Deloitte presented its 12^th annual Tech Trends report, identifying nine trends that are likely to transform businesses in the next 18-24 months. 

The report finds that some organisations are accelerating their digital transformation efforts not only to make their operations nimbler and more efficient, but to respond to dramatic fluctuations in demand and customer expectation.

Key trends observed by Deloitte include the future of the workplace, the industrialisation of Artificial Intelligence (AI) initiatives, upgrades for the critical core, and technology that supports diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI).

The nine trends explored in the report fall under three main categories:

The Heart of the Enterprise: Strategy, Engineered; Core Revival; and Supply Unchained focuses on the alignment of organisational and technology strategy. These components of the enterprise are complex, but imperative for success, and must work in concert to support each other.

A Better Experience, Inside and Out: Bespoke for Billions: Digital Meets Physical and Rebooting the Digital Workplace offer a view of two sides of the same evolving coin for customers, employees, and stakeholders: how do you better merge the future of digital and physical experiences to drive more value? DEI Tech: Tools for Equity discusses increasingly sophisticated tools to support organisational DEI across the talent lifecycle, which is the spark that powers innovation.

Data: The Art of the Possible: As enterprises move further towards automation and machine-led decisioning, human capacity can be augmented at scale. MLOps: Industrialized AI; Machine Data Revolution: Feeding the Machine;  and Zero Trust: Never Trust, Always Verify represent three specific opportunities for enterprises to realise more value through industrialisation and automation.

“What we’ve seen from the report is that a number of businesses used the situation to translate challenges brought on by for example COVID into opportunities with positive outlooks. This is becoming increasily necessary as businesses will have to continually adapt to the new way of working. For a business to lead with confidence in today’s environment will require that they are technologically enabled for the future,” said Kevin Govender, Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) and CIO Programme Leader, Deloitte Africa Consulting.

“The theme of this year’s report is resilience. We have seen countless, inspiring examples of resilience this past year as organisations assessed their circumstances and revised their strategic plans,” said Scott Buchholz, Emerging Technologies Research Director and Government & Public Services CTO, Deloitte Consulting LLP. “To us, resilience means a stubborn determination to adapt and thrive in the face of change. We have seen CIOs and other executives confidently lead this journey and prove they can bounce back.”

“Seemingly overnight, COVID-19 disrupted our assumptions and forced us to become more adaptable and responsive than we had previously thought possible. Comfortable plans for “the future” were condensed from years into weeks,” said Bill Briggs, Global Chief Technology Officer, Deloitte Consulting LLP. “This growth was uncomfortable at best, but has driven important change, and the trends we are seeing suggest a more hopeful dimension to the turbulent events of the past year.”

To download the full report, visit Deloitte's Tech Trends 2021 Report.