2024 and Beyond: Capturing Strategic Insights on Technology Trends
As we dive into 2024, we're seeing a surge of technological trends. Drawing from our work with large-scale enterprise, these are the focus areas that repeatedly surface:
1. Prioritizing Cybersecurity:
Business leaders are unanimously prioritizing cybersecurity, citing it as the foremost reason for increased technology budgets. The field’s biggest concerns include the constant threat of breaches, the overwhelming number of tools to manage, and the need for robust ransomware protection, incident response, the ability to trust but verify existing tools, as well as finding and retaining the right resources to manage the environment. We are seeing a shift in perspective from security being viewed as a cost center to a value center, as well as the need to break down silos across departments to allow collaboration to improve the overall posture. Moreover, companies are finding that the presence, or lack thereof, of a robust cybersecurity strategy is becoming a decisive factor in M&A activities, greatly influencing company valuations.
2. Harnessing AI, Big Data & IoT:
Enterprises are eager to leverage AI and Big Data to enhance customer experiences, automate operations, and improve efficiency and productivity. AI is no longer a trend, but a business imperative to stay ahead and remain competitive. The generative AI market was valued at over 10 billion dollars in 2022, and it’s expected to be over 190 billion by 2032. However, integrating these technologies comes with its set of challenges, including risk management/security and the need for comprehensive governance. Generative AI plays a vital role in CX (Customer Experience) strategies and implementation is not a one-size-fits-all approach. Companies are recognizing the need to carefully consider where and how to leverage this technology to make the most significant impact while maintaining a customer-centric focus.
3. Cloud Financial Operations (FinOps):
The shift to public cloud services has significantly altered technology consumption, bringing both advantages and new challenges in cost and strategy management. Businesses are grappling with rising costs and are exploring various strategies, including repatriation and hybrid cloud solutions, coupled with the need for sophisticated FinOps tools to manage these expenses effectively as costs spiral and the data center market approaches full capacity.
4. Elevating Customer Experience (CX):
Customer Experience strategy has become a critical battleground, directly impacting how businesses are perceived. A successful CX strategy can dramatically propel a business forward, while a deficient one can lead to decline. As such, it's a vital component in driving revenue, maintaining a competitive edge, and ensuring long-term business success. Improving CX is a top three initiative among large enterprise CEO’s.
5. Implementing Strategic Cost Management:
In a world marked by economic fluctuation and uncertainty, strategic cost management has become increasingly important. This approach goes beyond traditional budgeting and cost control, focusing on a comprehensive understanding of inventory, assets, and expenditures. It aligns strategic, costly solutions with company KPIs, offering new, data-driven methods to build resilience and provides a level of detailed visibility across spend we haven’t seen before.
6. Linking IT Deployments to Business Outcomes:
Rather than deploying technology in a vacuum, large enterprise is focused on ensuring IT deployments align with specific business outcome. This trend sees technology adoption being closely tied to measurable business metrics like customer experience, sustainability, and revenue growth. That said, the high-value initiatives take considerable resource strain and investment. As a result, commodity-based technology solution renewals often take a back seat, despite offering ripe ground for opportunities to capture budget reallocations to not only fund other initiatives, but also better align with KPI’s.
7. Operational Flexibility and Value-Driven IT Investments:
In an era of rapid change, there is a growing demand for operational flexibility, allowing investments to scale with the value they return. Businesses are seeking more predictable cash flows and technology investments that can adapt to their evolving needs.
As businesses pour investments into AI, Cybersecurity, Customer Experience (CX), and Digital Transformation, they are increasingly turning towards strategic agnostic partners - partners to help them navigate the complex tech marketplace, streamline evaluations, offer unbiased strategies, and provide expertise for efficient implementation.
Leveraging outsourced expertise doesn't mean your team lacks in-house capabilities; rather, it's about optimizing resources to achieve better outcomes in every aspect of your business.
