As consumers dramatically increased their use of digital technologies during the COVID-19 pandemic, enterprise companies across the world raced to keep pace—in response to consumer behavior, but also to build resiliency against unpredictable future disruptions. Now, “eight in 10 consumers will see the world as ALL digital” in 2022, Forrester predicts.

 

In global business, investments in digital technology initiatives are growing. “Direct digital transformation investments” grew to 16.5% CAGR in 2022 – 2024, the International Data Corporation (IDC) reports—up from a 15.4% CAGR in 2019 – 2024—where these investments will make up the majority of all information and communication technology (ICT) investments by the end of 2024.

 

These trends are not new, but they have accelerated as a result of pandemic-era disruptions and uncertainties. Evolving consumer needs, supply chain concerns, and competitive growth have made driven enterprise leaders to recalibrate technology investments for greater human centricity and resiliency, as well as stronger forecasting, decision making, and operational value.

 

On the other hand, “digital laggards” could forego up to 46% of annual revenue by 2023 due to failed digital transformation, the World Economic Forum predicts. Here we take a closer look at the trends accelerating digital transformation today, and the opportunities available to enterprise leaders so they can avoid falling behind.

 

Three Conditions Driving Transformation in 2022

 

Across the globe, internet usage has risen by 70% and the use of communications apps has doubled since the onset of the COVID-19 crisis, the World Economic Forum reports. Consumers and companies alike leaned heavily on digital tools to maximize opportunities and minimize risks to personal safety, supply chains, personal income, and physical commercial spaces. As humanity attempts to settle into new modes of working and living, three conditions of this new reality are driving the private sector.

 

All Business is Digital Business

 

By 2023, half of the world’s private companies will generate over 40% of their revenue from digital products and services, IDC reports—indicating “in 2022 more than half the global economy is based on or influenced by digital.” One need only consider the wide variety of verticals and business types to appreciate the importance of this trend. As we will explore, companies of all types will need to become more intelligent, integrated, and secure, automating key processes and augmenting human intelligence to drive value in as many ways as possible.

 

Leadership Goes Digital

 

Although companies spent $1.2 trillion on digital transformation efforts in 2019, only 13% of business leaders considered their organizations “ready for the digital age” in late 2021, the World Economic Forum reports. Digital literacy and the importance of CIO-driven leadership will grow in 2022 as a result. “By 2026, 54% of CIOs drive business transformation, empowering digitally resilient organizations via strategic technology roadmaps and re-platforming,” IDC predicts, where companies with this type of “cross-functional” leadership will innovate faster, gain market share quicker, and achieve greater efficiencies than their laggard competitors.

 

Changing the Nature of Work

 

Companies will adjust to—and even thrive because of—hybrid working models, in part because of the digital investments employees required to support new remote work models. In 2022, 47% of knowledge workers will work remotely, CIO reports—“a sure sign that for most organizations, hybrid work is here to stay.”

 

Even so, most companies are still drafting their personal playbooks for becoming a “distributed enterprise.” According to Forbes, only 9% of conference rooms globally are equipped to handle video conferencing, for example, as companies look to enable both flexibility and seamless work.

 

In addition to new technology investments, companies will need to upskill and reskill workers at unprecedented scales as well: “42% of the core skills needed to perform most jobs will change,” The World Economic Forum predicts. It is companies who can use new technologies not only to connect workers but to inspire them and help them prepare for future disruptions that will succeed.

 

10 Transformation Imperatives You Should Consider for Your Organization

 

Enterprise leaders who created winning best practices over the past several years are well positioned to continue on their path to resiliency, flexibility, and closeness with both customers and their employees. For those business leaders hoping to achieve their own competitive edge, the following tactics can help.

 

1. Build Digital Resiliency.

 

Digital technology investments that help enterprises become more resilient—especially cloud-native applications and capabilities—will be essential to future business success. These include tools that drive efficiencies, profitability, experimentation, and innovation; as well as technologies like AI and predictive analytics that future proof companies against future disruptions. By 2022, 55% of organizations will have “expanded resiliency plans” for these purposes, IDC predicts.

