Technology 2015: market behavior in an uncertain year

Unsurprisingly Brazil is going through a delicate moment in its economy, forecasts for GDP growth do not come to 0.05%, and there is little time experts have considered, including the probability of zero that percentage. On the other hand, IDC Brazil shows an increase of up to 5% in the ICT market (IT and Telecommunications) in the country in 2015. Obviously this does not mean that technology companies will invest more in the country; now is the time to keep, or perhaps even retract some of the investments already planned. But beyond the numbers, in practice, how industries and IT services companies intend to behave this year?

The oriented solutions for Business Intelligence and SMACIT (Social, Mobile, Analytics, Cloud and Internet of things) are increasingly sought after, the demand for tools that provide strategic information for decision making, as well as those that aim to address the new needs of customers remains solid. The companies look for ways to take a holistic view of your business and an increasingly assertive analysis of business data, their processes and their customers as well as the means of how to interact with these customers require a different composition support something that has been called Digital Strategy.

A new role and positioning are required by CxOs, to devise a strategy that meets the new information requirements dispersed in various media.

This strategy requires a new approach and focused support for the development of a Digital Marketing Strategy that addresses the concerns of their loyal customers and enable expansion into new customers through the new media; Furthermore there is also the need for Digital Operations Strategy that includes a compatible technology platform, enabling the decentralized processing, agile, secure and scalable in several platforms and locations; finally, it is necessary to make possible the diversity of interactions of its customers, contemplating a heterogeneous Digital Workplace Strategy allowing access from various devices, to a variety of means such as via mobility, social media etc.

We see in the case of retail businesses a clear example of the need for inclusion of a digital strategy that includes solutions that meet the growing demand for M-Commerce solutions that go beyond the traditional E-commerce and making it possible, through the navigation mobile in the product catalog, performing check-outs and electronic payments integrated into the banking network, and the withdrawal of the goods in a nearby town or even the customer’s home; this example is the current effort of these companies to achieve excellence in customer experience.

Thus the Customer Experience is no longer a search and becomes more and more a reality and a need to be met by technology area, either for the retail industry as in all others.

For the development of an approach based on these new experiments required by the consumer, a Digital Strategy invariably passes through the alignment of IT investments with the essential demands of support and business growth supported with these new technologies. In this sense, new terminology such as Demand Shaping, or in free translation, demand modeling, begin to be inserted in the technological jargon. This approach is nothing more than developing a clear and transparent governance, using existing planning tools such as roadmaps, strategic mapping and monitoring of value in order to present to senior where IT investments are being channeled, which programs and what business benefits are achieved and which methods should be used, so this understanding show the clear need for a new contribution in technology to support the business. Then we should perform the engagement of key people to review and adjust (shaping) of the initiatives will be part of the strategy to be followed. In the end, for adoption of these new technologies there is a need of adequate training resources, as part of solvers teams with the technical expertise necessary for its rapid implementation.

So hiring of specialized services to support a Digital Strategy is something present in the context of this and future years.

Furthermore, considering a portfolio of programs and projects aligned strategically sound and there is also the need to iniciatiavas of incorporation to ensure the quality of their implementation. In this sense, many companies are looking for additional services to strategic initiatives such as Testing Services to ensure the quality of deliverables. In this sense, for some years, IT organizations have invested heavily in robust methodologies and tools to support these services even include alternatives to reduce costs running in the cloud, enabling a low investment in tools and devoting greater amount to the contribution service, in which case testing services. In the financial area, banks have been highlighted with high investments on an ongoing basis, in order to structure your application development area with specialized teams in the development of requirements, development testing, or even the hiring of test plants (testing factories) to to conduct verification and validation of a large volume of applications, ensuring that new and existing features not suffer impacts.

Growth opportunity

Thus, a point that should be considered in IT companies, in particular for outsourcing companies, is that in uncertain economic times and pessimistic forecasts, the outsourcing companies are still a large room for growth. The search for cost reduction, reduction of capital investment and preference for hiring services that do not represent the core business, but which are essential for ensuring the continuity of business outsourcing companies to bring an increase of differentiated demand, even in times of crisis. Also in a growing, we have the outsourcing of business processes areas (such as finance, controlling, purchasing) by BPO (Business Process Outsourcing), passing control of administrative processes to specialized companies allowing siginificativo gain by failing to take responsibility a support functions. In this regard, many IT companies have also invested considerably in offering BPO services as attractive to companies seeking process optimization and cost reduction.

The technology market in 2015

The overview of the current scenario shows challenging, particularly with the economic downturns and needs adjustments made at the beginning of 2015, but there is a very promising outlook for technology companies that are able to make an alignment of its portfolio to the changing needs of its customers, whose demand for new technologies continues expanding, and whose role of the CIO is becoming more important in the strategic direction of the use of these technologies, focusing on core demands to the business, using tools and service to support the implementation of this strategy.

Full article: http://corporate.canaltech.com.br

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