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As you sit down to plan the year ahead, have you taken time to consider what the experts are foreseeing for 2020? Near the end of last year, Gartner released a series of predictions for business and technology in the months to come. While these predictions or trends are not meant to change the course of your IT game plan, they can be useful to identify gaps in your current strategy and offer new insight on ways to refine.

Let’s take a look at some of Gartner’s latest predictions for 2020, and how you can use them to strengthen your strategy in the new year.

Want more information on each of these predictions? Check out our latest webinar, Gartner Predictions 2020: Assessing Your IT Game Plan. You can review past webinars at any time on the Veracity events page!

Prediction 1: Multi-Experience Design

Gartner predicts that one of the key strategic technology trends for 2020 will be multi-experience design. As Gartner put it, “Multi-experience replaces technology-literate people with people-literate technology.”

To put it simply, multi-experience design is expanding or improving the different ways customers interact with your product, often achieved by removing barriers to entry, and taking technology to your customers to meet them where they are.

For example, Dominos pizza is a leader in multi-experience design, now offering nearly 15 different ways to order (or deliver) a pizza. This includes everything from online and in-app purchases to smart speakers, autonomous cars, and even drone delivery.

DominosAnywhere

Image from ProductHabits.com                                 

Other multi-experience features could include:

  • Wearables
  • Voice search
  • Augmented reality (AR)
  • Virtual reality (VR)

B2B platforms can apply multi-experience design when they simplify their user interfaces or make it easier for customers to use their digital products. While you may not need an autonomous car to deliver pizza to your customer, the concept of multi-experience can pose a series of unique questions to keep in mind. As you consider your personal 2020 strategies, ask yourself:

  • What are you doing to cut down the barrier between you and your customers?
  • Are there ways to simplify their process to make it easier to use your product?
  • How much MORE value could you capture with a new or reimagined digital experience?

By reviewing your current strategy with these considerations in mind, multi-experience design can improve your customer experience and set your teams ahead of the curve.

 

Prediction 2: Transparency & Traceability

As consumers become increasingly “data-aware” in our modern IT culture, organizations will need to take extra care to meet designated compliance standards in their industry.

This might require a redefinition of your compliance strategy, including modifications to architecture, user experience, and finding new ways to implement transparency and traceability to your systems.

While many assume their compliance adherence are up to par, research from Chef has identified some interesting trends when it comes to keeping pace with regular audits and compliance standards.

Consider the charts below, comparing what we may assume our compliance levels look like with a more realistic representation. In many cases, rather than keeping a consistent or steady pace throughout the year, organizations find themselves scrambling to meet compliance needs right before each audit comes around.

ChefComplianceChartsImage by Chef.io           

 

While this pattern may seem harmless, Chef has stopped to question the impact that an inconsistent pattern could have on a business, especially if compliance is never made a high priority. For example, making a huge lift before each audit has the potential to introduce new risks to the organization that they might not be aware of. Scrambling at the eleventh hour may prevent long-term changes from ever taking flight. But most importantly, this sort of “all hands on deck” mentality can take away from other growth activities and soak up precious time your teams could devote to other projects.

As you consider the state of your internal infrastructure and the idea of increasing transparency and traceability, ask yourself the following questions:

  • How severe is your compliance wavelength?
  • Is your team scrambling to meet the crest of each wave before each audit?
  • Is that time taking away from growth activities in the business?

When you consider the impact of these patterns on your organization, you might just find that working transparency and traceability into your compliance strategy is something you’ll want to do sooner than later.

 

Prediction 3: Traditional ITSM Risks

Gartner has made a series of predictions surrounding common risks of IT Service Management (ITSM) teams in the New Year. For us, the following two ideas stood out.

“Infrastructure-Led Disruption will enable I&O leaders to be known by the innovation they provide to business leaders and not by the infrastructure they manage.” – Predicts 2020: IT Operations, Gartner

As you consider your role in your own organization, do you feel you are valued for the new innovations and ideas you bring to the table? Or are you simply a “custodian” to existing legacy software?

Years of working with IT organizations have shown us that while IT leaders may want to make an impact or contribute new ideas, many are stifled by the perception of IT as a “cost-center,” rather than as a strategic asset to their business. If this sounds like the culture of your organization, it may be time to make a change.

“By 2023, 80% of ITSM teams that have not adopted an agile approach will be made redundant by DevOps practices and approaches.” - Predicts 2020: IT Operations, Gartner

How collaborative is your work process today? Are you engulfed in hand offs from department to department, or have you created true cross-functional, product-centered teams?

Many organizations fall into the trap of thinking they’ve achieved a DevOps culture, yet still suffer from the inefficiencies of a system without it. Ensuring your success and survival as a leader and an IT organization can come down to asking yourself the following questions:

  • What is the internal reputation of your IT or product team?
  • Has rapid growth compromised the agility of your technology organization?
  • Are you a custodian of legacy software or an innovator for the business?

Being honest with yourself about the state of your business from the perspective of these ITSM risks can help steer your 2020 strategies in a positive direction for change and growth, and help you take steps to establish your role as a strategic contributor.

 

While these are just three of countless predictions made by Gartner for the new year, each offers the chance for reflection and renewed perspective. Again, these predictions are not meant to derail an existing game plan, but rather offer insight on areas to improve, and ideas to consider as you take your existing IT strategy to new heights.

How do you plan to implement these ideas into your plan in 2020? Stay tuned for more Gartner predictions to come in our next Veracity webinar, February 6, 2020! 

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