2018 saw continued growth in cloud computing, mobility, and connected data, paving the way for new trends and milestones in 2019. Here are my top predictions for the year ahead:
The emergence of B2BC software.
The intuitive design and user experience of consumer technologies will set a new bar for enterprise software in 2019. Generational changes, workforce mobility and other factors mean business users will expect the same personalized, easy-to-use and self-serve experience in their business software as they do on any other app they use.
This consumerization of enterprise technology will bring with it a new kind of market – what I call B2BC (business-to-business-consumer) software.
Arguably the biggest example and enabler of B2BC software is Microsoft’s Office 365, the world’s most popular SaaS productivity software – and to a growing extent among large organizations, Google Suite. Key to Office 365’s impact on the B2BC space is the Office Store, offering sophisticated business software and add-on modules as easy-to-use apps that customers can pick and choose to meet their precise needs.
2019 will see Office 365 and Google Suite continue to introduce more sophisticated enterprise apps to their marketplace – for finance, data analytics, BI and more.
Platforms deliver on integrated business planning.
Companies continue to struggle to tie plans from sales, marketing, operations and other departments into single, strategic and data-driven plan for the entire business. In 2019, we will see businesses shift away from point solutions for budgeting and consolidation (in finance, for example), towards unified platforms that deliver on the promise of integrated business planning.
Unified planning platforms provide “greater than the sum of its parts” value in tying together disparate planning processes – and their respective technologies and data – in a single solution. They’re not the be-all-end-all for every business process, but ideally suited for business planning. Previously a utopia for CEOs and CFOs, platform-based, integrated planning is very much a reality for 2019.
An evolutionary shift to a truly connected cloud ecosystem.
Having been in business software for 30 years, I’ve seen computing go through several major evolutionary changes. In the 1990’s the personal computer moved computing from the mainframe to the client-server model. In the 2000’s I saw the internet and smart phones usher in the cloud computing era and apps as we know them today.
Now, we’re seeing a similar shift fueled by mainstream cloud adoption, anytime, anywhere mobility and interconnected data. And when the history books are written, the last years of this decade will be marked as the dawning days of the connected cloud ecosystem. In this new era, the cloud is everywhere in business…and business is everywhere.
Both as a function and a result, an overwhelming majority of new enterprise software installs will be purely cloud-based. Medium and large sized company cloud adoption shows no sign of slowing down; in the last year Vena helped some of the biggest, most conservative and risk-averse banks move to cloud software for their most important financial, reporting and regulatory needs. And if Wall Street’s doing it, you know you’ve hit the mainstream adoption point.
