6 technology challenges that hampered innovation

The unpredictable nature of life since 2020 and COVID-19 has demonstrated that in order to prosper and thrive, businesses must be able to adapt and innovate rapidly at scale. According to the third edition of the DBS readiness survey, there has been a continuous momentum in digitalisation efforts across the APAC region. In India, 62% of large corporates and middle-market companies are already in the formative stages of digitalisation.

While 2021 was not able to bring any major changes to the corporate landscape, it did provide a new set of technological hurdles. We will look at 6 technology challenges that CEOs should be aware of in order to be better prepared to tackle them and succeed in their digital transformation programmes.

Developing custom code is difficult:

Custom code is used in most digital transformation projects. However, custom code development is more complex than ever before, and can potentially result in project failure. Here are some reasons why custom code is difficult to build:

• Technical complexity has risen in recent years, with more code being written now as compared to 10 years ago. 
• Most of the developers' time is spent managing and maintaining current code, leaving them little or no time to focus on building new code. 
• Meeting the most basic non-functional needs, like security, is getting increasingly complex. When you look at analyst requests, you'll notice that security management is at the top of the list. 
• There are insufficient qualified personnel, which brings us to the next challenge.

It is always a challenge to find enough developers to complete ongoing projects. According to the research The Speed of Change: How Fast Are You, most firms are affected by competencies, talent shortages, and gaps that limit rapid adoption of the contemporary IT infrastructures required for agility, regardless of their digital and agile maturity. 

Even the Silicon Valley elite are having difficulty hiring developers quickly enough, and the challenge becomes even more arduous for organisations that are not particularly appealing to developers.

The rapid shift towards digital has led to a shortage of developers globally, with developers increasingly undaunted with heavy workloads. To combat this, businesses have started turning to low-code applications to help remove mundane tasks such as tracking, hard coding and debugging bugs, enabling developers to focus on higher value-added tasks like security analysis, vulnerability testing, gauging software requirements, and designing software to meet the ever-evolving, increasingly sophisticated needs of businesses today. 

Technology Silos within the organization and how we connect the dots 

This problem is typical among businesses who are just getting started with their digital transformation strategy. The first project that business leaders pick are often early digital transformation initiatives that are focused on improving the customer experience, which requires a specific tool to convert to manage this type of project. Another team in the meantime, might pick up another project, opting for a different tool to resolve the issue. 

This results in a common scenario where firms end up with a lot of separate and fragmented solutions that often compress into isolated silos and lead to dead ends, because of the short foresight on adopting a more robust technology to manage multiple business initiatives up front.

Legacy needs to be modernized for last mile coverage 

Investing in legacy is money wasted rewriting and maintaining code built with a short-term attitude - it fixes one problem, right now. This usually results from a strategy of favouring speed above accuracy in construction. 

According to a recent study, technical debt would cost businesses US$5 trillion over the next ten years, money that could be better spent on innovation and development. To put it in another way, that's over US$500 million a day that could be spent on innovation and new ideas to outdo competitors.
Cloud computing provides businesses with incredible benefits such as instant scalability, access from any device at any location, and usage-based pricing. However, its adoption has the potential to disrupt how businesses operate. 

According to the 2022 TechTarget priorities survey, 65% of IT leaders in India said their organizations are now cloud-first, which entails adopting cloud services in areas such as edge computing and the internet of things, as well as customer experience and business continuity. With India’s growing appetite for cloud, it is also important to understand that the process of moving to cloud is not an overnight task, and mistakes during mitigation can disrupt business plans in the future. Security and privacy concerns, administrative complexity, vendor lock-in, performance, and access speed are factors that executive should consider when selecting a cloud partner.
We're all aware of the impact the pandemic has had on our businesses, but COVID-19 isn't the only challenge businesses are facing right now. The rate of change is quickening, and the capacity to shift markets is becoming more powerful. Companies must consider the influence technological advancements have on how people utilize technology. 

The omnipresent 5G and the ability to develop new types of enterprise applications are two examples. 5G has the potential to totally disrupt industries that rely on field service or distribution. According to a report by worldwide market research firm GfK, adoption of 5G-enabled smartphones in India is predicted to more than treble this year, accounting for 40% of sales volume contribution, up from just 12% in 2021. As per Nokia Mobile Broadband Index (MBiT) 2022 report, 5G is predicted to generate up to 1% of global GDP or US$1.3 trillion in revenue by 2030. Use cases in areas such as healthcare, utilities, next-generation media applications, manufacturing, and smart cities will generate an increase in revenues.

Overall, 5G demonstrates how applications can be developed to work in tandem with applications in the business space. Industries that rely on field services or distribution, that can be completely disrupted with 5G. The challenge is for companies to be able to innovate and keep up with new technological advancements. Although today they seem further out, they can be the new normal tomorrow.

The article has been written by Subrato Bandhu, Regional Vice President, OutSystems India