IT Priorities 2023: Business automation intensifies as data governance returns
Accelerated enterprise automation, a rediscovery of data governance and a major shift to buyer expertise actions are highlights of enterprise software program and data administration funding for IT consumers within the UK, based on the annual TechTarget/Computer Weekly IT priorities 2023 survey.
The 2023 iteration of the survey was carried out between November 2022 and February 2023. The UK cohort of the worldwide survey comprised 156 know-how decision-makers, of whom one-third have been chief info officers, 30% have been IT managers and 13% have been different IT professionals.
The survey discovered that funding in enterprise automation initiatives was up by 9% to 36%, in contrast with the 2022 analysis. Robotic process automation (RPA) initiatives have been up by 81% to twenty% of respondents saying these have been funding priorities for 2023. Customer experience (CX) was additionally considerably up as an funding space, by 37% to 26%.
The analysis signifies 2023 to be the yr of automation, from using super-hyped generative artificial intelligence (AI) applied sciences such as ChatGPT to extra conventional enterprise and IT automation. Organisations within the EMEA area are planning to extend their use of automation greater than North America and Asia-Pacific, based on the analysis.
But when it comes to a selected space of enterprise purposes, buyer expertise is properly to the fore of funding initiatives. Some 43% mentioned they’ll spend money on buyer expertise software program spanning advertising and marketing, gross sales and make contact with centre administration.
Stephanie Corby, observe director at TechTarget’s analyst division, Enterprise Strategy Group, says: “CX is a top business driver for enterprise organisations … but the reality is that most organisations are still in the early stages of CX maturity and strategy. The complexity of CX technology stacks has created integration and adoption challenges that will inevitably drive conversion to platforms.”
Learning and expertise growth got here in as a distant third to CX, at 32% of respondents. Enterprise resource planning, the core software of enterprise purposes, got here in at 26%, whereas provide chain administration was backside of the pile at 15%, down from 23% within the UK lower of the identical survey for 2022.
Supply chain administration had been a excessive precedence in 2022, at 23%. Many of the extra complicated firms, with inelastic world provide chains, had a torrid Covid-19 pandemic, and been pressured into surprising provide chain adjustments.
Customer analytics and customer support help are each rising in 2023 as towards 2022, the analysis discovered. Significant numbers of respondents are rising their investments in superior buyer understanding applied sciences: 26% are investing in buyer journey mapping, 19% in advertising and marketing automation and KM, and 16% in chatbots.
HR software program is one other area rising in 2023 as towards the earlier yr. Learning administration and expertise growth was the highest class for funding, at 35%. This could counsel organisations are proactively investing in in-house expertise as a way to obviate such developments as quiet quitting or the “great resignation” of the peak of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Similarly, one other enterprise purposes space that organisations are planning to spend money on closely which could counsel a buttress towards attrition is knowledge management, lengthy thought of a relic of the late Nineteen Nineties. KM got here out as third within the content material administration class, behind the extra routine and mechanical areas of content material administration programs and e-signatures.
In phrases of the emperor of enterprise purposes, ERP, this yr’s analysis discovered that customers of legacy programs are struggling emigrate to cloud supply, however that extra are prepared to make the leap due to new functionalities that derive from synthetic intelligence/machine studying, the web of issues, blockchain and higher software integrations.
Real-time data analytics strikes ahead
Better buyer understanding and repair is likely one of the use circumstances for real-time data analytics. Not coincidentally, that know-how emerged as a prime funding space from the analysis.
Stephen Catanzano, senior analyst on the Enterprise Strategy Group, mentioned, apropos the analysis: “In 2023, I see a significant shift toward the use of data for real-time decision-making becoming a reality for all sizes of companies, as technology in this space has innovated and matured over the past few years.”
Three areas that emerged as rising in 2023 as towards 2022 have been: data science and machine studying platforms, at 23%; embedded analytics, at 19%; and data preparation, at 17%.
Data governance appears to be seeing a re-emergence as a brand new wave of regulation within the space of AI – one instance being the EU’s AI Act – comes into being.
2023 has been shaping up as the yr of data worth, as digital transformation and the underpinning digitisation of data has introduced data governance, stewardship, data observability and IT Ops into the highlight.
Growing this yr as towards 2022 as areas for funding are: data high quality, at 36%; data governance, at 56; cloud data warehousing, at 19%; and data lakehouses, at 8%. The “data lakehouse” is a portmanteau time period combining the data warehouse with the unstructured data lakes that emerged with and after the rise and fall of Hadoop, as a software program framework for large data. It has primarily been the area of Databricks, however has gained traction outdoors that exact provider, for instance, chez Cloudera.
