BUSINESS TRANSFORMATION

Ten trends shaping digital transformation in 2023

Digital transformation initiatives in almost every industry have been on fast-forward mode since 2020. Organisations of all sizes and sectors invested in collaborative and advanced technologies to adapt to the changed times. The trends that promise to shape digital transformation in 2023 include adapting to customer needs quickly, boosting efficiency and sustainability, and focusing on employee-centric work models.

Here are the details:

Increased investment in automation

As organisations try to do more with less, they will invest more in automation to speed up digital transformation. The fluctuating business landscape makes it imperative for organisations to boost growth and efficiency, and to handle unexpected disruptions. Deloitte surveys indicate that the implementation of robotic process automation (RPA) is expected to grow from 53 per cent to 72 per cent over the next two years. Organisations using RPA have reported increased process efficiency and reduced errors.

Many warehouses and factories have already become autonomous and 2023 is likely to see more delivery robots, and self-driving ships and trucks.

In fact, hyper-automation — already on the roadmap of many organisations — is expected to bring down operational costs by almost 30 per cent. As per Gartner, the global market for hyper-automation will reach almost USD 860 billion by 2025.

Increased use of no-code tools

Organisations that are not technology-centric can use low-code or no-code tools to continue their digital transformation without being slowed down by IT bottlenecks. Tools that allow drag and drop capabilities will continue to be popular among organisations as they continue to create new services and automate processes.

Research shows that the last two years adversely affected the progress of large numbers of IT projects because of a scarcity of IT skills. Many organisations trying to meet growing business demands are creating, or plan to create, fusion teams to boost their IT abilities. Gartner reports indicate that organisations that empower their teams are likely to speed up their digital transformation journeys without resource-driven hiccups. 

Increased migration to the cloud

As technology develops and internet speeds continue to increase, organisations will continue to adopt cloud technologies in digital transformation. Nations that have been historically slow in migrating to the cloud, will begin taking advantage of all that the cloud offers.



Increase in adoption of AI and ML

Artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) tools and techniques drive most digital transformation journeys. While AI provides deep insights about customer behaviour and demographics that help organisations make sound decisions, ML can help organisations use data to create customised experiences. By leveraging the powers of AI and ML, organisations can effectively develop the intelligence required to free employees from carrying out tedious and routine activities.



Composability will drive innovation and agility

Agility boosts, and will continue to boost, an organisation’s ability to adapt to changes in market demands. Composability will allow organisations to shorten the time to value and to reuse capabilities that already exist.

An average organisation uses almost 976 applications stored across multiple systems that are rarely well connected. This results in data silos that do not allow seamless digital experiences. A high percentage of IT leaders believe data or systems integration projects are time-taking and expensive. A composable enterprise strategy is the best answer to overcome such hurdles and over 60 per cent of organisations are expected to make that a business objective by 2023.   

Increased investments in total experience (TX) strategies

TX strategies will focus on both customer (CX) and employee experiences (EX) to retain talent and enhance revenue. In fact, senior IT leaders are increasingly being almost equally measured on CX as well as EX. Business outcomes based on TX strategies are expected to be more resilient and agile in such scenarios. The shared experiences will be superior and business values will increase. Organisations that focus on and nurture a total experience are expected to perform over 25 per cent better than their competitors by 2024. 



Increase data-driven decisions

Organisations will continue to improve their decision-making processes by relying more on data-driven intelligence. Such a move should help reduce any wasted business opportunities. In fact, enterprise intelligence can boost financial, customer, and employee results. A natural result of this is increased agility, digital resilience and innovation.

Organisations must focus on embedding analytics in a data fabric that connects data across systems. The insights obtained will help organisations automate the decision-making process, improve the use of data and significantly reduce the human hours needed to manage data. An accelerated time-to-value is a natural progression.

Almost 80 per cent of organisations are expected to be dependent on digital processes by 2023. That would mean a huge increase in data traffic between industry ecosystems.

Increased focus on cybersecurity

Investments in edge technologies and distributed architecture are expected to grow as organisations continue on their digital transformation journeys. The greater the digital footprint, the higher the security risks. Emerging cybersecurity solutions will help organisations manage data protection in the coming years.



Adopt more sustainable solutions

Research indicates that environmental sustainability is right behind performance and quality as drivers of growth. The global effort to reduce carbon emissions can be a success only if organisations make continued efforts to adopt more sustainable and efficient ways of working. Sound IT strategies are important since today’s world is so dependent on software solutions. The general population is also aware of the dependence of tech gadgets on rare earth elements and the huge amounts of data consumed by streaming technologies. In 2023, consumers are likely to focus on sustainable technology too as they demand products that are more energy efficient.

Technology leaders understand that sustainability has to be a primary objective in organisations and future budgets must include that. Integration across supply chains and data-driven insights will further help promote sustainability.

Greater interest in blockchain technology

Emerging technologies such as blockchain will receive greater investment in the coming years. Blockchain technology can be used in various industries and it has the ability to create smart contracts, and permanently store records that cannot be tampered with. It provides a high-security environment that is crucial for the success of digital transformation.

While experts agree that 2023 may throw in more surprises in digital transformation than can be predicted, it is widely accepted that there will be continued efforts to develop more advanced collaborative tools and technology to help organisations support their employees to work from any location without hampering operational efficiency.

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