Emerging Tech Challenges

Investing in emerging technologies is prioritized by respondents in the May 2021 HFS Pulse survey. Over 70% of the 801 representatives of global 2000 companies expect to increase their stake. This reflects the increasing value placed on technologies such as process automation (which 80%+ of global companies expect to increase spend on), and others such as process mining and discovery, AI and ML, cloud, cybersecurity, blockchain, AR and VR, Internet of Things, smart analytics, 5G and quantum computing.

But the same data identifies challenges that will constrain the impact of emerging tech unless tackled from the top. When asked what their company’s biggest challenges to adopting emerging technologies are:

• 70% of our sample say their company lacks the right organizational alignment – rising to 80% in Banking & Finance.
• 68% call out lack of C-level leadership commitment.
• The lack of centralised data governance is identified as a key weakness, too (77% ranking it first or second).
• The challenge of change management (16%), access to digitally fluent talent (16%) and archaic and broken processes (17%) pale by comparison versus the perception of poor alignment and uncommitted leadership.

HFS Bottomline. The C-Suite must back their investment with organizational change and personal commitment to a new mindset

It’s clear from the data; money is being committed to emerging technologies. Now leaders must face up to the fundamental organizational change required to take advantage. Process automation, for example, demands the alignment of multiple organizational elements in a way that simple task automation does not. Emerging technologies can support the move towards HFS OneOffice ways-of-working, but only if accompanied by a mindset shift to collaborative, cross-functional enterprise operations. To unleash the value of their investment in emerging tech, leaders must adopt the OneOffice mindset and join with consulting partners to redesign how work gets done.