IT trends 2020: Business benefits from digitization and smart technologies
The importance of digitization has once again risen slightly among companies and in public administration over the past 12 months. Nevertheless, just under 45 percent of the study participants again rate the results of their digitization efforts as only mediocre. In their assessment, CIOs are more skeptical than executives from specialist departments. The results are similarly mixed for the use of intelligent technologies, which on average more than one in three users consider to be a success. This is shown by the results of the annual IT trends study conducted by Capgemini in September and October, in which 120 business and IT managers from companies in Switzerland, Germany and Austria took part.
According to their own statements, just under 41 percent of participants are achieving good to very good digitization successes, including primarily IT service providers and companies from the automotive, retail and consumer goods industries, as well as the public sector. This means that the number of successful companies has risen slightly, but the overall balance has hardly changed. Only around 37 percent of users rate the use of smart technologies as successful or very successful, with executives from the business departments rating it much more positively than CIOs. "Digitization and smart technologies have great benefits for the business departments in their day-to-day work - the business clearly benefits. IT, on the other hand, has to manage increasing complexity and has less and less time to do so," explains Guido Kamann, Head of Capgemini in Switzerland.
Targeted change management ensures good results when using intelligent technologies
The successful use of intelligent technologies correlates with the intensity with which employees are informed, mobilized and qualified. Other success factors include defining a strategy, changing processes, restructuring and active technology management. Successful companies also operate their intelligent systems themselves more frequently than others. They generally perform significantly better than other companies in digitization and specifically in opening up new business areas in other industries.
Companies partly open to regulation of intelligent systems
The majority of study participants find it useful to give themselves ethical frameworks, to document the decisions of intelligent systems and to retain algorithms, which is already mandatory in some fields of application. The majority also agree with external verification of security measures against the manipulation of learning systems and the verification of training data with regard to discrimination. The latter could be carried out by external parties or an independent body within the company, as is common practice for other compliance issues.
Disclosure obligations for algorithms and the restriction of the operation of intelligent systems to European cloud providers meet with a divided response. In contrast, the majority rejects the disclosure of training data and the restriction of areas of use by legislators. "Companies that use smart technologies assume that they will lead to greater competitive pressure worldwide. They therefore see too many restrictions as a risk of falling behind internationally," explains Guido Kamann.
Technology trends 2020
The most important topic among the IT trends for 2020 is security automation, because security tasks are becoming more diverse and more extensive in the context of digitization and not least because of the DSGVO. In second to fifth place are the management of digital identities, the development of new platforms for sales, customer contact, ERP or the Internet of Things (IoT), protection against threats from IoT-enabled devices and the use of DevOps. Digital wallets, virtual or augmented reality solutions, and the digital twin have gained strongly in importance. The most significant increase in importance was in the topics of security automation and cognitive security, which are closely related.
Further results on IT trends 2020
- The use of intelligent technologies such as machine learning, predictive analytics or image recognition is making only slow progress. Problem number one is still the lack of suitable employees. However, the situation has eased slightly compared to last year.
- The use of cloud services has risen steadily over the past eight years. More than 70 percent of all IT services now come from a cloud.
- Service users currently rate their dependence on cloud providers as neither negligibly low nor worryingly high. However, more than three quarters expect it to increase in the future.
- Almost 61 percent of companies exchange data along their supply chain. However, they are very reluctant to share data with third parties - for example, partners outside the supply chain or competitors.
- In contrast to last year, this year's project list largely coincides with the priority list. Work is being done primarily on implementing the technologies that are currently the most important or have gained strongly in importance.
Source: Cap Gemini
