Software and tech predictions have been the talk of IT town for a good bit of time, particularly when 2014 came to a close. Despite the fact that predictions are just that – predictions – and may either come to fruition or not, they point businesses in the right direction in terms of the trends to watch out for in their respective fields.
The folks over at Cloudswave, a ranking site for cloud based business software solutions, helped me put some of these predictions together and provided some of the research for this article.
Human resources (HR)
1. Continued growth in the HR software market
As summarized by a Market Research Media report entitled “Human Resources (HR) Software Market Forecast 2015 – 2020,” the software market is expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 2.4% to reach $9.2 billion by 2020, a growth that will mostly be driven by talent management sectors – hiring, training, performance management, and succession management – and the continuing move to the (software-as-a-service) SaaS model.
2. Increased tech adoption and focus on talent
Chris Bruce of TLNT.com foresees a greater focus on talent and the HR industry’s increasing tech adoption for both hiring and retaining talent. As employee engagement becomes more complex, i.e., millennials prefer work-life balance whereas baby boomers are more concerned about their health care benefits, HR will need to work past a one-size-fits-all benefits package and offer perks addressing the unique needs of each of their employees.
On the technology side of the equation, as mobile devices become more and more ubiquitous in the workplace and as employees demand better use of their devices, mobile-optimized HR software will be seen as a welcome addition, enabling employees to quickly and easily access pertinent HR information such as rewards packages, hospital benefits, and leave accruals anywhere, anytime, even while they’re on vacation.
3. Internal recruiting to solve the “quit” issue
A recently published HR Cloud article by Robin Schooling summarizes what the experts identified as trends to pay attention to in 2015. One of such trends speak to the cost-effectiveness of developing internal talent more than hunting for fresh ones, the same way it’s cheaper to market to existing customers than acquire new ones.
4. Evolution of the hiring process
A Quantum Workplace article by Natalie Hackbarth asked the experts their opinions on various HR aspects. Below are some recruitment and retention predictions:
A heightened focus on candidate experience will be seen, which can involve interacting with prospective employees while they’re at other jobs.
The marketing and sales department is better equipped to attract talent to organizations more than HR.
Forward-thinking organizations will hire for culture fit rather than skills.
Before recruiting more people, focus on creating an awesome workplace to retain your top talents, particularly since competition for talent is very real and employees increasingly probe the market for better opportunities.
5. Gen Y’s move to leadership roles and the arrival of Gen Z
Generation Y, or millennials, which demographers say were born between the early 1980s to the early 2000s, are taking on more leadership positions. If your company plans to promote millennials, 2015 will be the year to start training them, advises Margaret Jacoby in a Huffington Post article.
While there’s no consensus yet on the exact birth date ranges, many individuals from Generation Z, who Jacoby pegs, in the same Huff Post article, as born between 1995 and 2010, will likely be senior college students by the end of the year. An organization will do well to consider hiring the highly talented of the bunch before the competition does.
Cybercrime trends
1. Targeted attacks
ESET’s global research team predicts that 2015 will see an upward creep in the number of targeted attacks. Targeted attacks, according to Webopedia.com, are not widespread in nature but rather are “aimed at a specific user, company, or organization.”
Pablo Ramos of ESET’s Latin America research lab explains that targeted attacks use social engineering techniques “where psychological manipulation is used to encourage potential victims into performing actions or divulging confidential information.” These attacks can also come as zero-day exploits, which PC Tools by Symantec explains as holes in software a vendor doesn’t know about, which then are exploited by hackers.
2. Attacks on mobile payment systems
Trend Micro, Symantec, Sophos, and Kaspersky all agree that mobile payment systems will be hot targets for cybercriminals in 2015, as reported by Stuart Dredge in an article on The Guardian.
Not every payment system has been carefully and rigorously tested against real-world threats. And while present mobile payment designs possess adequate security features to counter threats, credit and debit cards will continue to be exploited by criminals. The likeliness of an attack also depends on the popularity of a payment platform. The more popular it is, the more attractive it is to hackers.
3. Exploitation of IoT vulnerability
TechTarget defines the Internet of Things (IoT) as the interconnection of uniquely identifiable devices (e.g., built-in sensors in automobiles, biochip transponders in farm animals, smart thermostat systems, biometric systems on smartphones, and heart monitoring implants) via the Internet “without human-to-human or human-to-computer interaction.”
As more devices store more data and connect to the Internet, cybercriminals are finding more and more attack points.
4. Ransomware and cloud storage
McAfee predicts a serious threat to cloud security as ransomware moves to the cloud. Ransomware, according to Webopedia.com, is a “form of malware in which rogue software code effectively holds a user’s computer hostage” until a fee is paid.
Aside from mobile devices and other endpoints, McAfee Labs also foresees ransomware authors increasingly targeting cloud-based storage systems like Google Drive, Dropbox, OneDrive, and others.
Gartner’s top tech trends
In a news release, Gartner’s research analysts identified the top 10 tech trends for 2015 as follows:
1. Computing everywhere
As mobile devices become more and more prevalent, instead of a device-based focus, the needs of the mobile user in various contexts and environments will take center stage. This trend, however, will create major management challenges for IT organizations.
