What will 2023 bring? With rising costs, global supply chain issues and a recession coming, 2023 promises to be a year of change and challenge for businesses. How do businesses achieve their goals, service their customers and streamline their business will be a driving focus and this is where your digital strategy comes in.
We have highlighted 5 key themes to focus your 2023 digital strategy on.
Cyber security
In 2022 we saw a significant rise in demand for cyber security services and products from our customers. With high profile breaches on the news and the move to cloud and home working driving organisations to take security more seriously.. We expect this trend to continue in 2023 with more focus on multi factor authentication, email and data security.
Doing more with less – automation, automation, automation
The rise in costs seen by consumers is also one felt strongly by businesses in the second half of 2022 and one we expect to continue to cause challenges into 2023. The focus needs to be on getting more value with the resources you have in place. This has seen significant demand for new automated and digitized processes across the board. With the ability to generate a full return on your investment in one year or less and free up more resources to add value you can see why many organisations are turning to this route.
We use the Microsoft Power Platform including Power Automate and Power Apps to rebuild manual, spreadsheet or paper-based processes into automated and easy to use applications.
Rationalisation of IT infrastructure
One shift in the IT landscape is an acceptance that having a complex suite of digital solutions from a wide range of vendors creates a maintenance cost in terms of management. Understanding and quantifying this cost has caused many of our customers to consolidate offerings into one vendor.
Being a Microsoft gold partner, it is no surprise that the chosen vendor has regularly been Microsoft. With the ability to provide every digital service you can think of and the significant savings available via the bigger bundles you can save on license and maintenance costs going forward.
Bedding down of hybrid working infrastructure
In 2023 we are entering into the final stages of the shift to hybrid working. In 2022 we still saw significant demand for improving remote access, communication and collaboration platforms and as mentioned cyber security.
These solutions cover a wide range of services, from replacing poor performing VPNs with Azure Virtual Desktop, Desk phones with Microsoft Teams Phone and file drives with SharePoint Online.
We do see some organisations with a few final pieces needed to fully optimise their hybrid working environment for their employees and expect this to happen in 2023.
Download our Optimising your hybrid working infrastructure guide.
Low code growth
It is clear from industry news and through our customers that low code is slowly but surely taking over. As a Microsoft partner the Microsoft Power Platform is becoming a go-to solution for a wide number of challenges. We saw unprecedented growth in 2022 in this area with more organisations than ever turning to the Power Platform. With the ability to develop applications 70% cheaper than traditional routes you can see why it has grown so significantly.
One thing that was clear in 2022 and we expect to see this grow in 2023 was the focus on governance. Organisations are walking a fine line between enabling citizen developers and creating data leaks, poor performing apps and a lack of trust in the accuracy or calculations. The right training and governance framework can manage these efforts and deliver the value available from the platform. Discover our Power Platform quick start package here.
These are our top 5 trends for 2023 with another interesting year full of digital transformation ahead. If you would like help with your digital strategy or with any of the themes above, please contact us today.
