Digital transformation trends 2021

Digital transformation trends 2021

Author

CEO and Co-Founder of Bits Orchestra

Data streaming, MLOps, and multi-cloud management will drive agility and speed up companies' journeys towards digital transformations in 2021

Transformation Trends in 2021& digital transformation solutions 

Businesses' technology infrastructure shortcomings have been revealed by the pandemic. The technology curve is not behind growth companies, and their outdated systems can no longer keep up. Those businesses that have been keeping pace with technology have been adding new systems to their technology stack in order to generate higher revenue and growth.

Even though it is crucial to get returns on technology investments, it is now more than ever crucial to understand how staying current with technology gives a company a competitive edge. Cloud computing and new platforms offer increased functionality, which is the main reason many companies move to these solutions. Companies in the year 2021 will manage their technology by improving performance of existing systems, according to LBMC's fourth annual Business Outlook Survey Report.

digital-transformation-trendsdigital-transformation-trends

The chances of adding new systems by a high growth company were twice as high as those of a no growth company, where no growth businesses tended to replace existing systems and outsource technology support. A high-growth company is one that has attained an average annual revenue growth of 20% or more during the study period. Our high-growth companies, however, outperformed this threshold by a sizable margin. Over the past year, revenue has grown by 1-19% on average.

As digital transformation initiatives ramp up in 2020, organizations will be able to develop more effective strategies to combat pandemics.

Cloud computing and business intelligence technologies are projected to be the most popular investments for businesses in 2021. Forty percent of companies plan to make technology and software investments in 2021.

The majority of companies planning to invest in cloud-based solutions in 2021 plan to prioritize technology.

digital-transformation-trends

The speed at which technology is evolving is increasing exponentially. These features are no longer just included in enterprise solutions aimed at Fortune 500 companies. With machine learning, artificial intelligence, and business analytics, these features can be integrated into any application. Small and medium-sized businesses can afford many software applications with this functionality. AI and machine learning enable organizations to lower costs and/or increase profits as they provide timely information, visual representation of trends and potential risks, and increased operational efficiencies. Digital business transformation solutions in this case can bring a lot of important benefits for a company and transform its structure and future performance. 

What is Digital Transformation? 

To meet changing business and market dynamics, organizations can use digital technologies to create and modify new or existing business processes, practices, models, cultures, and customer experiences. It's simply about determining how you can maintain a competitive edge in the digital age by adapting your business to drive customer loyalty. 
 

Digital enterprise transformation solutions & Organization's Digital Transformation: Why is it Important?

A digital transformation cannot be successful without your people. It is not a good idea for businesses to use technology just to use technology. Bringing solutions to our businesses requires more than just technology. In digital transformation, the human dimension matters because it allows your people to do more creative work and frees them from redundant and repetitive work tasks.

Innovation is not achieved by technology alone; it is achieved by people. A person interrupts or disrupts technology, not the technology. Technology enhances the potential of our people and enables them to maximize their potential. However, people remain the most important asset. Your employees will be able to focus on higher value tasks and contribute to the success of the business. We have so many things available to our employees that their contribution to the bottom line is obviously influenced by what they know and who they know.

The fear of change holds most businesses back from digital transformation, but it allows us to transform our business models. 

Adapting to the new normal is difficult, and businesses are being forced to bring in new skills, talents, processes, and technology that they did not possess previously. The slow evolution of digital has accelerated rapidly in the past several years, resulting in businesses pivoting to enhanced user experiences focused on customers. Businesses with many of these mechanisms in place were able to conduct business without much interruption in 2020 as they were seen as experts and were able to pivot to virtual business development and client experiences without much disruption. By using technology, we improve our probability and ability to compete in our own markets in order to stay competitive and disrupt our own industry.
 

Getting started with digital transformation: what are my next steps?

When embarking on its digital transformation process, the most important step is to impose discipline. The importance of evaluating operational inefficiencies and whether they can be eliminated by changing business processes cannot be overstated. Would it be possible to automate low value, time-consuming tasks that employees perform manually? As a business grows and scales, it is important to ensure that the investments in the technologies will continue to perform well. The roadmap for your digital transformation can be provided by defining clearly your functional requirements and the outcomes you expect over time. 

