IT Predictions 2022: What will businesses focus on?

By Juan Carlos Tercero, Senior Manager IT, Ricoh Latin America

Decision makers want three things: growth, digitization and efficiency. Over the past two years, organizations have been in constant flux due to unexpected events. However, the promise of digital business as a way to thrive and advance in the marketplace remains clear.

In 2022, leaders have the opportunity to embrace innovations to accelerate growth and strategically drive companies forward.

These technologies must offer:

Reliable digital connections for people and devices everywhere.

Solutions to rapidly scale digital creativity anywhere.

Innovative capabilities to accelerate business growth.

The following trends complement and reinforce each other. Together, they help leaders scale, adapt and grow:

As a Service" options will evolve rapidly: Companies need to focus on achieving their organizational and business objectives, not IT complexity. As a result, companies will increasingly look for "As-a-Service" solutions. This trend is due to the fact that companies are adapting to the digital transformation, and the “Device as a Service” model, also called "DaaS" (a perfect example of a solution as a service), offers a digital, flexible and collaborative workspace. According to the consulting firm IDC, by 2024, companies will prioritize digital technology that can deliver empathetic customer experiences. As a result, they will shift 70% of all IT spending to outcome focused "As a Service" models.

Hyper automation: Increased focus on growth, digitization and operational excellence have highlighted the need for optimized automation. Hyper-automation is a business-driven approach to identify, examine and automate as many business and IT processes as possible. It requires the orchestration of multiple tools and technology platforms, including Robotic Process Automation (RPA), reduced-code platforms and process extraction tools. By 2022, enterprises will focus on establishing a holistic roadmap and prioritizing collective initiatives, rather than islands of task automation, to ensure synergistic and coordinated business outcomes.

Data Driven Organizations to Drive Sustainability and Greater Business Efficiency: The value of data has never been clearer. But often, it remains siloed within applications, meaning it is not used as effectively as possible. Companies will invest in solutions to detect and use their information more efficiently, wherever it is needed in order to achieve more agile workflows and make business decisions faster.

Talent-centric hybrid work: In the last 18 months, virtually every company has undergone some kind of change that has reshaped its approach to work. When done successfully, it enables greater collaboration, innovation and agility. By 2022, companies will establish long-term hybrid work strategies by putting talent at the center. Technology and processes will be established based on the needs of mobile human capital. Getting this right leads to greater business agility and better support for employees and their productivity.

Perimeter cybersecurity: Digital business assets are distributed across the cloud and data centers. Traditional, fragmented security approaches leave organizations exposed to breaches. As a result, demand will increase for a perimeter cybersecurity architecture that provides a prevention-based approach to create a scalable and interoperable service. Integrated common structure secures all assets, regardless of location.

These above points join the macro trend that will boom in 2022: companies will focus on achieving "the total experience". This unifies three disciplines: customer, user and employee experience. The goal is to interconnect and improve each of them to achieve a more holistic overall experience for all stakeholders.

For further information, visit: https://www.ricoh-americalatina.com/en