Digital Business Driving Trends to Watch in 2022

Saphyte Team

3 min read

Updated: April 27th, 2022

2020 proved to businesses that they can adapt to drastic changes, even at a rapid pace, with the help of digital tools and technology. This pace carried on two years later. While some trends and predictions from 2020 were proven correct, others didn’t come to fruition due to urgent and strategic needs that needed to be met as the pandemic persisted. 

At present, global spending on digital transformation and initiatives is still rising. Statista predicts a jump to an annual 20% jump, making it $1.8 trillion next year. 

Now that 2022 is on full-combust mode, it’s going to be hard not to be able to keep up. So what will the headlines entail this year? What is the most engaging digital business driving trends to watch in 2022? Only time will be able to tell. 

But, for now, here are some of the most interesting digital trends in 2022 that might or might not surprise you. 

Data Fabric Weaves its Way to our Doors

Data fabric architecture is the future of data management and integration. This design concept uses both human and machine capabilities to access data in place or aid in data consolidation in which is most appropriate. 

Data fabric constantly determines and connects data from different applications to find unique, business-relevant relationships in-between available data points. The data points, in return, produce insight that supports “re-engineered decision-making.” Thus providing more value for businesses through immediate data access and comprehension than the traditional data management practices.

This concept provides scalable, flexible, and more tight integration of data sources across platforms and business users. If implemented vigorously, data will now be available everywhere it’s needed, regardless of the location of the data.

Data fabric uses analytics to learn and actively recommend where data should be used and changed, thus reducing up to 70% of data management efforts.

Agile and Flexible Solutions, No longer a Fad

This trend is not new, but agile and flexible solutions will be more prevalent and necessary this year. Agile methodologies have an excellent reputation and are popular among software developers, and IT teams alike. These methodologies began to make strides when COVID forced businesses and companies to acknowledge the importance of responding quickly to extreme changing conditions.

This trend will be more prevalent amongst retail and eCommerce businesses. With a vulnerable industry, investing in flexible, scalable, and agile IT solutions can help them adapt to changing market conditions. 

Customer and Employee Experience Centric Digital Transformation Projects

The pandemic has changed the way we interact with businesses and people. And, honestly, there’s no point in returning things the way there were in 2019. COVID-19 highlighted our need to focus both on customer experience and employee experience. 

Everything has turned virtual, from ordering food, grocery shopping and doctor visits. Customers and their experiences now shifted to digital channels. Companies that deliver better customer experience brought up to 5.7 times more revenue than competing brands with bad customer experiences. 

However, emerging trends now focus on investing in customer experience initiatives. The pandemic has also changed how businesses engage with their workforce. With the work-from-home setup, some companies find it hard to find ways to make employees feel engaged with their work. 

Research has shown that one-third of employees who work from home report feeling engaged in their job. This could pose a problem for businesses as low engagement can significantly impact output and performance. With this trend, companies are expected to increase and intensify investing in adopting modern CRM systems with customer experience, employee onboarding, and data management capabilities.

The Era of Privacy Rules

Tech companies will be in a blaring spotlight. Big tech companies will be regulated, and their privacy rules revisited most significantly. We are all aware that data creates the best experiences. But, somehow, there has been neglect on how data is collected and how often it is gathered. There’s no actual law or policy on how information is monitored from last year – until now. 

With the massive amount of data we voluntarily give to apps, e-commerce, and other social media sites, we have “unconsciously” created a world where tech companies can make the best user experiences. The best-of-breed user experiences will be balanced with more solid and thoughtful data management practices this year. 

This year, organizations that rely on data collection through apps and other third-party apps or organizations will need to expand their data collection policies. This will eventually lead businesses to find a new way to source data and decide on strategies to collect and manage data openly and honestly without hurting or compromising customer experience. It sounds like a bit of a pickle, which won’t be a manageable undertaking. Still, spending and investing time in building an excellent data privacy policy will be critical to your business’ success. 

Hybrid + Multi: Are you Paying Attention?

Cloud is old-school. But a new type of cloud is taking center stage as we speak (we mean, write). Welcome to the era of the hybrid+multi cloud!

2022 will be an exciting year as vendors compete for the perfect public and private clouds mix. As enterprise IT structures become more omnipresent, hybrid leadership will remain a focal point for legacy IT and cloud providers alike. The rise of open-source and popular modalities for hybrid IT architecture will be more prevalent this year.

Experts believe that businesses will be adapting this setup as any workload to any destination remains a requirement for sustaining the complex needs of a business. This trend will be advantageous for companies that use more than one public cloud to solve their technology and business integration challenges. Companies that invest in this space can simplify the process of orchestrating workloads and make their data more accessible and secure, eventually future-proofing their business core.

Wrapping Up

2022 is just getting started. There has been so much focus on data, privacy, AI, and applications, that it has become hard to keep up with what is happening around us. However, future-proofing and streamlining your business is always a priority. Regardless of these upcoming trends, 2022 will be a great and exciting year for tech and business advancement. Let’s just buckle up and see how things play out.