 

2. Become Human-Centric.

 

Digital experiences must become more human-centric, both for customers and for employees. It is “digital native” companies who were best equipped to accommodate both employees and customers as their exchanges and workflows increasingly relied on personal-digital interactions when the pandemic set in. “Tech execs will leap from digital sameness to human-centered technology transformations,” Forrester predicts, where they must “be bolder and more creative to meet [customer] expectations.”

 

3. Empower Nontechnical Workers.

 

Companies cannot continue to rely only on their highly technical employees (e.g., data scientists) to support their digital capabilities. Business leaders will increasingly leverage low-code and no-code technologies so that nontechnical employees can participate in application development, analytics-driven decision making, and other capabilities critical to future business success.

 

4. Augment Human Labor.

 

Enterprise leaders will not only accelerate and reduce risk within existing business processes; they will accelerate human labor and support employees as they develop entirely new and necessary skillsets as well—enabling “closer collaboration between humans and smart machines,” as the World Economic Forum describes. IDC predicts that by 2023, “90% of organizations worldwide will prioritize investments in digital tools to augment physical spaces and assets with digital experiences” as a result.

 

5. Adopt Next-Gen Automation.

 

While many enterprises have employed digital automation for individual processes or workflows, enterprises will increasingly take an “ecosystem-wide approach” to automation, as IDC describes. By 2025, 60% of global organizations will use this approach to respond quickly and intelligently to market disruptions as less agile competitors fall behind.

 

6. Solve Problems through Artificial Intelligence (AI).

 

Enterprise companies have only scratched the surface in terms of what AI will do for their companies. Enterprise applications for AI will become more diverse and grow more common in decision making capacities at all levels of the organization. Beyond chatbots learning to understand the context around individual conversations, AI will accelerate its understanding and solve deeper, more complex problems, for example; it will take on proactive roles and “create software code, manage retail stock, automate staff training, and optimize manufacturing” as well, CIO predicts.

 

7. Adopt 5G for Agility at the Edge.

 

Private 5G networks have been popping up within individual enterprises and their partner networks, but 5G adoption will grow even more rapidly in 2022. This will be due in part to increased rollouts of public 5G, where workers and devices with 5G-connectivity will have a wider operational range. 5G will drive enhanced digital capabilities at the very edge of enterprise operations, whether on a factory floor or in a rural area during a service visit. Connected devices will process granular on-site data and leverage enterprise-level capabilities in near real time, vastly improving endpoint digital capabilities.

 

8. Take Action on Decarbonization.

 

Enterprises without a clear path to carbon neutrality will increasingly become outliers in the global business world. “Fewer than 10% of organizations say they are not applicable or not implementing objectives to reduce carbon by the end of 2023,” IDC reports. Companies will increasingly invest in analytics and decision-making tools to reduce the environmental impact of their own and their partners’ operations.

 

9. Improve Executive Decision Making.

 

Executives will increasingly move on from basing decisions on historical data, focusing instead on high-level dashboards supported by advanced predictive analytics instead. Enterprise leaders who take a data- and predictive analytics-driven approach to investments and planning can “de-risk revenue and cost profiles, understand and forecast shifting revenue streams, plan for new growth areas, [and] rethink how to finance innovation,” as the World Economic Forum describes.

 

10. Prepare for a New Cybersecurity Paradigm.

 

The risks of cyberattacks will exceed the abilities of in-house cybersecurity teams, even at the largest enterprise companies. Enterprises will turn to firms that offer security operation centers as a service (SOCaaS) to give them a fighting chance instead. SOCaaS firms will offer white-glove services that supplement their clients’ internal security capacities. They will providecutting-edge, AI-driven security capabilities, as well as business continuity and disaster recovery resources to protect against losses.

 

Conclusion: Digital at the Core

 

Digital tools are no longer simply business enablers; they are at the foundation for business success. Future enterprise will feature “‘digital-at-the-core’ business models” that are “data-led, asset-light, and based on services rather than products,” as IDC describes. But enterprise leaders can’t lose sight of the importance of human-centricity, even as their digital investments become more robust. Building closeness with customers, and the efficacy and satisfaction of their employees, depend on that focus.

 

Learn More about Modern Digital Infrastructure with Uvation

 

Uvation is here to help you navigate new digital, operational, and leadership opportunities within your industry. Visit our Transformation and Modernization service page to learn more, or start a conversation with one of our digital transformation experts today.