TOP 5 Business Application Trends in 2020
Our company develops corporate products. Our clients use our products to improve their applications and add complex functionality to them. I go to different conferences and track all the new trends. And this is what I would like to talk about today — most essential trends which will dominate 2020.
1. Digitalization / Business Transformation
This is one of the most significant trends in the last 10 years. Business visionaries started digitizing 3–4 years ago and managed to enhance their performance as a result of business process transformation inside the company and transformation of communication channels with the outer world. The more conservative companies have already picked up that investing into business transformation is profitable and started pouring their money into this segment.
In our company we have studied web-sites and presentations of companies which make BPM / Low-code / No-code products. We’ve looked at 12 companies, and all of them have included information on Digitalization or Business Transformation into their product descriptions or onto their web-site main pages.
2. Artificial Intelligence
iBPM (intelligence business process management) is a new segment which has appeared in the BPM environment. iBPM includes data analysis and workflow optimization features. AI has not yet become part of popular business applications, but major SaaS vendors have already started implementing AI features into their products.
A report on current use of AI technologies was published in November 2019. AI use cases and AI prospects are described in this report, it is most objective and thorough, and I strongly recommend my audience should read it.
The main restraining factor with implementing AI into business applications is its complexity. And obviously it is time-consuming, for it can take more than a year for a project to be released. Unfortunately this is too long when it comes to most of business applications. The reason it’s happening is that there’s a lack of ready to use components which can be easily integrated into existing solutions. Some vendors offer simplified API based on their cloud technologies, but this is hardly enough.
3. Total customization
Leading companies have always made software to fit their own business processes and have never adjusted business processes to software solutions they purchased. There are exceptions of course, but they are not worth mentioning. Software development is a time-consuming and complex process, that is why most companies prefer solutions which are ready to be used. And that’s the catch: suitable solution has to be quickly integrated into the existing system, but how quickly can the existing system accept it without damaging functioning business processes?
Luckily, having to spend weeks and months to change business application logic will be left in 2019. Business requires fast reaction to change. And in 2020 it will be possible to create business applications on the spot, without having to adjust and customize them for end users. Following old habits in this case means ignoring your customers’ needs and eventually losing to your competitors.
This problem can be easily solved by adding builders, expansion modules and other customization tools into your solution. Developing efficient tools is very expensive and time consuming. In my experience, any project which includes creating a builder / designer / etc. inevitably turns into a builder / designer project, and it never ends.
4. Using Applications Without Learning
We all know that nowadays users do not read manuals, and managers are reluctant to spend money on training and prefer their users to work efficiently but at less cost. Social media and web-sites usage mechanisms have migrated from internet companies to corporate software and business systems producers. Yet business systems are still complicated and require thorough training.
DPA (digital process automation) and RPA (robot process automation) systems allow to manage complex operations in different systems via a simple interface with several fields and one control button. It is obvious that this is only the beginning of major changes in developing UI / UX applications. It is not clear yet how fast legacy systems will be evolving, but there’s no way back.
5. Mobile applications
This trend is closely connected to Using Without Learning technology. It means that users need a mobile interface to access applications. But creating even the simplest mobile application is a difficult task! First mobile application constructors appeared 10 years ago, but there’s still no tool which allows you to build an efficient application.
There are technologies such as ApacheCordova, PhoneGap and ReactNative, which allow to reduce mobile applications development costs, but it is still very expensive for most people, and such technologies won’t help you create Proof of Concept in one week or even one month.
Processing our customers’ requests made me realize that there’s a great demand for mobile application prototyping tools. Companies need applications which are cheap and easy to use, and they are not ready to wait 6, moreover 12 months to launch a beta-version.
Summing Up
Current business applications market is on the verge of change. Companies make new demands, and existing mechanisms and approaches are often not enough to satisfy customers’ needs and require significant investments.
In this article I have discussed those trends which companies are ready to invest into. And I’m sure that it will boost their growth and allow them drive their competitors out of the game.
P.S. There’s one more trend which has just emerged in the market — deglobalization. It means that regional markets want to use local products, adapted for their local needs and habits. Media resources and networks stay out of it, but it does affect business applications. National realities have to be taken into account. But this is something I will talk about in one of my next articles.