Based on this information, you can design and architect your technology infrastructure both from a hardware and software perspective, and you can measure the results of your efforts. As you begin this process, involving the right employees and communicating your objectives and expectations will increase the level of buy-in to change, which is what ultimately leads to success.

A digital business model was no longer an option, it was essential to survive in the COVID-19 era of 2020. The digital transformation was crucial for enabling remote working, transitioning to collaborative workflows, and realigning operations from supply chain management to customer experiences.

Business leaders no longer need to persuade CIOs and IT leaders of the importance of technology. IT and business leaders will need to collaborate, work in the cloud, and use analytics by the end of 2020.

IT leaders will take on a proactive, strategic digital transformation agenda instead of a reactive posture in 2021. Using technology and data for competitive advantages, IT leaders will collaborate with business colleagues to create digital business models, promote an experimentation culture, and nurture a culture of innovation. A four-point strategy, priorities and roadmap for digital transformation will be established by CIOs in 2021.

Has the pandemic changed our need for business transformation? 

Many companies have been considering digital transformation prior to COVID-19. Has the past year affected our willingness to change or does that still hold true? A pandemic has indeed accelerated transformation. With technological advancements, we must embrace new methods for getting things done, such as working remotely.

In order to achieve lasting change, what are the important dos and don'ts?

  • Maintaining traditional IT to ensure success in the future 

  • The road to success is paved with processes

  • Don't let today's insights stand in the way of tomorrow's success 

  • Create a change-aware culture

In addition to these four domains, it's important to understand the various business transformation components - some of which are more relevant to your organization than others. The list is quite encompassing: 

  • Data & AI, Data & Analytics, Software Quality Delivery

  • Software Development

  • Developer Velocity

  • Agile

  • DevOps

  • Cloud

  • Digital Transformation

  • Developer Velocity

  • Agile DevOps

The challenges and actions for each component will be discussed.

1. Agile reshapes enterprise culture and business models

To develop applications, improve machine learning models, automate CI/CD pipelines, and deliver other business-focused programs, IT leaders have embraced agile practices. Product owners became increasingly important as IT and business collaborations grew more complex. 

Adopting agile practices and DevOps was only the first step in establishing agile business models and cultures that would support digital transformation. By 2020, more CIOs look forward to partnering with business leaders as agility becomes an imperative. CIOs are expected to play an increasingly critical role in driving agility deeper into the organization in 2021:

  • New business capabilities will be released by teams comprising marketing, operations, finance, HR, and sales colleagues.

  • Change management programs that engage early adopters, customers, and stakeholders will be transformed into transformational programs.

  • Data science teams will increasingly adopt agile portfolio management tools, experimentation cultures, and experimentation management tools as organizations expand agile.

2. Low-code use cases are centered on customer and employee experiences

For organizations seeking to develop workflow applications, integrations, and automations, low-code platforms will become increasingly important due to COVID-19 and remote working in 2020. Apart from providing personalized assistance, these applications also helped workers set up their remote office environments and kept them safe. Automating processes reduced costs and filled process gaps.

The importance of low-code platforms is increasing among CIOs and business leaders despite their existence for decades. In 2021, digital leaders will combine low-code, robotic process automation, and integration technologies in order to improve customer and employee experiences. Low-code platforms allow organizations to migrate to the cloud and modernize legacy applications while using fewer resources, such as software developers, cloud architects, and DevOps, which remain scarce.

3. Multi-cloud architectures are enabled by cloud service providers

Cloud migration entailed shifts to a hybrid cloud model where applications could run both in data centers and in private clouds, as well as on public clouds. Even as their primary public clouds mature, many enterprises are coming to accept that their architectures and services must run on multiple public clouds. The following are some of the reasons:

  • avoiding vendor lock-in;

  •  facilitating pricing and service-level negotiation;

  •  enabling innovation on emerging services;

  •  complying with data sovereignty regulations; and

  •  supporting acquisitions.

