With the turn of a new year comes the beginning of new business plans, with CEOs turning over a new leaf and focusing on how they can improve on their exploits in 2021.
Naturally, the next 12 months will be dominating the thoughts of decision makers, but the effects of the pandemic became clear throughout 2021 as businesses worked out how to deal with COVID-19. So what will the next 12 months bring?
Soprano Design Vice President of Global Marketing, Matt Thompson, said that trends in 2022 will boil down to four themes: more sustainable solutions, perceiving with innovation, a higher priority for communications, and a new relationship for providers.
Sustainable Solutions
By Thompson’s own admission, this might be an obvious prediction, but it is one that holds water. After reacting to the pandemic, businesses will continue to look for long-term solutions that will cater to their hybrid requirements.
“Now that businesses have worked out how they are going to work in the future, we're starting to see customers ask us about what technology they may have been missing and what they could be doing instead,” said Thompson.
“Therefore, companies will start to take a longer lens view of the technology they use. Customers also want to learn more about what the technology is capable of, and some of the newer innovations that other companies are taking advantage of.”
Persisting with Innovations
Investing in the future at this time is a sensible move given the changes that have occurred in 24 months. According to Thompson, although businesses can be burnt by gambling on future technologies, they will continue to find ways to integrate these innovations into their business.
“Some leaders talk about the innovative technologies they work with, but when you get down to the brass tax, it's difficult to implement in a way that shows a good outcome.
“What we were hearing is companies saying that they are going to try to simplify these innovations, rather than abandon them, and focus on one use case until they can get it right. A good example is contact centers where chatbots are being used to try to reduce the number of phone calls or to try to make it a better experience for customers”
Communication at the Heart of DX
The pandemic has highlighted the necessity to have efficient communications. The rapid rise of Teams from 20 million daily active users in 2019 to over 145 million in 2021 only highlights the importance of having quick and easy forms of communications between employees.
Thompson said that communications has risen to the top of the IT spending stack, adding that communications will be at the heart of any digital transformation projects next year.
