As we roll into 2021, it’s imperative that IT teams analyze the data and behavior that’ll determine relevant upcoming trends.  

To help uncover the movements that are right around the corner, we analyzed content from Gartner and McKinsey and followed discussions from the Systematic Community—which includes leaders at companies like Fastly, Google, Aryaka, and more.

Without further ado, here are some of the top IT trends we identified for 2021:

1. Hyperautomation 

The transition to a remote work environment has revealed our over-reliance on manual labor to manage business processes. 

Hyperautomation, or the use of advanced technology to automate previously manual processes, should play an increasingly important role in addressing this during the coming year—especially when you consider that only 7% of enterprise businesses have implemented automation initiatives at a large scale

Before a business can implement hyperautomation next year, however, they’ll need to assess their processes and identify their outstanding issues. It’s easy to speed up bad processes—so it’s imperative that organizations take the time to optimize each before automating it. 

2. Total Experience

Another trend you can expect is total experience: an IT strategy that pulls together the different categories of experience (employee, customer, and user experience) to drive digital transformation.  

To address each of these experience types, companies should continue to incorporate an increasing number of automations and integrations across their processes and tools.  For example, low-code automation tools can transform your employee onboarding process, enabling new hires to hit the ground running; while they can also help deliver delightful experiences for your customers—thereby preventing customer churn. 

3. Security

Heightened security risk is common during this work-from-home era, as employees are no longer protected by office firewalls and are using personal devices, connections, and networks more regularly.  

These changes will only push companies to continue strengthening their security by scaling their authentication measures, focusing on security at an individual level, and investing in security technologies, such as blockchains, to protect customer information and promote trust.

4. Intelligent Composable Business 

To help organizations remain resilient in 2021, they’ll look to become an intelligent composable business (a business model that allows teams to operate with greater autonomy and in a way that’s agile). 

This will help organizations quickly take in data, enhance it, analyze it, and ultimately use it to arrive at better decisions for the business, faster.

What other trends do IT and BT leaders predict for 2021? You can ask them directly by joining our Systematic Community!

Mary Hodges
About Mary Hodges

Mary Hodges is the Community Manager for Systematic.