In today's environment, multicloud architectures are challenging to support, however, public cloud vendors recognize how important it is to enable multi cloud integration, management, and support to maintain good relationships with large enterprises. Managing system resources as well as Kubernetes clusters across multiple clouds is supported by Azure Arc and Google Anthos. Public cloud service providers also recognize the benefits of edge computing for workloads requiring low latency and analytics capabilities close to the data center, including Azure Stack Edge and Amazon Web Services Outpost.

In order to address some of these issues, using multi-clouds will be useful. Deployment options and multi-cloud management are becoming more accessible to enterprises interested in moving and growing strategic workloads to the right cloud.

4. Event-driven and real-time processing become mainstream

Using real-time data processing, which used to be a challenge reserved for industries like financial services and advertising, businesses with split-second reductions in data latency can achieve significant advantages. 

Companies relied on unreliable data for solving stoppages, data quality issues, and complex queries, rather than automating process updates scheduled nightly, weekly, or monthly.

CIOs can support real-time data processing in different ways. Platforms that support event-driven architectures, distributed architectures that scale on demand, and RPA software that automate many aspects of collecting data have made cloud platforms a reality.

5. Digital Enterprise Transformation Providers & Bringing machine learning into production with easy MLOps

Many technologies, social networks, and technologically advanced businesses have machine learning models in production, but other industries lag behind. In Algorithmia's "2020 state of enterprise machine learning" report, only 45% of respondents said they were able to deploy models into production. More than 40% of organizations that successfully deployed machine learning (ML) models encountered deployment issues, taking longer than thirty days. Apparently, over 28% of artificial intelligence/machine learning initiatives fail, according to a recent IDC study.

However, enterprises' struggles are not proof that machine learning is fading. MLOps will gain traction as more data science and IT organizations collaborate. Platforms will gain traction as they provide ML lifecycle management capabilities.

With advanced MLOps, organizations can reduce deployment time and detect ML models that are drifting in production. As they use the platforms to manage and operate their AI initiatives, data scientists can concentrate on developing and testing their models. The first successful ML production models should appear by 2021.

In order to achieve long-term success, businesses prioritize practical solutions

The digital transformation trend is diverse in keeping with its broad definition. Compared to previous lists, this one presents a different outlook for 2021. The technology and data capabilities of it help organizations benefit from digital transformation in the short term. When business performance is not the goal of a digital transformation, it fails. By 2021, organizations will strive for improved customer experiences, increased operational efficiency, and advanced capabilities, but they'll need less technical expertise, as well as the risks associated with implementing the technologies necessary to achieve them.

Platforms in low-code, MLOPS, multi-cloud management, and data streaming enable businesses in a wide range of industries to develop technology processes that drive true business agility.

Digital Transformation Consulting Services and Solutions 

As a result of these trends, digital transformation will reshape and develop a smarter economy.

Several businesses collapsed due to the pandemic. However, the crisis accelerated digital transformation and enabled rapid technology adoption. As disruptive technologies have evolved, businesses have been using them to enhance productivity and growth. Businesses started building a digital presence due to the shift of consumers to online platforms and the pandemic-induced restrictions. This year, digital transformation will offer a lot considering the changing business landscape and the integration of technology everywhere. Here are the top 10 trends that will shape businesses' digital transformation journeys in 2021.

1. 5G Will Become the New Normal

Today, digital is the norm, and businesses are working remotely and at home to manage operations. 5G has already been much talked about during the past year, and in the coming year it is likely to gain more attention. Providing an unprecedented degree of speed and connectivity, 5G networks can meet the increasing demand for bandwidth and connectivity. As 5G becomes mainstream, it will improve IoT connectivity, improve user experience and digital collaboration, and accelerate digital transformation.

2. Blockchain to Witness Development

A rapid adoption of technology last year has brought blockchain to the forefront. Blockchain technology was once associated with cryptocurrencies, but is now used in a variety of industries, including monetary institutions. Blockchain technology is expected to play a critical role in cybersecurity in the coming years, and it will mature as it is adopted in more industries.

