Top digital transformation trends for 2022

As we head towards 2022, busi­ness lead­ers should already be con­sid­er­ing their dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion pri­or­i­ties for next year, along with the nec­es­sary invest­ment to bring them to life.

From cloud-native plat­forms and hyper automa­tion to 5G and the rise of smart cities, board­rooms are nav­i­gat­ing a com­plex mix of emerg­ing tech­nolo­gies, sup­pli­er and cus­tomer demands, and con­flict­ing inter­nal pres­sures as they look to adapt for the long term.

Accord­ing to a study by Snap­Log­ic, automa­tion looks like it will play a key role in this puz­zle. It found 78% of busi­ness­es plan to increase spend­ing on such ini­tia­tives in the com­ing 12 months, while the pan­dem­ic has already seen 48% of IT deci­sion mak­ers accel­er­ate their automa­tion projects.

Sara Ras­mussen, chief com­mer­cial offi­cer at mobile vir­tu­al net­work oper­a­tor Tel­ness Tech, thinks organ­i­sa­tions across all sec­tors are approach­ing their own “digi­tise or die moment”. The pan­dem­ic super­charged the cre­ation and imple­men­ta­tion of new tech­nolo­gies across a range of indus­tries, she says, enabling chal­lenger brands and new entrants to thrive. 

“This exter­nal pres­sure, along­side soar­ing cus­tomer expec­ta­tions, will make 2022 the year when organ­i­sa­tions accept trans­for­ma­tion is no longer option­al, but rather a mat­ter of sur­vival,” Ras­mussen says. “As a result, we’ll see busi­ness­es trans­form­ing their cul­ture and process­es in order to increase flex­i­bil­i­ty and agili­ty through­out their organ­i­sa­tions.”

Jes­si­ca Nord­lan­der is chief oper­at­ing offi­cer at enter­prise dis­cus­sion man­age­ment plat­form Though­tex­change. She believes the pandemic’s fall­out will inten­si­fy the need to reimag­ine the work­place, using a dig­i­tal­ly focused ver­sion of the tra­di­tion­al archi­tect and build­ing plan­ner.

“I believe there’s going to be an increas­ing need for a new cat­e­go­ry of spe­cial­ists able to archi­tect advanced dig­i­tal work­places,” she adds.

Funding questions

The views of Ras­mussen and Nord­lan­der chime with an Octo­ber study by Ricoh Europe, which shows that two-thirds of busi­ness lead­ers (67%) are increas­ing or main­tain­ing their lev­els of invest­ment in dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion.

Finance will be crit­i­cal, Nord­lan­der says. “The most sig­nif­i­cant dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion project that lead­ers will need to under­take in the com­ing year is build­ing a tech­nol­o­gy infra­struc­ture that will sup­port and pro­mote a high-func­tion­ing remote or hybrid work­force,” she says. 

This isn’t going to demand new tech­nol­o­gy, she adds, not­ing that “there’s a lot of that already”. Rather, it will be about using the tech they have inten­tion­al­ly and in a more con­sid­ered and holis­tic way. 

“The changes that have been imple­ment­ed in numer­ous organ­i­sa­tions have so far been far more reac­tionary and hap­haz­ard than inten­tion­al or trans­for­ma­tion­al,” Nord­lan­der adds. 

That hap­haz­ard­ness is per­haps demon­strat­ed in research by Dyna­trace. An Octo­ber report from the soft­ware com­pa­ny found that 22% of the 1,300 senior-lev­el devel­op­ment and DevOps lead­ers sur­veyed admit they’re often under so much pres­sure to meet the demand for faster inno­va­tion that they must sac­ri­fice code qual­i­ty. 

5G’s transformative potential

C‑suites will be keen to ensure this rush doesn’t cause issues for one of 2022’s biggest poten­tial dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion advances: 5G com­mu­ni­ca­tions tech­nol­o­gy. This could empow­er work­ing from home, mak­ing it faster and more sta­ble. It could also inte­grate inter­nal 5G net­works into oper­a­tions and build­ings to pow­er a smart city rev­o­lu­tion, con­nect­ing assets like vehi­cles, build­ings, street­lights and roads. 

Maria Lema is co-founder of Weaver Labs, a busi­ness spun out of King’s Col­lege Lon­don to democ­ra­tise access to tele­coms infra­struc­ture. It digi­tis­es pub­lic and pri­vate assets like street­lamps, traf­fic lights and bus shel­ters to make them con­nect­ed, work­ing with the likes of Trans­port for Greater Man­ches­ter. The company’s projects have been fund­ed by the UK gov­ern­ment and Euro­pean Space Agency.

Lema believes dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion in 2022 will have 5G at its heart. Com­pa­nies must ensure access to dig­i­tal infra­struc­ture and solu­tions — includ­ing con­nec­tiv­i­ty infra­struc­ture – is “more open, trans­par­ent and secure”. This would allow more peo­ple to use it to pos­i­tive­ly impact their every­day lives.

Unlike pre­vi­ous advanced wire­less tech­nolo­gies, 5G democ­ra­tis­es access to high-speed, high­ly reli­able con­nec­tiv­i­ty. 

“This opens the pos­si­bil­i­ty for busi­ness­es across all ver­ti­cals to use con­nec­tiv­i­ty to advance in areas that would have oth­er­wise been impos­si­ble,” Lema argues. “There’s a lot of inno­va­tion in new busi­ness mod­els for infra­struc­ture invest­ment, some­thing we will see evolv­ing much more through­out 2022.”

Wider impacts

Sus­tain­abil­i­ty is also a hot board­room top­ic, though the Ricoh Europe research found that 71% of busi­ness lead­ers don’t believe dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion can help them achieve their company’s long-term sus­tain­abil­i­ty goals. 

Weaver, how­ev­er, believes sus­tain­abil­i­ty should no longer be seen as a trend, but as an essen­tial part of dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion. 

“The core fun­da­men­tals and objec­tives of dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion are to increase pro­duc­tiv­i­ty, effi­cien­cy and inno­va­tion, and in doing so, mak­ing improved solu­tions that inher­ent­ly address sus­tain­abil­i­ty ini­tia­tives, such as the UN’s Sus­tain­able Devel­op­ment Goals,” she says.

Anoth­er key fac­tor that must be con­sid­ered in dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion is the “desk­less work­force”, accord­ing to Kit Kyte, CEO at intel­li­gent oper­a­tions busi­ness Check­it.

Kyte thinks roles like nurs­es, clean­ers, super­mar­ket staff and field engi­neers are falling behind those in tra­di­tion­al desk jobs, who now ben­e­fit from dig­i­tal technology’s influ­ence on pro­duc­tiv­i­ty, col­lab­o­ra­tion and report­ing. 

“For all the mas­sive changes tech­nol­o­gy has brought about, dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion has failed to reach 80% of the work­force,” he says. “As a result, the desk­less have suf­fered from tools that are not fit for pur­pose or man­u­al paper-based process­es that exist because of lega­cy or the lack of a bet­ter option. It needs to be addressed.”

We depend­ed on such work­ers at the height of the pan­dem­ic, Kyte notes. Busi­ness­es must pro­vide them with greater dig­i­tal capa­bil­i­ties, which will unlock val­ue, improve reten­tion, cut waste and inef­fi­cien­cy, raise stan­dards and strength­en cus­tomer con­fi­dence, he says. 

“We need diver­si­ty in dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion. This can be the age of the aug­ment­ed enter­prise – but only if busi­ness lead­ers stop neglect­ing the dig­i­tal pover­ty of their desk­less oper­a­tions.”