Each year, we see advances in technology. Some technology changes the world in dramatic ways, and yet other tech trends will change how we manage our businesses and run an Office. This year, we expect some big advances with the world’s largest solar park in Benban, Egypt finishing construction, the world’s largest offshore wind farm starts, and NASA gears up to complete the Unmanned Aerial System Traffic Management system to manage drone traffic in our skies. In 2019, we should see the worldwide sales of electric vehicles hit approximately 6 million, and cell phone service providers should begin bringing 5G data service, which is roughly 30 – 50 times faster than 4G, to a location near you.
Those 2019 predictions are great, but they don’t really directly affect the average person much. What about tech trends that will have an immediate impact on our clients, specifically the Office Managers that keep everything running so smoothly?
1. The C-Suite sees two major risks much more clearly. Cybersecurity and MeToo!
2018 gave management a much more tangible understanding to two powerful trends that can impact the executive team of any business. Cybersecurity, electronic eavesdropping, international business espionage, liability for data breach, and the impact of the MeToo movement. Senior managers of large and small businesses can see the devastating impact of both trends on the business and the lives of the senior managers. IT and HR policies are changing. The momentum for change will carry over in 2019.
2. Stress on the IT Budget. A lot more to do and a little bit higher budget. With a strong economy, the IT budget predictably expands as growth and business opportunities require additional capital. But, this year is not a normal year. We saw 2018 as a year of growth, and as a result, now there is extraordinary pressure on the IT budget. Why? First, 2019’s growth is less certain than 2018’s with pressure to take greater profits and build cash reserves. Second, the IT budget must take on additional security requirements that don’t add to top line sales or productivity. The next step in innovation and security improvement is expensive. Therefore, we see increases in IT budget and extra pressure on IT in the same year. It looks like a challenging year.
3. Employee Experience … seeking happy employees in an era of low unemployment. The competition to recruit and retain millennials, the biggest age group in the workforce, led to new changes in the office. Businesses will be competing for talent by offering a better employee experience. This can lead to offering more than pay raises to key staff. Small to mid-sized businesses are considering the emotional, physical, financial, and professional needs of the staff to develop “well-being” strategies. This means more work-at-home days to save travel time, more flexibility with schedules, and newly added services including financial advisors, gym subsidies, discounted products/services, and even debt counseling and student loan forgiveness programs. Companies are getting creative!
4. “Autonomous Devices” quietly start to positively impact the office. Consumers are focused on automated cars, household robots, delivery drones, and smarter appliances. In the business sector, data management devices and computer agents will quietly gain strength in the workplace in a big way this year. In 2019, we will coordinate intelligence, data, hardware, and software to automate tasks that will do more to improve productivity and reduce costs. Gartner admits this seems like a broad claim, but it is happening faster that most of us think. Every IoT device, application, and service is going to get smarter and perform more tasks self-sufficiently. In fact, TechSolutions is already using automated agents that function to protect your company’s network. Our newest security technology uses autonomous agents that automatically scan business applications for a new class of embedded malware, and we are rolling out these agents to provide real-time protection against unauthorized network access 24×7 with little supervision needed. They’re here!
5. Big Data becomes Augmented and Accessible Analytics: We now understand that valuable data is collected with every online transaction, web search, and cloud application used. We also know that there is more data than we have time to organize and integrate into our decision-making processes, especially in small to mid-size businesses … until 2019. This year, data management techniques begin to really change. New tools will make it easier to automate the collection, organization, and analysis of business data. Automated analysis of business data has several benefits. Not only is it fast and efficient, many experts believe it will remove bias associated with traditional management analysis. In the upcoming years, 40% of data tasks will be automated for business managers. Business Intelligence tools and intelligent dashboards will give managers more and more help as the years continue. Get started on this one now!
6. Privacy: The “Who Cares” vs “You Can’t Do That” movements battle to define acceptable. When two trends collide, it usually results in confusion until it’s all worked out. Millennials continue to share almost everything on social media, and they are willing to surrender personal data for shiny objects. They continue to demonstrate a lower sensitivity to data privacy. They are numb to the calls for greater data security. On the opposite side, governments across the world are following the EU and create mandating standards for data privacy and new laws to protect consumers. Delaware is no exception. The result is a period of chaos while the real standard for data privacy is worked out. For small to mid-sized businesses, it can be difficult to understand the required protections that need to be in place, as well as the actions that need to be taken when a breach occurs. Experts predict that workplace policies, standard operating procedures, and acceptable risk will be difficult to define this year and even more challenging to enforce. Business leaders need to consult with the people they trust and make complicated decisions on data protection policies and strategies for their companies. Then they need to enforce and follow through on those decisions.
7. Cybersecurity will require more from users … two-factor authentication for everything?
As owners and managers come to understand the threat of cybertheft and the impact of a data breach, better employee awareness training will not be enough for many firms. Concepts like cyber hygiene are beginning to develop. Smart business owners will demand stronger security measures take effect soon, and we believe this will require more involvement from their computer users. This year, computer users will be required to play a bigger role in their own security. This changes a decade long trend of fighting the cyber security battle inside the computer and behind the scenes. This year, the battle will require more users to make use of biometrics, to take additional steps during the login process, to use more complicated password protocols, and to submit to a more deliberate process for password resets. We will start to see the end of single-factor authentication. We can look for the end of simple passwords which historically have been the keys to the kingdom for the bad guys. We expect to see multi-factor authentication implemented for almost everything that is important. This is the year the trend shifts, and employees join the cybersecurity battle.