Transformation trends Aussie organisations will follow in 2020

Cultural traits such as empathy and empowerment and organisations powered by AI are some of the digital transformation (DX) trends enterprises in Australia will follow in 2020.

This is according to IDC’s FutureScape: Worldwide Digital Transformation 2020 Predictions – Australia Perspective, a top trends list for the year.

There will be a shift from DX technologies to underlying organisational structures and innovation ecosystems in 2020 according to the research firm.

This includes the adoption of digital KPIs (key performance indicators), with a third of Australian businesses adopting multiple business metrics by 2020 to gain deeper insight into the business value of digital transformation.

“By 2024, the leaders of 50 per cent of Australian (ASX200) organisations will have mastered ‘future of culture’ traits, such as empathy, empowerment, innovation and customer data centricity as they seek digital leadership at scale,” IDC A/NZ research director Louise Francis said.

“This will, in turn, accelerate co-innovation and enable businesses to respond to market changes at hyper speed as the enterprise learns as a single entity and at scale.”

IDC predicts that by 2022 empathy among brands and for customers will drive ecosystem collaboration and co-innovation among partners and competitors, which will drive 20 per cent of the collective growth in customer lifetime value.

AI-powered organisations are also expected to be able to respond at least 20 per cent faster to customers, competitors, regulators and partners. This would be the result of proactive, hyper speed operational changes and market reactions.

Within the next two years, 40 per cent of organisations will neglect investing in market-driven operations and will lose market share to existing competitors that made the investments as well as to new digital entries.

Other trends include the expansion of the functionality and effectiveness of the digital workforce by 25 per cent, fueling an acceleration of productivity and innovation at organisations practicing ‘future of work’.

DX spending is expected to grow from 45 per cent to 55 per cent by 2021with a higher focus on data intelligence and analytics.

A total of 68 per cent of organisations will “aggressively” modernise legacy systems with extensive new technology platform investments through 2023, which is driven by an increase in cyber threats and need for new technology.

Enterprises seeking to monetise on new intelligence technologies will invest over US$5.5 billion in Australia by 2023, making the DX business decision analytics and AI domain a “nexus for digital innovation”, according to IDC.

“As DX budgets and effectiveness come under scrutiny, CEOs, boards and DX decision makers will demand and expect metrics that demonstrate the true value and return on investment. With DX budgets now outstripping tradition IT budgets it is not a matter of if, but when businesses will move to an enriched metrics model,” Francis said.