2023 has been another transformational year for IT professionals. Just as employees everywhere had acclimatised to a perpetual hybrid world, a new technology arrived that promised to revolutionise our working lives once again: AI. Jeremy Rafuse, Vice President & Head of Digital Workplace at GoTo and Olga Lagunova, Chief Technology Officer at GoTo discuss their predictions for IT going forward into 2024.
Almost unheard of amongst common workplace necessities until ChatGPT’s release at the end of 2022, the rise of AI, and Generative AI in particular, has been nothing short of staggering. Today, millions of workers around the world already use AI to streamline their workloads and uncover valuable new insights. Meanwhile, security and compliance regulations continue to tighten in response to new technologies and potential threats, and leaders persevere with experiments around cost efficiencies and innovations in the face of tough economic conditions. So, what will 2024 hold for IT leaders and the wider industry? Let’s explore our top predictions today, so that your organisation can be fully primed for tomorrow.
The big picture: Harnessing New Tools to Drive Productivity and Innovation
To drive innovation, CTOs must identify and evaluate new technologies, develop and implement new products and services, create a culture of innovation in the company, and upskill talent. It’s a tall order but in 2024, leaders must focus on taking full strategic advantage of game-changing technologies, such as cloud, automation, and Artificial Intelligence, and pay special attention to their industry-specific technology advancements. The demand for the use of data to support data-driven decisions and to create new, smarter products will rise. Data will continue to be a pressure commodity for an organisation. CTOs will need to reevaluate their data collection, data architecture, and the ways to expose data.
By adopting cloud and modern engineering practices, such as Continuous integration (CI), Continuous Delivery (CD), Infrastructure as code (IaC), Containerisation, and microservices, CTOs can improve productivity and efficiency of technical talent in the organisation, reduce costs, and get products to market faster. CTOs must also invest in training and development programs for their employees to stay current with new emerging technologies.
Using AI to scale up business
While 2023 was a breakout year for AI as we became acquainted with tools like ChatGPT, 2024 will be about using the technology more broadly to shape organisations’ digital agendas and create more impactful business outcomes. IT teams should currently be exploring new ways AI can unlock efficiency, such as an internal AI chatbot for helpdesk ticket deflection, customer-facing AI chat and search, and AI-powered tools to support HR processes, to name a few. AI boasts significant potential and stands to revolutionise operations. IT teams would be remiss to not include it in 2024 IT plans.
CTOs can use new AI capabilities and tools such as GitHub Copilot to improve engineering productivity. For example, Copilot can help engineers to write code faster, translate code between languages, reduce repetitive tasks, improve the onboarding process for engineers, and make code more reusable. Artificial Intelligence and Generative AI also create an opportunity to amplify employees’ productivity across all functions: IT and engineering, marketing, sales, customer care, HR, finance and more. AI and humans are better together. To take advantage of AI and automation, organisations need to bring in new technologies, change how they work, and train/ upskill the employees.
CTOs can take advantage of data and AI capabilities to create efficiencies in the organisation by:
• Identifying and automating repetitive tasks: AI can automate repetitive tasks, such as data entry, customer service, and financial reporting. This can free up employees to focus on more strategic tasks and improve productivity.
• Improving decision-making: AI can improve decision-making by analysing large amounts of data and providing insights that would be difficult or impossible for humans to spot.
• Improving customer experience: AI can be used to personalise the customer experience by understanding customer preferences and recommending products and services that are likely to be interesting. Chatbots can answer customer questions and resolve the most frequent customer issues, freeing up customer service representatives to focus on more complex issues. Generative AI can transform the experiences of Contact Centre Agents by providing just-in-time assistance and advice, helping human agents to serve customers better.
• Optimising operations: AI can be used to:
• Predict when equipment is likely to fail. This allows businesses to schedule maintenance in advance and avoid costly downtime.
• Forecast demand for products and services. This allows businesses to optimise their inventory levels and production schedules.
• Fraud detection: AI can be used to detect fraudulent transactions and activities. This can help businesses protect their assets and reduce losses.
As AI continues to develop, CTOs will have even more opportunities to use it to create organisational efficiencies. By keeping up with the latest AI trends and developments, CTOs can position themselves as leaders in the digital transformation space.
Improving cybersecurity, privacy, and compliance
As new ways of working and engaging with tech continue to expand the vulnerability landscape and create new pathways for hackers, you’d be hard-pressed to find an IT leader whose number one concern wasn’t cybersecurity. Bolstering cyber hygiene to stave off threats and protect sensitive data is a top agenda item, especially in a working world where hybrid, dispersed and remote-centric teams are commonplace. In 2024 businesses should be firing on all cylinders to scale up employee security, utilise zero trust products, continue to enforce a strong acceptable use policy (AUP), and move toward passwordless authentication. These are simple yet powerful ways we can improve and modernise current practices to ensure that cyber threats can’t breach company systems.
Cybersecurity is a top priority for all businesses-small and large. CTOs, working with CISOs, are responsible for protecting their business, customers, and employees from cyberattacks and data breaches. In 2024, CTOs must continue implementing robust security measures and invest in new cybersecurity technologies, including zero-trust architectures (ZTAs).
Optimising IT’s value
To innovate or to optimise? Increasing budget pressure due to economic conditions will demand further simplification and consolidation of the technology stack used by organisations and increased productivity of existing teams.
Driving forward digital transformation initiatives while navigating budget constraints is a challenge many IT leaders face. That’s why in 2024, the critical focus must be on value creation. When it comes to effective IT, less is more, and too many tools can run up costs, accrue technical debt, and lead to disjointed user experiences. Exploring new and innovative technologies is an essential way to add value for customers and remain competitive, but an equally important part of this is tidying up the IT toolkit.
Right now, we should all be looking to consolidate our software to remove clunky and redundant capabilities. This also extends to physical hardware-by moving certain workloads to the cloud, office and data centre footprints can de significantly reduced. And let’s not forget the people benefits either! Strategically migrating certain processes to single platforms can make a real difference in terms of ease of use. Taking proactive measures to enable business operations will not only conserve costs in the long run but also drive up IT’s overall value. Businesses should always strive for quality over quantity, and cost optimisation will follow.
Creating a culture of upskilling
It’s no secret that in today’s hybrid workforce, technology is critical to the employee experience, and therefore, business outcomes. But an often-overlooked part of this equation is equipping employees with the foundational knowledge and support they need to succeed. A central priority in 2024 will be training and educating employees on using new technologies, like generative AI, in day-to-day roles. For AI implementation to be successful, IT teams must create a culture of digital literacy and understanding. If employees lack this knowledge base, they won’t reap the many benefits AI has to offer, and may even put company data at risk through unintentional misuse.
A critical component of improving security, especially for hybrid and remote workers, will be rolling out improved guides and training around home networking and security best practices. With a myriad of factors impacting the world of IT at speed, businesses should consider revamping onboarding processes to maximise employee impact. These updates and improvements will contribute to a more self-sufficient and functional virtual working environment for employees.
Accelerate digital transformation and improve customer experiences
Digital transformation has been a priority for CTOs for several years, but it is becoming even more critical in 2024 as businesses face increasing competition. CTOs should anticipate an increased demand to improve customer experience by understanding the customers’ needs and providing outstanding services and communication. And they must help their businesses improve customer experience by implementing new AI-enabled technologies, starting with customer care and support, marketing, and sales.
By leveraging new tools and investments, improved internal productivity and employee collaboration will then seep into the experience of not just our colleagues, but also our customers’ experiences and help organisations become leaders in their fields-long into 2024 and beyond.
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