E is for excuses.
"Tech regulators are still very much reactive when it comes to enforcing compliance and imposing fines in the sense that they continue to rely on companies to 'turn themselves in'.
"The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic is going to test the regulators' patience with companies blaming their lack of compliance on pandemic-related challenges – particularly those that rely on manual processes to comply.
"Streamlining compliance with regulator certifications and implementing regulator standards in 2021 are key steps to tackle this issue.
- Stephen McNulty, President Asia Pacific and Japan at Micro Focus. ESM stands for enterprise security management, while IDM stands for identity management.
F is for (a new) focus.
"Organisations will continue to employ the lessons they learned in 2020 — namely, investing in architectural agility up and down the stack. Additionally, the adoption of new initiatives will be lower on the list of leadership priorities, so internal innovation will be key in maintaining distributed workforces. Keeping the organisation alive and connected — both in terms of technology and regarding emotional engagement and enthusiasm — during the ongoing economic downturn will require IT teams to home in on existing technologies within the business and strengthen the skills required to keep them running optimally."
- Leon Adato, Head Geek, SolarWinds.
"As we try to adapt to the new normal, tech priorities will also continue to be shuffled around until we find the right balance. When it comes to network management, for example, the systems and infrastructure once business-critical (e.g., the fibre backbone running across the campus) are now secondary, while parts of the network once viewed as 'nice to have' (e.g., client VPN connections for every employee) are now more than mission-critical—they’re the essential tools of the business."
- Sascha Giese, Head Geek, SolarWinds. VPN stands for virtual private network.
G is for green initiatives.
"It’s clear the effects of climate change are real, and we need to find a way forward. This is particularly true of industries like resources, transport, and agriculture. As companies continue to embed and accelerate their digital transformation, they need to do this with a view on climate change and its effects. In the face of these concerns, technology can enable better practices.
"Innovative solutions like edge computing will play a key role in this space – for example, implementing and tracking efficient and sustainable practices on the ground, tweaking and optimizing on the go to increase yield, decrease emissions, better manage productions lines, and so on."
- Ho Chye Soon, Singapore Country Manager, Nutanix.
"Sustainability has risen beyond being just a key global supply chain trend. In 2021, it will become an imperative. In every single buying decision, enterprises will factor in the impact on their carbon footprint goals. And with new efforts led by the World Economic Forum and the EU aimed at standardising metrics and reducing ‘greenwashing’, businesses will be held more accountable for their efforts."
- Matthew Oostveen, CTO, Asia Pacific & Japan, Pure Storage.
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| Source: SensorFlow. Ranganathan. |
"The misconception that sustainability is too expensive or not worth investing in needs to be dispelled, especially among hotels. Many solution providers have leveraged technology to build accessible solutions that address high costs and disruptive installations. They are also much more intuitive to use, often requiring only basic tech knowledge.
"Sustainable technology also needs to be holistically integrated with business operations rather than a piecemeal deployment to reap maximum benefit. Artificial intelligence (AI)-driven automation and smart energy solutions have an immediate positive effect, but they will achieve their full potential over time as they continuously gather data and insights. Implementation should be done with a view towards the long-term future instead of as an instant magical cure."
- Saikrishnan Ranganathan - CEO & Co-Founder of SensorFlow.
H is for human error.
"While network security controls remain an important component of cloud security, additional layer of identity and access management (IAM) governance is now needed as organisations continue to scale their cloud presence. (In 2020), Palo Alto Networks Unit 42 researchers observed that a single IAM misconfiguration could allow attackers to compromise an entire, massively scaled cloud environment and bypass just about every security control.
"Overall, our findings indicate that these identity misconfigurations are prevalent across numerous cloud accounts and represent a significant security risk to organisations, with the potential to impact entire environments, with thousands of workloads, in less than one week."
- Sean Duca, VP and Regional Chief Security Officer, Asia Pacific & Japan, Palo Alto Networks.
I is for integration.
"Open APIs have become the ‘new normal’ and SaaS players need to fit their product into the ecosystem or risk being excluded from the stack. This also leads to a smoother experience for the user, empowering providers to foster a stronger relationship with customers and ultimately build loyalty.
"We will see integrations and the ecosystems play being an important role in marketing communications throughout 2021. Big global players such as Shopify and HubSpot will only continue to grow their presence, and with that we will see more appetite from brands to provide automated, integrated solutions for customers, such as with their SMS communications. The marketers that can best leverage these tools for multichannel engagement will create the strongest connections with their customers and in turn, drive ROI."
- MessageMedia COO Anushka Wijendra. API stands for application programming interface; SaaS for software as-a-service, and ROI for return on investment.
"There is an increasing demand for embedding the crucial metadata into the data objects so that it's not just about performance, but about being intelligent. Object storage is well suited to the growth of cloud platforms and the big data environment of the modern world. Ultimately, customers want a scalable, agile system that can handle the challenges of modern, unstructured data.
"While object storage might be having a renaissance, it is not on its own a panacea. It might be highly scalable but it cannot mutate individual pieces, i.e. open up an object and write a few bytes out of it. In order to be successful a full application workflow needs more than just an object store. While fast file storage is not a new concept, putting file and object together in the same platform is a creative way to avoid building two different silos and adding more complexity. Unified file and object is the future and 2021 will see this category go mainstream."
- Oostveen from Pure Storage.
