It’s 2023, and some organizations are already experiencing digital fatigue. That’s an understandable reaction. There’s just too much happening in the digital transformation space.

Digital transformation is an ongoing process that continues to shape and revolutionize industries across the globe. As businesses strive to meet the ever-changing demands of consumers and enhance their digital experiences, it is crucial to stay ahead of the latest trends in this rapidly evolving landscape. In this article, we will explore the top 10 digital transformation trends for 2023 and beyond, providing insights into the key areas that organizations need to focus on to thrive in the digital age

Digital Transformation Trends for 2023

As the year matures, IT leaders should get ready to lead greater cultural shifts in the business, get more serious about data governance, advocate for DT-centric shifts in appropriate sectors, and lobby for acceptance of AI and insight-driven innovations. Furthermore, they should get ready to fully examine the benefits of public cloud adoption.

These changes are just scratching the surface, considering every digital transformation to come in 2023. Let’s dig in and learn what’s in for IT leaders and digital transformation advocates.

1. Hyper-Automation: Streamlining Processes with AI

Automation has become an integral part of digital transformation strategies, and in 2023, we can expect to see an increased emphasis on hyper-automation. This trend involves the use of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) technologies to automate and streamline processes across organizations. By leveraging AI-powered tools and platforms, businesses can reduce manual efforts, improve efficiency, and drive productivity. Hyper-automation enables organizations to automate complex tasks, enhance decision-making processes, and deliver personalized experiences to customers.

2. Low-Code/No-Code Development: Empowering Citizen Developers

Low-code and no-code development platforms are gaining traction as organizations seek to accelerate their digital transformation initiatives. These platforms provide non-technical users with the ability to design, build, and deploy software applications without extensive coding knowledge. By offering a visual interface and drag-and-drop tools, low-code platforms enable citizen developers to create custom solutions rapidly. This trend promotes collaboration between business users and IT teams, empowering organizations to innovate and iterate more quickly.

3. AI takes Center Stage (for the better)

Even for those who have successfully managed collection of big data, making sense of it in such scales will require the help of machines, which is how AI makes the difference.

As far as digital transformation goes, delivering business outcomes will largely be decided upon by AI. As an emerging technology, AI will be the key reference in standardizing the digital transformation market. As such, ‘digital’ will now yield tangible business results because AI will be infused into all functions, from HR and finance to sales and marketing.

On the other hand, machine-learning algorithms are maturing up fast and expanding quickly. Experts are now urging IT leaders to incorporate machine learning algorithms into their business-driven data analytics strategy. This does not only yield more effectiveness and quick synthesis for presentation of insights gleaned from all the vast amounts of enterprise data, but is also far better than what teams of human data scientists could possibly assimilate.

If that’s achieved, then business stakeholders can be sure of a competitive first-mover advantage. At the same time, leveraging machine data and AI within data architecture paradigms could lead to automation and mitigation of data governance problems. This, in fact, is possible right from aggregation and cleansing, to extraction hence yielding an analytics-ready format that’s easily usable.

4. Merger and Acquisition (M&A) Shakes up IT Services

A new trend is fast accelerating in the IT outsourcing industry, and especially with IT service providers.

Have you seen traditional IT service providers make mergers and acquisitions with digital marketing and engineering firms to bolster their clients’ efforts?

About 75% of all the 2,200 tech acquisitions that happened in 2019 were either engineering, analytics, or digital solutions providers. That speaks volumes, and it’s obvious for CIOs that M&A activities will be a major source of disruption.

At this rate, CIOs will have to rethink their landscape and reevaluate the kind of service providers they partner with. In the end, they will be forced to recognize potential synergies and integrate digital competencies into their product lines.

5. The Arrival of New Digital Transformation Allies

According to digital transformation experts, 2023 will see lots of service providers who didn’t think their way to digital transformation would force them to partner with others in order to make their way to digital prominence.

It’s a fact no vendor can tick all the boxes with regards to digital transformation, even though most of them front themselves as end-to-end service providers. Technology partners will remain key for most organizations lagging in digital transformation. This is even more critical now that most clients are looking for off-the-shelf, customizable solutions.

This kind of partnership in the IT service sector isn’t anything new. This wave of digital transformation will compel vendors to team up with marketers. Some will go the extra mile and set aside dedicated, branded spaces in the design studios or innovation hubs.

Consultancy firms are not left behind either. Most will have to conform to the concept of ‘frenemies’, creating three-way coalesced partnerships. Each party will then be required to play to its strengths and deliver depth in domain and delivery proficiency.

6. Public Cloud Adoption Fast Expanding

Over the past few years, a lot of talk about cloud has been centered around PaaS, IaaS, and SaaS as organizations seeking to leverage the scalability, efficiency, and elasticity of cloud services to reduce cycle times and optimize their spending. In 2023, the talk will be around using the cloud to enable even better innovation,

Cloud service providers have upped their game and are now working to create intelligent automation and service capabilities on AI, customer engagement, analytics, and machine learning. For IT organizations, leveraging this new move will allow them to drive business value more efficiently and quickly. IT leaders are now busy looking at how they can leverage this new trend of public adoption of cloud capabilities to drive value, instead of investing money and time to create such internally.

What Else?

Well, a lot. 2023 will witness the emergence of new digital transformation metrics so that CIOs can quantify their progress in digitizing their organizations. Digital projects will now be evaluated based on three key proficiencies, which include velocity, intelligence, and experience.

Velocity will consider the speed of processes and how quickly that facilitates work to be done. Intelligence will concentrate on the area of analytics being able to automate and improve the effectiveness of decisions, while experience will look at how experiences drive the right economic and behavioral outcomes.

Lastly, there’s going to be more insights-first innovation. Most digital projects in the previous years focused on solving an immediate need and ignoring the future. In 2023, IT leaders will not rush digital projects but will look at how the projects can solve a present need and optimize solving future needs. Innovations will depend on future insights rather than reacting to current trends.

Accelerate Your Digital Transformation with Plumlogix

There’s more that’s yet to be revealed as far as digital transformation 2023 is concerned. Tangible trends have already been unearthed, and we can only look forward to even more revolutionary trends for the better. More is going to happen with DataOps, 5G, containers and microservices, and in immersive experiences with AR, VR, and mixed reality.

Plumlogix partners with organizations to help drive their digital transformation strategy. The company offers a wide range of Salesforce services to customers in quest for accelerating their digital transformation. Plumlogix is the ideal option for accelerating your digital transformation objectives, catering to a wide range of sectors and industries such as e-commerce, manufacturing, government, and non-profit organizations.

About Plumlogix

Plumlogix, a Minority-Owned Salesforce Partner, boasts a seasoned team of Salesforce experts with a rich history of handling intricate Salesforce projects. With over seven years dedicated to ensuring customer success and a remarkable 70+ Salesforce certifications, we are committed to maximizing the returns on our clients’ Salesforce investments. At Plumlogix, we aim to drive digital transformation for businesses by optimizing operational processes, elevating digital user experiences, and fostering seamless internal communication. While our expertise spans various domains, we specialize in the non-profit, education, and manufacturing sectors, as well as state and local governments and federal entities.