforms – In 2022-23, no-code development platforms would continue to take the center stage in the application development industry with companies joining the bandwagon and encouraging citizen developers to fast-track their digital transformation initiatives. Accelerated by the effects of the ongoing pandemic, there has been significant adoption across companies of various industries and sectors, so much so that some of the fiercest skeptics acknowledge that the no-code has perhaps matured at the right time. Recent articles and reports by Diginomika[1] and Enterprise Talk[2] go on to reinforce the impetus that the pandemic, fueled by the skeletal workforce and the acceleration of digital transformation, has provided to companies looking to adopt the no-code revolution.
Another report[3] attempts to elucidate the reasons behind the meteoric rise in the adoption of no-code platforms. The report outlines how the average enterprise stack has never been more complex and the need to build a digitally connected business has never been greater. Internal teams build disproportionate amounts of time building and maintaining internal tools and managing the compounding technical debt. Recent research shows that a whopping 72% of IT leaders' project backlogs prevent them from undertaking strategic projects, while 6 out of 10 CIOs are expecting skills shortages from allowing organizations to keep pace with time.
All these recent trends indicate why the no-code platforms have seen an exponential rise last quarter. This revolution is fast bridging the digital divide and empowering IT teams and citizen developers with the tools they need to fast-track their digital transformation journey. We have developed our own in-house No-Code application development platform QuickReach to empower business executives in companies like yourself to build applications to streamline workflows and processes and reduce manual labor.
The rise of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML): Optimized stacks – After years of evolution, AI and ML are having a significant impact in the business world today. Consider, for instance, how AI helps utilities forecast electricity demand, or how it allows automakers to create self-driving cars. Various developments are encouraging this new wave of AI, including increased computation power and the availability of more sophisticated algorithms and models. Perhaps most important, data volume is exploding, with network devices collecting billions of gigabytes every day.
AI has various subsets including machine control, machine learning, deep learning, and the neural network that have individually grown exponentially in the last couple of years. We have seen the rising trend in the development of apps and websites is the chatbot. AI chatbots have replaced human assistance and customer service. They have reduced human involvement in almost everything and thus made it less prone to errors.
2022-23 will bring more programming languages, development skills, machine learning, chatbots, accurate customer preferences, customer behavior analysis, and lesser human resource engagement. AI will make every task automatic with reliability and speed. According to the market research firm Tractica, the global AI software market is expected to experience revenues increasing from around 9.5 billion U.S. dollars in 2018 to an expected 118.6 billion by 2025. These numbers tell us that AI software solutions aren’t just a ‘trend’ anymore, in fact, it is a dominant force in the technological world of today. AI has reached healthcare, finance, education, and transportation with augmented analytics, automated testing, automated code generation, and automated solution development.
Cloud adoption: The end of on-premises infrastructure – Over the last decade or so, businesses have realized the growing need for business availability, data recovery, and high accessibility. The on-premises infrastructure deals only with on-site infrastructure, so this restriction has forced many companies and entities to move to cloud alternatives. Even governmental institutions felt the need to shift to cloud technology.
Not only this but with newer technology coming in like ‘distributed cloud’, the need for this technology is going to rise even more. With this, there will be more clouds in the future in many locations. This would make it easier for them to access vast amounts of data. Now you know why this is going to be the top trend in the next few years; so, we predict this trend to continue in 2022-23.
Automated software development: More than just hype – With the ever-increasing acute scarcity of skilled technical talent, a new approach to building software has started to emerge. Automated software development ensures that companies can launch custom software in a matter of weeks. This is made possible by layers of automation and AI built on top of a flexible codebase that could be customized based on the client’s requirements. The results of this approach are astounding – automated software development ensures 70-90% faster time to market compared to if you were building these applications from scratch. Additionally, this approach proves to be 30% cheaper than outsourcing, ensuring your app has a lower cost for the same build quality. Finally, since all the components are expertly curated and pre-tested, you would spend less time fixing errors and bugs or stabilizing code.
What’s more? Unlike a SaaS No-Code platform, you could take ownership of the resulting intellectual property. Additionally, the client receives a well-documented and human-readable source code, ensuring that enhanced or new features can be added easily by any team.
With so many advantages to building applications, one is going to see a lot more automated software development platforms in 2022 and beyond. We have also developed Xamun – our in-house platform which helps companies custom-build software applications cheaper and faster.
Cybersecurity continues to be increasingly important - Cybersecurity continues to be a top C-suite and board-level priority. Across all industries, attacks are growing in number and complexity, with 80 percent of technology executives reporting that their organizations are struggling to mount a solid defense. For all enterprises, data has long become the most valuable resource, thus making cybersecurity the ultimate priority for all IT services, including outsourcing software development. As reported on UN Cyber Crime on Rise During Pandemic, the UN reported about ‘a 600% increase in malicious emails during the current crisis’. It is the growing digital dependency that increases businesses’ vulnerability to cyberattacks as every 39 seconds, one cyber-attack takes place around the world — analyzed by the UN in the same report.
So, the demand is now making the data well-secured to not become the victims of a cyberattack. Thus, innovative outsourcing software development companies have now implemented multi-level security approaches to eliminate risks and guard business data. According to research about IT Security Outsourcing Rises conducted by Computer Economics, 47% of IT organizations are increasing their use of outside security services instead of relying on the in-house team alone.
BlastAsia: Helping You Be On Top Of Digital Transformation Trends
Digitalization has become a necessity in the world today. There will always be some technology that would be the flavor of the season. There have been innumerable examples of companies that have invested significant time and resources without any substantial results. What is needed is an encompassing digital strategy to help you make sense of the emerging trends and technologies and to ensure that you make the right investment in the right technology platforms. This could then be complemented by a few quick wins to help senior management appreciate the investments they are putting in the transformation.
Reach out to one of our digital transformation evangelists HERE to make sense of all these trends and to ensure that you are truly prepared for an uncertain and digital future.
References:
[1] https://diginomica.com/urgency-workflow-automation-pandemic-times-low-code-difference-maker-cherwells-ceo-shares-field [2] https://enterprisetalk.com/featured/increased-adoption-of-low-code-platforms-in-the-post-pandemic-world/ [3] https://techcrunch.com/2020/07/07/no-code-will-define-the-next-generation-of-software/