Strategic technology trends are those that have a significant impact on the way technologies are developed and used in a company or industry.
Some examples of these may be: artificial intelligence, the cloud, the Internet of Things, cybersecurity, and augmented reality.
If you are the CEO or leader of your organization, you are aware of the challenging market conditions currently, especially when you have the responsibility of leading the digital transformation. Staying up to date with strategic technology trends helps you prepare for these challenges, while leading the company towards new horizons.
Without a doubt, strategic technology trends will have a significant impact on the business of almost all companies and industries, not only in 2023 but at least in the next three years, as Gartner argues. Technology is changing rapidly and can affect the way products and services are developed and used in a company.
Beyond any challenge, strategic technology trends can be a great opportunity to improve efficiency, reduce costs, increase competitiveness, and offer better products and services to customers.
In this article we will share what we consider to be the trends that you should not ignore in your digital transformation journey. To help your business not fall behind compared to the competition and lose all the advantage in the market.
Go for it!
7 Strategic Technology Trends That Every CEO Should Consider
1. Digital Immune Systems
A digital immune system combines practices and technologies for software design, development, operations, and analytics to mitigate business risks.
In 2023, it will be a priority for companies to combine practices and technologies to create a superior user experience (UX) and reduce system failures that impact business performance. A digital immune system protects applications and services in order to make them more resilient so that they can recover quickly from incidents.
In a recent Gartner survey on overcoming barriers to digital execution, nearly half of respondents (48%) stated that the primary objective of their digital investments is to improve customer experience (CX). It is here where a digital immune system will be key to ensuring that Customer Experience is not compromised by defects, system failures, anomalies, software bugs, or security issues.
Gartner expects that by 2025, organizations that invest in building digital immunity will increase customer satisfaction by decreasing downtime by 80%. In other words, the consultancy believes that if companies invest in a digital immune system, they will be able to improve customer experience and reduce downtime, with a positive impact on the business.
2. Applied observability
Applied observability works from the data emitted by an organization, using artificial intelligence (AI) to analyze and make recommendations. This allows a company to make faster and more accurate future decisions.
When applied systematically, it can reduce latency for response and optimize business operations in real time. In other words, applied observability is a technique that uses data and artificial intelligence to analyze and recommend how to improve a company's operations.
Being one of the most relevant trends, we will increasingly see organizations using applied observability to obtain and develop competitive advantages. This will be a powerful approach to data-driven decision making with a clear positive impact on business benefit.
3. Increased Trust in Artificial Intelligence, Risk Management and Security
The term known as AI TRiSM (AI Trust, Risk & Security Management) provides support for governance, reliability, fairness, reliability, robustness, efficacy, and data protection in artificial intelligence models.
2023 will be a year of accelerated adoption of artificial intelligence by companies. Therefore, we will begin to see how they start to combine methods for explaining the results of artificial intelligence, quickly deploying new models, actively managing AI-related security, and implementing controls for privacy and ethics issues.
One of the main challenges in this trend has to do with transparency and lack of trust in artificial intelligence models. Many consumers are still uncomfortable interacting with machines rather than other people. This issue is amplified when decision making inside the black box is difficult or impossible to explain, leaving consumers without satisfactory answers to their demands.
AI can provide audit and comment trails, displaying a timeline of discussions and decisions around the model, allowing for a thorough and clear understanding. In other words, transparency is an important aspect in trust in artificial intelligence models. When detailed and clear information is provided about how decisions are made in an AI model, it is easier for consumers to understand how it works and this can increase their trust in it.
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4. Industry Cloud Platforms
Industry cloud platforms combine SaaS, PaaS, and IaaS with tailored, industry-specific functionality that organizations can use to more easily adapt to the relentless stream of disruptions in their industry.
In 2023, we will see companies increasingly making their journey to the cloud. With the goal of implementing systems that offer customized solutions for a particular industry, something that is gaining popularity because it helps companies better adapt to their environments and accelerates the adoption of new approaches. This also benefits process improvement and reduces the time to market for new developments and implementations.
This is particularly important in a headless and composableapproach, which makes it easier for business owners to deliver value-added capabilities through marketplaces and leading e-commerce sites. The adoption of cloud platforms makes it easier for businesses to offer new or additional functionality, at a time when marketplaces are booming and there is renewed demand from digital consumers.
5. Superapps
Like a Swiss army knife, a superapp is a single application that integrates a wide range of functions and services, allowing users to access a wide range of options from a single application. These services can include messaging, payments, online shopping, entertainment, news and much more.
Super applications have been very popular in Asian countries, especially in China, where some of the most popular apps, such as WeChat and Alipay, have become superapps with a wide range of functions and services.
Gartner expects that by 2027, more than 50% of the world's population will be daily active users of multiple superapps. A concept that will also expand to include business mobile and desktop experiences, such as workflow, collaboration and messaging platforms.
In 2023, many companies will seriously consider superapps, seeking to consolidate and replace multiple applications for customer or employee use and support a headless and composable business ecosystem approach. They will particularly be used to create personalized user experiences (UX) by selecting and installing mini-apps (focused on performing a single task). Superapps will eventually expand to support chatbots, Internet of Things (IoT) technologies, and immersive experiences such as in the metaverse.
6. Adaptive Artificial Intelligence
The Adaptive Artificial Intelligence is capable of assimilating new knowledge while it is being built. Think about this for a second. With that said, this new generation of Artificial Intelligence, unlike traditional artificial intelligence systems, can review its own code to adjust to changes in the real world that were not known or anticipated when the code was first written. 🙂
In fact, Gartner expects that by 2026, companies that have adopted AI engineering practices for developing, building, and managing adaptive AI systems will outperform their peers. Specifically in the number and time it takes to operationalize artificial intelligence models at least 25%.
This is why in 2023, organizations that integrate adaptability and resilience in design in this way will be able to react more quickly and effectively to disruptions. And flexibility and adaptability are vital now, as we have learned from the pandemic or climate change. The key will be training this Adaptive Artificial Intelligence to learn in execution and development environments, to adapt and better withstand change.
7. Metaverse
There's still a lot to be done and said. But in general, the metaverse allows people to replicate or improve their physical activities. This could happen by transporting or extending physical activities to a virtual world, augmented reality, or transforming the physical world. It's definitely a trending topic, a new frontier of technological innovation that combines multiple themes and technologies.
Without a doubt, the metaverse(s) that exist and are adopted massively will provide companies with economic opportunities using new types of digital business assets (DBAs) and value exchange models. To improve the digital transformation strategy, many companies will need to explore product development, brand positioning, customer participation, and financial flows in the virtual world.
In 2023, although at a very early stage, many companies will try to take advantage of the metaverse to improve the immersive experience of the human customer facing the machine. CEOs will begin to use the metaverse to help expand their digital transformation strategy, although one thing is clear here: success will depend on a good understanding of key elements of the economy and financial/business models in this new technological paradigm. Everything is still to be done.
Now it's your turn.
Staying on top of trends in our industry is a complex and demanding task. But we are confident that bringing topics such as Adaptive Artificial Intelligence, Applied Observability, Cloud Platforms, Super Applications, and the Metaverse to the executive table will help us look in the right direction.
Knowing and implementing technological changes will be a priority for those leading their digital businesses, particularly in order to improve customer experience, optimize operations, and expand the digital transformation strategy. It is the challenge we have ahead.