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Digital Intelligence: 2018 Digital Trends report (Part one)

To understand and prioritise what your next big moves should be, here are the key findings from The Econsultancy 2018 Digital Trends report.

When we talk about digital trends we’re mostly looking at website design, digital marketing or social media. It’s not often we delve into the world of Information Technology and its infrastructure. As a Brisbane website design agency, we see first-hand the trends and challenges facing IT executives trying to integrate legacy systems with new technology. This challenge in itself if the most significant obstacle to driving digital transformation.

Digital powerhouses Adobe and Econsultancy have teamed up to address these issues with their The Econsultancy 2018 Digital Trends report. It’s based on a sample of 400 senior IT leaders who took part in the annual Digital Trends survey, which an estimated 13,000 digital professionals take part in each year. The research dives into the digitally-driven opportunities and challenges facing organisations from the perspective of IT professionals, taking into account internal business factors and external technological and consumer trends.

The largest headache is security

The latest Global Risk Report, published in January 2018, the World Economic Forum stated it was elevating cyber-attacks and data fraud or theft to third and fourth place, respectively, in its list of major risks facing our global society. The only two threats placed higher than this were extreme weather events and natural disasters.

The security risks IT professionals need to deal with are certainly keeping them up at night, and it reflects in the Digital Trends report too. An impressive 44% of respondents said that “security of business and customer data” was the number one key to success of their organisation in 2018, followed by “implementing an extensible digital platform for experience delivery” and “improving digital workflows.”

Due to the open, collaborative, and data-hungry nature of digital-focused businesses, IT professionals are compelled to program new, innovative security strategies with a longer shelf-life.

2018 digital trends

The things keeping IT executives up at night

The threat of a security breach, keeping up with customer expectations and tech failures (downtime) are the top three challenges keeping IT execs up at nights.  Interestingly “industry and geographic compliance across business systems” was the least important.

2018 Digital Trends report

 “The act of becoming truly digital extends beyond the CMO. It is bigger than that” – Paul Roehrig, Chief Strategy Officer, Cognizant Digital Business

Internal IT quandaries

Making progress towards a digitised business is easily blocked by a sea of internal barriers. The most common internal barrier to successfully driving digital transformation was the difficulties around integrating legacy systems utilising new tools or technologies. Coming up against different department needs and typical bureaucratic resistance was a close second. The larger the business, the more difficult it was to approach these challenges.

2018 Digital Trends report

Improving workflows

Workflows come in all shapes and sizes. Some convoluted, some as simple as flicking a switch. In the end, good processes help with the coordination of task, collaboration between team members and synchronisation of data between systems. A good workflow has the ability to reduce costs, improve productivity, boost staff morale and provide great customer satisfaction.

Improving workflows are well on track for IT executives. Switching to a paperless business and integrating cloud systems are two things IT professionals are high on the checkbox list of achievements.

What are digital business looking forward to in the future?

What are digital business looking forward to in the future?

Delivering real-time experiences and Internet of Things devices are the most exciting prospects for digital-focused businesses. The question, which was directed at IT decision makers and other decision makers (CEOs etc.), shows a distinct difference in excitement for IOT devices. This is most likely because non-IT managers err on the side of caution when it comes to security and privacy.

2018 Digital Trends report

In part two in this series on IT Digital Trends, we’ll be looking at the top actionable tips to help future-proof your IT function.


iFactory is one of Brisbane’s leading digital agencies with its finger on the pulse of new technologies. To find out what we can do to elevate the technology in your business, contact us today. 

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