How will technology alter through the course of 2022 and how different will the results be compared with similar predictions made about 2021? One company stepping forward to offer advice as to what the next year may bring is Syntax. This is in the form of a new report, of which a summary has been provided to Digital Journal. The report looks at three essential themes: cybersecurity, automation, and employee skills.
The first thing evident from the report is the fact that IT leaders tend to overinflate their actual innovation capabilities, meaning that these three themes are too often overlooked or underestimated. While many executives ranked themselves on the “leading edge,” meaning among the top 5 percent of businesses when it comes to innovation, their actual capabilities reflect a different picture. The capabilities form the three core themes of the report.
Cybersecurity
Key findings in this year’s report include the stark warning that business should expect even more cyberattack fallout next year. This issue is compounded by an overall lack of preparedness. The survey finds that nearly half of respondents (49 percent) said they would be unable to successfully mitigate a data breach or ransomware attack
The altering world of work has also introduced new risk factors. For example, when it comes to securing the hybrid workplace, 43 percent of respondents said they are only somewhat confident their company can keep them safe from cyberattacks.
Automation
A different technology trend is with making work easier and central to this concept is automation. However, too many enterprises appear to lag in adopting automation.
With the application of technologies designed to enhance automation, the majority of enterprises reported less than 50 percent of their processes are currently automated, and low-code and no-code tools are still absent from 48 percent of enterprises. Additionally, the findings indicate that automation investments are seeing the lowest returns with only 42 percent of enterprises reporting positive ‘return on investment’.
Talent shortages
As to why the returns are so low, this potentially a deeper symptom of talent shortages within many areas of business technology. Hence the third key finding from the survey is that talent shortages are slowing transformation timelines.
This is borne out by 45 percent of business saying they do not have the talent to migrate to a public cloud. Furthermore, only 36 percent of companies think they have the staff to implement artificial intelligence automation.
This brings the three core findings together. Too many businesses are vulnerable when it comes to cybersecurity and they are not realizing efficiency gains due to automation. Underpinning both of these is a lack of suitable employees equipped with the necessary skills to drive forwards the next transformational wave.
