The lines between corporate and tech strategy continue to blur
Strategic platforms with advanced analytics, automation, and AI are on tap for 2021, according to Deloitte.
Deloitte has released a slew of predictions for 2021, including in theenterprise tech, data andtech, media, telecom spaces.
Deloitte picked resilience as the theme for its 12th annual tech trends report; a word that became a mantra in nearly every organization after their 2020 plans were upended by the coronavirus pandemic.
In a webinar Monday, the firm identified nine trends separated into three groups that focus on how organizations can use technology to digitize, modernize, and enhance their businesses. Some have been spurred by COVID-19 and some by changes that have been ongoing for years, said Scott Buchholz, a managing director with Deloitte Consulting and emerging tech research director.
The first group is dubbed “Strategy, engineered,” and addresses the notion that the corporate and tech strategies “have really become intertwined as we move forward and increasingly become one and the same,” Buchholz said. This means the C-suite has to think about how the tech choices being made potentially in IT impact the enterprise, and vice versa, he said.
The second group Deloitte identified is “Core revival,” which addresses whether increasingly core systems running in the back, middle, and front office need to be refreshed, modernized, or moved to the cloud, Buchholz said.
This is becoming an increasing focus as organizations seek to reduce their technical debt, he said.
The third group is “Supply unchained,” and addresses the stark reality of discovering that supply chains were not as resilient and robust during the early part of the pandemic as organizations believed them to be.
“The tide went out and we’re starting to see organizations getting more serious about digital transformations across supply chains from sourcing to procurement and everything in between,” Buchholz said. As part of this, organizations will focus on the ability to connect systems across the enterprise and apply AI and ML and increasingly accelerate their ability to go from sales opportunities to sales value, he said.
The back office in particular, is getting transformed, Buchholz added.
Other trends for next year are a focus on the human experience and rebooting the physical workplace, according to Mike Bechtel, a managing director and chief futurist at Deloitte Consulting.
While there was an early sense among leaders that this would result in productivity decline, “our research indicates it’s not only climbed but increased,” he said.
Physical workspaces will be reconfigured to be less about individual productivity and more about collaboration and team rooms, Buchholz said.
Another trend will be tools for diversity, equity, and inclusion. While 90% of organizations acknowledge that this is important to address, Deloitte’s research shows that only 13% are ready, Bechtel said. What used to be the exclusive purview of HR, now it’s also the responsibility of the CIO and CTO, he said.
