Gartner, the world’s leading information technology research and consulting company, today released important strategic technology trends that enterprises need to dig deeper in 2021. The analysts presented their findings at the Gartner IT Symposium/Xpo Americas virtual conference held this week.
Brian Burke, vice president of research at Gartner, said: “The need for operational resilience in various corporate functions has never been stronger than it is now. CIOs are working hard to adapt to changing conditions and design future businesses. This requires continuous restructuring of corporate organizations. Gartner’s 2021 important strategic technology trend can achieve this plasticity.
“Corporate organizations are shifting from responding to the COVID-19 pandemic to driving growth, so they must focus on the two main areas that form the mainstream trends this year: people-oriented & location independence. The overall impact of these trends after the combination is greater than their respective independent impacts. And focus on meeting social and personal needs around the world to achieve the best delivery.”
Gartner: Ten Trends Forecast for IT Organizations and Users in 2021 and Beyond
Daryl Plummer, Gartner Distinguished Research Vice President and Academician Analyst, said: “Technology is approaching its limits, and traditional computing is also hitting walls everywhere. The world is developing at an unprecedented speed, and it is vital that technology and processes meet the needs of digital innovation. From now on, non-traditional technological methods will lead the major innovations in the next decade.
“Future technologies that lead the reorganization of all things have three key commonalities: they promote enterprise innovation and efficiency, are more effective than the technologies they are replacing, and have a revolutionary impact on society.”
By 2024, 25% of the CIOs of traditional large enterprises will be responsible for the results of digital business operations, and they will actually become “acting COOs.”
The chief operating officer’s understanding of the business and the ecosystem in which the business is located is an important link in the successful realization of digitization, and the position of the company in the digital enterprise is constantly improving. CIOs have a deep understanding of the technologies that can promote business impact. They can integrate technology and business goals by assuming part of the responsibilities of the chief operating officer to improve corporate efficiency.
Mr. Plummer believes: “As more and more CIOs are responsible for the digital performance of enterprises, there will be a global trend in which CIOs report to CEOs in highly digitalized traditional businesses.”
By 2025, 75% of the dialogue scenes at work will be recorded and analyzed, and new corporate value or risks will be discovered.
Work sessions are changing from traditional real-time, face-to-face communication to cloud conferencing solutions, messaging platforms and virtual assistants. In most cases, such tools keep electronic records of these sessions. Work session analysis can not only help companies comply with existing laws and regulations, but also help companies predict future performance and behavior. With the increasing use of digital surveillance technologies, the ethical considerations and actions that put privacy in the first place will become critical.
By 2025, traditional computing technologies will encounter digital bottlenecks, forcing enterprises to turn to new paradigms such as neuromorphic computing.
CIOs and IT executives will not be able to use current computing technology to execute key digital plans. Technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI), computer vision, and speech recognition require huge computing power, and these technologies will become ubiquitous, and ordinary processors will become increasingly unable to adapt to these digital innovations.
Mr. Plummer believes: “A variety of advanced computing architectures will appear in the next ten years. In the short term, massive parallel architectures, DNN chips, or neuromorphic computing may appear. In the long term, technologies such as circuit process upgrades, DNA storage, and chemical computing will bring a wider range of innovation opportunities.”
By 2024, 30% of digital businesses will try to store in DNA storage to solve the challenge of exponential growth of data in order to cope with the bottleneck of existing storage technology.
With the development of computing requirements, humans will need more advanced systems that have strong adaptability and resilience to complex and harsh environments. DNA is inherently resilient, capable of error checking and self-repairs, so it is ideal data storage and computing platform for various applications.
Mr. Plummer said: “Today, the amount of information collected is greater than ever before, but the current storage technology is strictly limited in terms of data storage time and loss prevention time. DNA storage technology will be used in the DNA biological chain. Data is encoded to achieve a storage life that is impossible with traditional random storage.”
By 2025, 40% of physical businesses will expand to paid virtual experiences to improve sales performance to surpass competitors.
With the continuous enhancement of the Internet of Things, digital twins, and virtual reality and augmented reality (VR/AR) functions, immersive experiences will become more attractive to a wider range of consumer groups and adjusted to a price that they can afford. The social impact of the epidemic has changed people’s attitudes towards remote and virtual interaction, and this trend is accelerating. Physical enterprises must begin to establish and master the discipline skills related to the creation, provision and support of immersive virtual experiences.
By 2025, more than 20% of global industrial products and agricultural products will be first contacted by end buyers.
Various new technologies are turning more and more manual tasks into automated tasks, excluding manual involvement in the process, and this trend has accelerated significantly during the epidemic. Let people start to rethink product design, material use, factory location and resource utilization. As automation becomes an inevitable new trend, end buyers will gradually become the first batch of people who come into contact with these industrial products and agricultural products.
Mr. Plummer believes: “Automation is a new driving force for competitive advantage and change. For example, smart machines will not crush grapes like humans when packaging grapes. With the continuous updating of future processes, CIOs should regard super automation as a Principle, not a project.”
By 2025, clients will hire freelance customer service experts to solve 75% of customer service problems.
Traditional customer service methods will bring bottlenecks and pain points to customers. Channels other than official corporate channels can often solve service problems more effectively and create a better customer experience. Customers will no longer directly contact the company, but go to freelance professional customer service personnel and seek help from these technical experts. CIOs must work with these freelancers as early as possible to reduce the customer experience, brand, and financial risks posed by third-party customer service providers.
By 2024, 30% of large enterprises will use the new “social reputation” indicator to deal with social issues and evaluate the impact on their performance.
“Social reputation” refers to the common opinions expressed by people in a society in order to promote the transformation of moral values to socially accepted results. Business performance evaluation methods are being expanded to include opinion indicators such as social voices, and have the same weight as more specific indicators such as click-through rates. Business executives must consider such indicators so that all departments of the company can quickly respond to social changes.
Mr. Plummer believes: “As we have seen time and time again, if we turn a deaf ear to social issues, it may cause rapid and irreparable damage to the brand. In response to social calls, product brand names or product brands that will be changed or abandoned next year Brand information will be more than the sum of the past five years.”
By 2023, large corporate organizations will increase employee retention by 20% by turning office space into childcare and education facilities.
The childcare assistance needs of workers around the world are still unmet. The outbreak of the new crown epidemic has made this problem even more serious. According to Gartner’s forecast, one-fifth of private childcare institutions will be permanently closed early next year. In order to meet the ever-increasing demand, large enterprises will begin to re-use the vacant facility space in order to provide social value-added products such as childcare services or education services. This will significantly improve employee satisfaction, work efficiency and retention rate, especially female employees.
By 2024, 30% of large enterprises will investigate user-generated content review services as the chief executive’s top priority.
The social turmoil in the past year has led to an increase in content changes on social media. This will bring brand safety issues and other related challenges to brand marketers and advertisers. Investment in content review, execution, and reporting services is essential for companies to understand how to plan website content.
Mr. Plummer believes: “In many cases, before the emergence of corresponding regulatory measures, brands are completely’crossing the river by feeling the stones’ on user original content platforms. However, website and application publishers must still implement various policies to ensure environmental safety. At the same time, they must also comply with the censorship system. Therefore, brand advertisers must avoid publishing extreme content, and industry content review standards are about to be introduced.”