"With further IT/OT integration with systems such as ERP, AI/ML, and CRM, we will be witnessing an increasing number of rich sensors that can stream data bidirectionally. These sensors will move further towards streaming events, which will be processed in pipelines, and lead to efficiencies, innovations and insights. IoT will also grow from the current ‘capture and analyse later’ via big data lakes towards real-time bidirectional command and control. With innovation in mobile-access edge computing, low latency use cases will start to get solved at the edge as well."
- Sumeet Puri, Chief Technology Solutions Officer, Solace. IT/OT stands for information technology/operations technology. ERP refers to enterprise resource planning; ML to machine learning; and CRM to customer relationship management. IoT is acronym for the Internet of Things.
J is for the evolution of jobs.
Customer service
"Marketing engagements, customer interactions and customer support will each be at the centre of digital transformations in 2021. Greater personalisation in marketing and communication is assured.
- Keysight.
Finance
"In 2021, a technology that businesses should consider is cloud-based payroll that reduces the manual processes of data input and verification. Adjusting to regulatory changes is a complex task; minimising the risk of non-compliance often requires sophisticated technology and expertise from a premium payroll partner.”
- ADP’s President, Asia Pacific, Peter Hadley.
"Everyone experienced a disrupted year, but for finance & accounting (F&A), the challenge exacerbated by the pandemic has been holding companies back for years. While so many other parts of business have benefitted from digital transformation, F&A is too often still getting the job done with the same tools and technology they have used for decades, still relying on spreadsheets and manual processes. Manual processes take too long, create unnecessary risk and hurt morale and productivity.
"In fact, over half of 11 finance roles - of varying seniority - will be moderately or highly impacted due to technology, according to the ISCA. Many accounting tasks, often routine and easily automated, will also adversely impact junior roles, causing them to be completely displaced by automation. Simply put, traditional manual accounting processes are not sustainable.
"2021 will see F&A invest in technology to turbocharge their digital transformation journeys. This includes moving to a modern accounting model that unifies all of a company’s systems and data into a single source, automates manual, repetitive activities that drain time and energy, and provides real-time information and analyses to inform business decisions. It is no longer a question of if F&A should digitise – it’s now a question of how best to do it."
- Terry Smagh, Senior VP & GM, Asia Pacific & Japan at BlackLine
Smagh also elaborated on what technologies F&A will be adopting:
"In 2021, F&A organisations will increasingly invest in tools and technologies that help their employees better manage their time. Whether it will be automation for repetitive, time-consuming tasks or collaboration tools, more of these will be deployed to help teams find creative ways to connect."
He also said: "Storing data in the cloud allows instant access to computing resources from anywhere at any time. Information is updated in real-time which allows accountants to analyse and make decisions quickly. Additionally, while initially it was only consumer software, business software will increasingly be available on mobile devices so everyone from the Staff Accountant to the Controller, every skill level from contingent worker to tenured accountant, can work smarter and be more productive, in the office, at home, from anywhere."
"The broader use of AI and ML to streamline their manual processes also gives firms a competitive boost by improving their productivity. A recent SAP Concur-commissioned study, for instance, found that as many as 38% of employees in the Asia Pacific region submit expenses manually by filling out a form and enclosing physical receipts. Firms can save tens or even hundreds of thousands of US dollars each year − and improve staff satisfaction − by automating their finance and administration processes.
- Andy Watson, Senior VP & GM for Asia Pacific Japan and Greater China, SAP Concur.
HR
“HR technology is no longer exclusively used by chief HR officers. Employees are also users of HR software and contributors of data. As virtual communication increasingly replaces face-to-face interaction, well-designed UX can boost the employee-employer relationship by improving accessibility, productivity and engagement. When selecting a HR tech platform, decision makers should consider whether it has seamless access across devices, and if the UX is intuitive for employees to upload and access information easily. Another consideration is whether the service provider continually invests in new products and design improvement.”
- Hadley from ADP.
“In the unpredictable job market of 2021, it will be critical for organisations to leverage AI to ensure they find the right candidate for the job. AI will enable HR departments to become more proactive in their hiring and help them determine a candidate’s cultural fit by using data to measure the quality of a hire.
"Innovations such as intelligent screening software that automates resume screening, recruiter chatbots that engage candidates in real-time, and digitised interviews that help assess a candidate’s fit will start becoming commonplace in HR departments.
"AI also holds great promise for creating more diverse and inclusive workplaces, given its ability to reduce biases and add objectivity into employment decision-making through AI-powered algorithms that will identify the unique qualities of candidates.”
- Fabio Tiviti, VP of Asean at Infor.
Innovation-led
"Collaboration technologies and practices have and will continue to take on new significance. Technology businesses will escalate the formation and organisation of mission-critical innovation teams that will be managed remotely.
"Engineers, and other innovators, will need to return to on-site, in-person collaboration, but will be more intentional and strategic about when to do so."
- Keysight.
Marketing
"In 2021, more brands will turn to social media to engage in authentic, one-on-one conversations with customers. The brands that didn’t use social media to drive customer interactions and sales before the pandemic will be forced to digitise their operations. Brands that already established a presence on social before the crisis will increase the use of sophisticated analytics and reporting tools and use data from these tools to guide key business decisions. This will result in brands forming stronger and more intimate bonds with their customers."
- Ryan Holmes, CTO and Co-founder, Hootsuite.
Sales
"Enterprise sales organisations will undergo a significant transformation as hybrid salesforces (mix of in-person and virtual) apply new methods for relationship-building and learning objectives, as well as alternative ways to provide product and solution demonstrations remotely."
- Keysight.
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