Trends Identified
Digital engagement - Context + content for marketing . . . and beyond
Content and assets are increasingly digital—with audio, video, and interactive elements—and consumed across multiple channels, including not only mobile, social, and the web, but also in store, on location, or in the field. Whether for customers, employees, or business partners, digital engagement is about creating a consistent, compelling, and contextual way of personalizing, delivering, and sometimes even monetizing the user’s overall experience— especially as core products become augmented or replaced with digital intellectual property.
2014
Tech trends 2014 - Inspiring Disruption
Deloitte
Wearables - On-body computing devices are ready for business
Wearable computing has many forms, such as glasses, watches, smart badges, and bracelets. The potential is tremendous: hands-free, headsup technology to reshape how work gets done, how decisions are made, and how you engage with employees, customers, and partners. Wearables introduce technology to previously prohibitive scenarios where safety, logistics, or even etiquette constrained the usage of laptops and smartphones. While consumer wearables are in the spotlight today, we expect business to drive acceptance and transformative use cases.
2014
Tech trends 2014 - Inspiring Disruption
Deloitte
Technical debt reversal - Lowering the IT debt ceiling
Technical debt is a way to understand the cost of code quality and the impacts of architectural issues. For IT to help drive business innovation, managing technical debt is a necessity. Legacy systems can constrain growth because they may not scale; because they may not be extensible into new scenarios like mobile or analytics; or because underlying performance and reliability issues may put the business at risk. But it’s not just legacy systems: New systems can incur technical debt even before they launch. Organizations should purposely reverse their debt to better support innovation and growth— and revamp their IT delivery models to minimize new debt creation.
2014
Tech trends 2014 - Inspiring Disruption
Deloitte
Social activation
Over the years, the focus of social business has shifted from measuring volume to monitoring sentiment and, now, toward changing perceptions. In today’s recommendation economy, companies should focus on measuring the perception of their brand and then on changing how people feel, share, and evangelize. Companies can activate their audiences to drive their message outward—handing them an idea and getting them to advocate it in their own words to their own network.
2014
Tech trends 2014 - Inspiring Disruption
Deloitte
Cloud orchestration
Cloud adoption across the enterprise is a growing reality, but much of the usage is in addition to on-premises systems—not in replacement. As cloud services continue to expand, companies are increasingly connecting cloud-to-cloud and cloud-to-core systems—in strings, clusters, storms, and more—cobbling together discrete services for an end-to-end business process. Tactical adoption of cloud is giving way to the need for a coordinated, orchestrated strategy— and for a new class of cloud offerings built around business outcomes.
2014
Tech trends 2014 - Inspiring Disruption
Deloitte
In-memory revolution
As in-memory technologies move from analytical to transactional systems, the potential to fundamentally reshape business processes grows. Technical upgrades of analytics and ERP engines may offer total cost of ownership improvements, but potential also lies in using in-memory technologies to solve tough business problems. CIOs can help the business identify new opportunities and provide the platform for the resulting process transformation.
2014
Tech trends 2014 - Inspiring Disruption
Deloitte
Real-time DevOps
IT organizations need to better respond to business needs with speed and agility. IT can likely improve the quality of its products and services by standardizing and automating environment, build, release, and configuration management—using tools like deployment managers, virtualization, continuous integration servers, and automated build verification testing. Popular in the agile world, DevOps capabilities are growing in many IT organizations with either waterfall or agile methodologies.
2014
Tech trends 2014 - Inspiring Disruption
Deloitte
The glass half-full
CEOs are more positive about the state of the global economy than they were last year. Twice as many think it will improve over the next 12 months (see Figure 1). Conversely, just 7% think it will deteriorate, compared with 28% in 2013. But there are marked regional differences in sentiment. Only a quarter of CEOs in Central and Eastern Europe believe the global economy is recovering, versus half of all CEOs in Western Europe and the Middle East. The optimism some CEOs display may therefore stem from relief that certain risks (such as the collapse of the eurozone) have been averted for now, rather than the conviction that things are really getting better. Moreover, CEOs are still cautious about whether greater global growth will translate into growth for their own companies. They’re slightly more hopeful about the short-term outlook (see Figure 1), but just as wary about opportunities over the next three years as they were 12 months ago.
2014
17th Annual global CEO Survey
PWC
The global rebalancing act
CEOs are coming out of survival mode, but the search for growth is getting increasingly complicated as the global economy gradually rebalances itself. In 2012, the advanced economies were spluttering, while the emerging economies sizzled. In 2013, the picture became more nuanced. The advanced economies are mending, while some emerging economies are slowing down – and separating out in the process. By the third quarter of 2013, the US economy was already 4% bigger than it was in 2007, before the financial crisis was in full swing. The Japanese economy had also recovered all the ground it lost, although a listless performance in the second half of 2013 dented hopes that the eurozone had done likewise (see Figure 2). While the advanced economies are recovering, some of the emerging economies have been decelerating. The prospect of a shift in monetary policy in the US (which materialised in December 2013) and other advanced economies triggered substantial capital outflows from some emerging countries. These macroeconomic changes have revived interest in a number of the mature markets and exposed the weak spots in some of the emerging economies, as well as the extent to which they’re diverging.
2014
17th Annual global CEO Survey
PWC
Three trends that will transform business
So what does the future hold? CEOs told us they think three big trends will transform their businesses over the coming five years. Four- fifths of them identified technological advances such as the digital economy, social media, mobile devices and big data. More than half also pointed to demographic fluctuations and global shifts in economic power (see below).
2014
17th Annual global CEO Survey
PWC