Sunil Jose, SVP & Country Leader, Salesforce India
Accelerated by technology and innovation, enterprise IT organizations are in the most exciting and decisive moment in their histories. Faced with unprecedented innovation, highly empowered and discerning customers, and an increasingly demanding workforce, IT leaders must satisfy a diverse array of new demands, all while keeping the lights on.
With much on their agenda, IT leaders need to focus on the broader trends that are impacting — even transforming — their organizations: customer experience, employee experience, mobile technology, AI, voice technology and IT staff learning and development.
It’s all about customer and employee experience. Consumers and B2B buyers alike are savvy, empowered, more discerning, and less loyal than ever. Consumer expectations have been shaped by everyday experiences with companies that are increasingly connected and tailored to their wants and needs. IT leaders today are rating customer experience as their top priority with 87 percent making it a top priority and 77 percent of them increasing investments in customer experience (Salesforce Enterprise Trends Report 2019). This new North Star is driving myriad changes to their organizations, from new customer-centric strategies to their team’s very skillsets. And at a time when security and trust are top of mind for customers, companies, and policymakers, security and identity technology is just as important.
When it comes to employees experiences, only 50 percent of IT leaders are increasing investment in the employee experience, despite the fact that 75 percent of the workforce claims personal technology has changed their expectations of work technology. (Connected Customer survey, Salesforce Research, April 2018). However, despite relatively low investment in the employee experience, IT leaders widely recognize the importance of modernized work technology. 84 percent of IT leaders believe improved employee technology is critical for their company to compete. (Salesforce Enterprise Trends Report 2019).
The mobile-first mindset is firmly entrenched in customers and employees alike. Ninety-nine percent of IT leaders say businesses must be mobile-enabled to survive in the future, underscoring the seriousness with
which they take the matter. Yet with all their competing demands, fewer than half of IT leaders place a high priority on mobile. That, combined with low skill levels and strategies that are largely described as only ‘somewhat’ defined, will present challenges in a mobile-first future. A mobile-first future isn’t only attributed to an anytime, anywhere mentality. It’s also due to the globalization and dispersion of teams. It’s logical, therefore, that more than four out of five IT leaders expect a mobile-first development mindset among successful organizations by 2025. (Salesforce Enterprise Trends Report 2019).
Perhaps more than any other technology since the advent of smartphones and mobile apps, artificial intelligence (AI) is shaking up IT circles. Eighty-three percent of IT leaders say AI is transforming customer engagement, and 69 percent say it is transforming their businesses. AI is already making a big splash in enterprise technology, with 42 percent of IT leaders reporting that their organizations already use it. That rate of adoption is expected to nearly double within just two years. (Salesforce Enterprise Trends Report 2019).
Additionally, voice technology is an increasingly prominent example of AI in everyday life. Yet much like AI generally, IT strategies and skill sets around voice technologies have substantial room for improvement, and prioritization of voice initiatives has largely taken a back seat to more immediate needs.
Lastly, technology is racing forward, but technical skill sets are not. Fewer than a quarter of IT leaders have a completely defined strategy on how to handle this crisis of skills, setting their firms up for competitive disadvantages. Technology, customer expectations, and business priorities are moving so fast, and their workloads are so great, and so the majority of employees view their companies as responsible for empowering them with the skills they need. New learning platforms provide one resource, as do low code or no code development tools that can offload simple projects to business partners and free-up developers to work on more strategic projects.
The innovation that now defines IT has ushered in unprecedented possibilities for customers, employees, and business models. Technological infrastructure affects the culture, efficiency and relationship of a business and thus, it is all the more imperative for the IT leaders to rethink how they connect with their customers by encouraging personalized, real-time, and consistent communication.
Technological infrastructure affects the culture, efficiency and relationship of a business and thus, it is all the more imperative for the it leaders to rethink how they connect with their customers by encouraging personalized, real-time, and consistent communication
Perhaps more than any other technology since the advent of smartphones and mobile apps, artificial intelligence (AI) is shaking up IT circles. Eighty-three percent of IT leaders say AI is transforming customer engagement, and 69 percent say it is transforming their businesses. AI is already making a big splash in enterprise technology, with 42 percent of IT leaders reporting that their organizations already use it. That rate of adoption is expected to nearly double within just two years. (Salesforce Enterprise Trends Report 2019).
Additionally, voice technology is an increasingly prominent example of AI in everyday life. Yet much like AI generally, IT strategies and skill sets around voice technologies have substantial room for improvement, and prioritization of voice initiatives has largely taken a back seat to more immediate needs.
Lastly, technology is racing forward, but technical skill sets are not. Fewer than a quarter of IT leaders have a completely defined strategy on how to handle this crisis of skills, setting their firms up for competitive disadvantages. Technology, customer expectations, and business priorities are moving so fast, and their workloads are so great, and so the majority of employees view their companies as responsible for empowering them with the skills they need. New learning platforms provide one resource, as do low code or no code development tools that can offload simple projects to business partners and free-up developers to work on more strategic projects.
The innovation that now defines IT has ushered in unprecedented possibilities for customers, employees, and business models. Technological infrastructure affects the culture, efficiency and relationship of a business and thus, it is all the more imperative for the IT leaders to rethink how they connect with their customers by encouraging personalized, real-time, and consistent communication.