2. Internet of Things
Patrick Thibodeau of Computer World summarizes this trend as a chance to “empower individuals in IT organizations to develop uses for connected devices and sensors” by applying the four basic usage models derived from widespread digitization: manage, monetize, operate, and extend.
3. 3D printing
A 98% growth in global 3D printer shipment is expected in 2015, which will double in terms of unit shipments the following year. The next three years will see a tipping point in 3D printing as the market for low-cost printers takes on new heights and industrial usage expands.
4. Advanced, pervasive and invisible analytics
Analytics will become deeply entrenched everywhere as every app becomes an analytic app delivering “the right information to the right person, at the right time.”
5. Context-rich systems
Systems will use contextual information about places, people, and things to deliver appropriate responses. An example would be in the travel industry where a traveler’s expectations on weather-related hotel searches are hugely different from that of a traveler searching days in advance of a leisure trip.
6. Smart machines
Self-driving vehicles, advanced cancer-fighting robots, smart digital assistants – all these and more will herald the “most disruptive smart-machine era in the history of IT,” as Tech Republic’s Michael Kassner puts it.
7. Cloud/client computing
Mobile and cloud computing will continue to support information sharing on multiple devices.
8. Software-defined applications and infrastructure
To remain relevant and responsive in a fast-evolving industry, working on hard-coded, predefined systems will no longer suffice. Agile programming of everything from basic infrastructure to applications will be key.
9. Web-scale IT
This means adopting the global-class computing capabilities of large cloud service providers as more organizations, even the small ones, start to replicate the apps and infrastructure built by Google, Facebook, and Amazon for better operational coordination, development, and scalability.
10. Risk-based security and self-protection
As organizations realize that keeping an environment 100% secured is now next to impossible, the trend will move towards the development of self-protecting applications.
Business intelligence (BI) trends
1. Self-service analytics
Sisense’s Saar Bitner foresees 2015 as the year of self-service business intelligence in response to actual users’ need. Users who are now so used to the applicability and usability of the native apps on their mobile devices expect the same capabilities from their BI tools, without the IT department regularly intervening to generate answers to their respective queries.
BI solutions are expected to be: (1) simple for business users who don’t necessarily have IT expertise to use and understand, (2) agile enough to adopt to ever-changing business needs, and (3) scalable and extensible to grow with the organization and its expanding data requirements.
2. Social intelligence
Tableau Software predicts that sellers and marketers will take advantage of social intelligence to separate themselves from the pack. Listening to customer conversations via social tools will allow organizations to be more responsive to their customers’ needs and create more optimized products.
As a consequence, social intelligence leaders will be seen by their competitors as having the uncanny “ability to see into the future.”
3. Business intelligence across the organization
Tableau also sees analytics emerging across organizations as data analysis roles are now taken on by sales professionals, operation supervisors, marketing executives, and so on.
Embedded BI
David Cearley of Gartner predicts that BI will be so deeply integrated everywhere that it becomes invisible.
5. Mobile analytics
As mobile usage becomes more and more ubiquitous, mobile analytics will reach a maturity level that would allow mobile workers to perform some analysis while on the go, forcing “vendors to offer more natural and intuitive interfaces across the board,” says Ellie Fields of Tableau Software.
CRM predictions
1. Mobile CRM
The pervasiveness of mobile devices is changing the business landscape that entrepreneurs are having trouble keeping up. This plus the ease of use and speed afforded by mobile applications, and it’s not surprising that customers are changing the pace at which industries must respond to their needs.
And then, there’s beacon technology, which, while still in its infancy, is expected to revolutionize the way many industries operate – the foremost being the retail sector. With geo-location, retailers will be able to push relevant messaging (e.g., discount coupons or beachwear on sale to the customer on a beach vacation) while customers are inside or near a brick-and-mortar outlet. Repeat shoppers can also be identified and their shopping behaviors inside the store recorded.
2. Cloud CRM
While cloud CRM is nothing new, we’ll see more and more companies switching to web-based CRM applications as Gartner predicts more than 50% of CRM deployments will be cloud-based in 2015.
3. Customer experience
Buying experience has a lot to do with how customers are treated. And with the many choices customers have at their fingertips today, they have a certain power that businesses must recognize. CRM Trends predicts that the “key to satisfying this empowered customer is offering a holistic experience across all company touch points and developing the infrastructure that allows for knowledge sharing and smart communication.”
4. CRM in context
Context-rich systems, which Gartner predicts to be a 2015 trend, will include CRM solutions. Users will be rooting for the software system that understands context more than the software that doesn’t.
5. Digital experience
Social, cloud, and mobile technologies have banded together to empower the customer even more. “Reduced enterprise market barriers,” as Eric Berridge of consulting firm Bluewolf puts it, are affording customers with more choices and information, hence their “expectations for high quality experiences that are relevant, personal, and frictionless.” This paves the way to more and more company initiatives that are hugely customer-facing.
Final word
2014 was proven to be an exciting year for the software industry, and 2015 is shaping to be even more interesting. When properly leveraged, the above trends and predictions can help guide businesses and entrepreneurs with their decision-making functions.
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