At t2B EXPERTS, our expertise lies in not just understanding the trends but in applying a tailored approach to each client's unique goals, requirements, and challenges. Our capabilities extend beyond advising on technology selections; we dive deep into aligning technology with business outcomes, ensuring that every IT investment directly contributes to our clients' strategic goals.
Here are some of the ways t2B EXPERTS is helping large enterprise clients navigate these trends:
1. Personalized Cybersecurity Strategies:
Recognizing the paramount importance of security, we assist businesses in developing strong, tailored cybersecurity plans. With over 4,000 security products in the market today, navigating the options is overwhelming. Whether evaluating evolving Microsoft strategies, optimizing licensing strategies and configurations for maximum benefit, or assessing and reinforcing existing tools to guarantee they yield the best results for your specific environment, our strategy includes comprehensive risk assessment, tool optimization, and proactive incident response planning across a broad range of vendor/solution options in marketplace. This ensures that our clients are not only safeguarded against threats but also ready for challenges that may arise.
2. Leveraging AI, Big Data, and IoT Integration:
We guide enterprises in harnessing the power of AI with a focus on translating these complex technologies into a stellar CX experience. Our team assists in the entire CX lifecycle, from strategy formulation to implementation, focusing on enhancing customer experiences and operational efficiency.
3. Optimizing Cloud Financial Operations:
To set large enterprises on the path to long-term success, neutral and unbiased advice is more crucial than ever. Diving too deeply into public cloud solutions or changing strategies midway can lead to hefty costs and, more importantly, they're often avoidable mistakes. With decades of experience in cloud strategy, architecture and FinOps, and over 1500 implementations across a myriad of vendors, solutions, and client environments, we help navigate through the choices of public, private or hybrid models, as well as leading FinOps tools, to ensure client cloud strategies are both cost-effective and scalable.
4. Customer Experience Transformation & Acceleration:
At t2B EXPERTS, we recognize the essential impact of customer experience (CX) on generating revenue, staying competitive, enhancing brand value, and ensuring long-term business prosperity. We guide clients in crafting and sustaining a CX strategy that surpasses customer anticipations, nurturing loyalty and propelling expansion. Furthermore, our cost-effective CX workshops and swift assessments provide valuable insights into performance, transformation, AI, CRM, BPO, and cloud benchmarking and readiness, enabling actionable improvements.
5. Harnessing Strategic Cost Management:
In an era of economic uncertainty, strategic cost management services are more relevant than ever. At t2B EXPERTS, our services go beyond traditional budgeting and cost-control, focusing on holistic visibility into smart spending that aligns with business outcomes and market opportunities, thereby driving efficiency and long-term growth. We deliver rapid assessments to ensure our clients’ strategic, costly solutions align with company KPIs to drive growth and provide consulting, evaluation, and competitive bidding services where existing solutions fall short. Additionally, we offer fully managed, robust telecom expense and lifecycle management services that leverage best in class TEM software that integrates with multiple major Accounts Payable applications providing customization to your unique requirements.
6. Ensuring Outcome-Oriented IT Deployment:
Our approach ensures that every technology deployment is an investment in our client's success. Whether we are engaging on evaluating commodity-based tech renewals or consulting on high-value tech strategy initiatives, we align IT strategies and solutions with business outcomes, ensuring that every technology investment serves as a catalyst for growth and operational efficiency.
7. Delivering Operational Flexibility:
At t2B EXPERTS we understand the need for businesses to remain agile and adaptable in this dynamic economic and tech landscape. Leveraging our real-time market insights, we guide our clients in navigating agreements across a broad range of vendors and solutions. We know the levers to pull to assist in creating flexible operational strategies that adapt to shifting market dynamics and business goals. This ensures that IT investments continue to deliver tangible results well into the future.
In summary, engaging with t2B EXPERTS isn't about supplementing deficiencies; it's about enhancing capabilities to focus your team on pivotal, high-impact projects for optimal results. We take pride in being more than consultants; we are strategic allies dedicated to your success, by your side for the long haul.
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