Top 5 predictions for enterprise management in 2020

Best practice

Top 5 predictions for enterprise management in 2020

This article has been contributed by Matt Klassen, Vice President of Product Marketing at Cherwell, to share some insight into what he thinks will be major trends in 2020 and beyond.

Low code will democratise IT

Low-code, no-code or “codeless” are big buzz words right now in enterprise IT, and for good reason. By allowing anyone in the business to develop and build new processes themselves without any coding – and thus no expensive developers or staff training required – no code or low-code is the Holy Grail of digitisation. It empowers non-technical users, accelerates innovation, improves technology adoption and reduces the time-to-market for new solutions. More fundamentally however, it democratises IT, so everyone in the business can contribute to digitisation.

It is important to note that not all low-code tools are designed with citizen or business developers in mind. Many of the tools coming from the rapid application development space are still designed for professional developers with the goal of making them more productive. These low-code tools still require scripting and coding. By contrast, no-code platforms for service management tend to focus more on non-professional or business developers. The goal of no-code platforms is to enable these non-coders to design better experiences, automate workflows, identify actionable trends and allow quick and easy integration with various systems of record.

“Multi-experience” comes of age

Gartner describes multi-experience as the replacement of technology-literate people with people-literate technology. This is based on the idea that the way we interact with technology has evolved far beyond a single channel or application – we now interact with technology in so many different ways, from collaboration platforms and augmented reality to smart watches, etc. The key is to truly understand your users and build multiple ways for them to engage, such that they can experience your technology in the way that works best for them.

Since we don’t know what tomorrow’s interfaces will look like, how do enterprises build technologies that are ready to deliver the multi-experience of the future? Software platforms must be designed in such a way that ensures whichever technology is implemented, it must be able to respect the individual user’s preferred interface. While some generations prefer email or phone, others prefer collaboration tools and instant messaging. Enterprise Service Management (ESM) – which enables different business units to manage their processes (often in a no-code manner) – will increasingly become the foundation for the multi-experience because its functionality is inherently agnostic to the interface or interfaces adopted by the user.

Automation steps up a gear

Enterprises have been expanding their use of automation over the last few years. In 2020, we will see organisations accelerate their automation efforts with Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML). This will increase the sophistication of automation beyond repetitive tasks, instead providing organisations with end-to-end workflow automation. This will bridge organisational silos and provide richer analysis, discovery, measurement, etc.

ESM platforms that focus on low or no-code will be well positioned to lead an organisation’s automation efforts since it provides the common foundation for the automation of all processes, since an ESM platform covers all aspects of automations (people-to-people, people-to-machine and machine-to-machine type workflows).

The rigorous data protection environment is now the “new normal”

The GDPR (General Data Protection Act) is no longer the new frontier it once was. With EU-wide enforcement starting in May 2018, the GDPR can be credited with bringing data security and traceability into the wider public consciousness and motivating organisations to be much more transparent in how they use their customers’ data.

At the same time, organisations are using more data than ever before to deliver better experiences to their customers. ESM has helped organisations to keep the lights on under this new normal, ensuring they can continue to bring together various data points to advance their business, while ensuring the integrity of the data wherever it lies. This will continue at a pace in 2020 as organisations are now familiar with how to innovate within the constraints of the GDPR.

DevOps reshapes IT

DevOps has been a trending topic for a while now, but in 2020 it will move from trend to reality in many organisations as they restructure siloed infrastructure and operations teams into collaborative cross-functional product teams.

Another word that will be used in combination with DevOps is “Versatilist,” which refers to the new breed of IT operations personnel that deliver a specific application or service via multiple different technologies. This new approach will provide focus on business outcomes for core services and the whole set of technologies needed to innovate, deploy, and operate those services.

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