 3. Prioritizing Cybersecurity

Cybersecurity became more relevant because of the pandemic that surfaced last year. Several companies were attacked over a short time period. The majority of companies are now doing remote work, which means heightened security is required. For companies undergoing digital transformation or planning to adopt it, robust cybersecurity practices are a top priority. Digital transformations should occur at the same pace as a company's security strategy and infrastructure.

4. A Heads-up to Digital Banking

Rapid digitalization has impacted the finance and banking sectors more than any other industry. Digital payments, online credit applications, and online loan applications were initiated by many of these companies. The company is implementing a digital transformation to enhance the digital experience of its users. Digital banking and open banking initiatives are expected to rise in the coming years. Transforming the financial sector will be reshaped by digital payments and banking.

5. Customer Data Platforms Will Storm

Modern business models are customer-centric, which means data is the fuel. A strong infrastructure can make data collection and management easier, however. In this situation, CDPs play an important role. The CDP collects, organizes, tags, and makes available data from various sources for use. Often, businesses do not fully utilize the data they have access to today. In addition to the potential for enhanced growth and efficiency, data analytics is another potential ingredient. CDPs have the potential to revolutionize digital transformation if they consider these factors.

6. Multi-Cloud

Even as businesses migrate toward cloud solutions, it's important to acknowledge the emergence of multi-cloud platforms. There will be no vendor lock-ins and common barriers that providers face will be eliminated. Cloud computing will flourish this year and in the future, which will shape the transformation of business. 

Cloud computing assets, software, and applications can be distributed across different cloud platforms using multi-cloud computing. In addition to using private and public cloud infrastructure, they can also use several other cloud services.

7. Quantum Computing to Mainstream

Google recently announced that it will develop a quantum computer that is error-free within ten years. It is a vital research topic even though quantum computing hasn't fully been commercialized yet. Quantum computing will be explored by numerous industries in the coming years to enhance the digital transformation.

8. XaaS and Transformation

XaaS, or Everything as a Service, has already become a big player in the business ecosystem. There are many different types of online products and services that have been described as cloud services. Companies can use it extensively since the services will be accessible quickly, simplifying technology deployments. By utilizing the XaaS model, businesses can improve agility and streamline the digital transformation process.

9. Remote Work To Stay

Since the pandemic, offices have worked from home and in remote locations. The mobile work strategy seems to be here to stay, according to a number of studies and surveys. There has also been an acceleration of digital transformation as a result of companies recognizing the benefits of working remotely. The population of 'work from home' will be catered to through more innovations and smart technologies.

10. Automation at the Core

In the years ahead, businesses will focus largely on automating processes and ERP. Automation can accelerate digital transformation. A number of companies had to turn to automation during the pandemic. 

Digital transformation and digital transformation software development  is thus centered around automation. AI, machine learning, and robotics enabling better growth and agility will be made possible by integrating AI, machine learning, and robotics with businesses.

Wrap Up 

Here at BitsOrchestra we take into account all digital transformation tendencies and align all our business processes with the latest developments of the system. 

 

 

Table of contents

    Share

    Author

    Author

    Roman Hutnyk

    CEO and Co-Founder of Bits Orchestra

    email link linkedin link

    12 years of software development experience helped me to grow up a deep feeling of business needs and processes, the value we could introduce to business, quality standards, and trends in business as well as software development.

    As the CEO of Bits Orchestra software development company, I spearhead the mission to drive business innovation and growth, by building cutting-edge web & mobile applications, as well as specializing in Kentico development.

    Check other articles

    Understanding The Six Pillars Of Digital Transformation Beyond Tech

    Understanding The Six Pillars Of Digital Transformation Beyond Tech

    What is the future of digital transformation? | Bits Orchestra

    What is the future of digital transformation?

    Top trends shaping digital transformation in 2022

    Top trends shaping digital transformation in 2022

    Contact us

    Before we proceed, please help us understand your needs better. We will review your application and schedule a free estimate call

    Roman Hutnyk

    CEO & Co-founder

    ceo