Technology Reseller v27

PREDICTIONS technologyreseller.co.uk 35 London’s office market has long since overheated as a result, and now big centres like Manchester are catching fire too. For the channel, 5G will add more scale and speed to the tech infrastructure underpinning London, Manchester, Birmingham et al, creating happy hunting grounds for resellers targeting movers and growers. Those without routes into these markets won’t feel the ripple effects of the 5G goldrush, even as the cost of doing business in such centres rises. RPA Rise of the automation first mindset Guy Kirkwood, chief evangelist , UiPath Gartner describes robotic process automation (RPA), where software robots are used to automate daily processes and free up humans for more creative, strategic tasks, as ‘the fastest growing segment of the global enterprise software market’. It expects the global market for RPA services to reach £5.98 billion this year, as an ‘automation first’ mindset becomes a strategic business imperative. Here are seven trends that I believe will impact RPA adoption this year. 1 The global economic downturn will encourage automation. Signals from the financial markets don’t look good. The fall of long-term interest rates and the retraction of corporate investments reflect increasing instability from global tensions, conflicts and trade wars. If consumer fear takes hold and demand collapses, we could be facing another recession. Normally, organisations would lay off employees and struggle through; automation offers another way forward. As businesses face the realities of working in an economic downturn, I predict they’ll adapt their business models with automation, scaling up robots rather than scaling down human employees. 2 RPA will become the YouTube for automation. In 2020, RPA is going to claim its place as a central platform for other enterprise automation tools: it will become the repository for automation in the same will make up a sizeable chunk of any tender score. If a reseller wants to work in the public sector, things like adherence to the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals are becoming mandatory. Total Cost of Ownership plus Sustainable Development Goals – TCO plus SDG – will be the new success formula in enterprise and public sector. n Business ethics – managing reputation in the trust-apocalypse. Ethics is the natural bedfellow of sustainability and just as much of a focus right now. A brand’s entire value can nosedive through the unethical behaviour of its leadership and bigger enterprises and the public sector will avoid doing business with operators that have tarnished their image. Placing good ethics and robust governance at the centre of how you do business and at the forefront of your proposition to the market is essential. n Don’t believe the hype just yet – avoiding the AI bandwagon. There’s been plenty of talk about the impact of AI, from driverless cars to business applications. While we might find ourselves in the middle of the AI hype curve, the reality is that we are still at the start of a long journey. No doubt there are some amazing innovations, but they remain beyond the reach of most organisations, given the level of investment required to realise them. As we enter the next decade, we’ll see fewer people rushing to buy AI out of FOMO and more properly interrogating their investment. If RPA (robotic process automation) – many people’s first step on the AI journey – enables them to achieve their strategy and direction of travel, great. But the days of buying AI just because it’s the hottest ticket in town are waning. n Mind the gap – the UK’s urban-rural economic gap will widen with 5G . We’re in the early days of 5G but it will be a real game changer for the economy. The big networks are piling into our major cities to make it ubiquitous in these important commercial nodes, while rural businesses are still waiting for fibre optic broadband. This is a problem. The irrepressible rise of urbanisation means our city centre economies continue to flourish and outpace the rest of the UK. Mega Trends Power to the people Phil Jones MBE , Managing Director, Brother UK Last year saw further consolidation in the channel. While this will continue, expect the ripple effects of global megatrends to make themselves felt too. n Power to the people – democratisation. Purely transactional resellers risk further decline as the industry becomes smaller but more sophisticated. Even those resellers that have already transitioned to service-based models will need to up their game as SME buyers get savvy, driven in part by the democratisation of business applications that allows smaller enterprises to access the same tools and solutions as larger firms. Resellers need to stay one step ahead if they are to offer added value back to customers. Scale isn’t necessarily the answer: it used to be that the big ate the small; now, the fast eat the slow. Your relevance, proposition and speed of response will need to be on-point to ensure survival in the democratised business jungle. n Biophilic design – hardware’s role in the outside-in office . Architects working at the vanguard of corporate HQ design are bringing the outside inside. Biophilic design places nature, sometimes entire mini-forests, in the workplace in a bid to keep employees calm and productive. With mental wellbeing high on the agenda and tech and agile working fuelling the dichotomy of people being more together and more alone at the same time, companies are thinking much more deeply about design and creating spaces that foster conversation and productive encounters. Hardware needs to fit around this. The copier room and watercooler, once the village pump of any workplace, are being designed out in favour of a more distributed environment serving smaller, more agile working groups. n Sustainable procurement – TCO plus SDG. There has been a stick shift in how sustainability ranks in buying decisions. The days of box ticking are over; now, you need to demonstrate real evidence, which Phil Jones MBE Guy Kirkwood Part two of our series on the key trends set to shape the world of IT in 2020 2020 Vision Part II continued...