The year ahead: what’s new for 2022

We are used to beginning the year with a rash of predictions. Why should 2022 be any different?

If we have one certainty this year, it is that uncertainty will continue. That being said, there are a number of things we can predict with some confidence: digital transformation will continue apace, hybrid working will be further embedded, the ecommerce space will expand, and technology will be at the forefront of it all.

The backdrop?

Climate change, further Covid outbreaks, global supply chain challenges, inflation, rising interest rates and – perhaps – a greater level of regulation on tech companies.

Regarding digital transformation, we all know the extent to which Covid hitting in early 2020 accelerated this exponentially. However, digitally enabled operations increased further in 2021, and the overall economic climate, which has seen the UK economy remain 1.5% below its level at the end of 2019, means that it’s digitally transform or die for many organisations in 2022.

The ever-evolving nature of work means that HR now commands a louder voice in the boardroom. Moreover, wellbeing and diversity & inclusion will remain priorities, as organisations look to attract the best talent with the best offers and the most welcoming environments.

People will do more and more purchasing online; whether it’s someone doing their groceries or B2B customers putting in an order, fewer and fewer interactions will take place primarily face-to-face.

What connects these areas?

Data, and specifically, technology’s role in providing and analysing it. We need the right data, and we need a level of trust from customers if we’re to get it. This can be trickier than you think; while the pandemic saw an increase of trust in institutions, this didn’t last, with the bubble bursting between spring 2020 and the start of 2021. Having said that, business fared better than government, media or NGOs and is now the most trusted institution in 18 of 27 countries surveyed by Edelman for its annual trust barometer.

As well as trust, quality will be paramount in 2022. At a recent TEN event, 62% of respondents said that lack of trust in the quality and integrity of their data was the single biggest barrier they faced in making their organisation data-driven. It’s not that businesses can’t get enough of it; they’re swimming in it, though not always in one ocean; it can be in a selection of disparate ponds aka siloed within applications, and not being effectively used.

According to Gartner’s Top Strategic Technology Trends for 2022, CEOs will prioritise growth, digitalisation and efficiency this coming year. The importance of growth is a given and efficiency is hardly a surprise given the economic contraction seen in the last two years. It’s digitalisation – perhaps the key factor in driving growth and ensuring efficiency – that concerns us here. Some tech buzzwords from Gartner’s predictions to begin: composability; interoperability; hyperautomation; cybersecurity mesh architecture; cloud-native platforms; distributed enterprise; AI engineering; lastly, autonomic systems.

Many of these innovations were mooted by Gartner for 2021, so in some ways the year ahead is not breaking that much new ground. For example, the last two years have taught us the importance of having a composable business – a trend in 2021 – that can rearrange itself and adapt based on circumstance; this year, the importance of that being embedded into composable APIs is simply a distillation of last year’s trend. Many of the other trends are part of medium to long-term transformation that has been ongoing for some time now.

With that in mind, let’s focus on two of this year’s new trends: distributed enterprise, and autonomic systems.

Gartner describes distributed enterprise as

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“a virtual-first, remote-first architectural approach to digitise consumer touchpoints and build out experiences to support products”.

It is predicated upon two of the major changes that we’re already alluded to: remote working and consumers not being available in traditional, physical environments. It can encompass digital dressing rooms and drone usage. A prediction from Gartner:

“By 2023, 75% of organisations that exploit distributed enterprise benefits will realise revenue growth 25% faster than competitors.”

Moreover, given the move to what Forrester are calling an “anywhere-work strategy”, in which younger workers in particular want to distribute their time between home and office, it’s not difficult to see why organisations are seeing the appeal of architecture that prioritises digital-first wherever the interaction is taking place. Consumers don’t want a different experience depending on whether or not the operator with whom they’re interacting is in their bedroom or downtown. Similarly, whether the consumer is at home or in a store, they want an optimised and consistent experience.

Autonomic systems, according to Gartner, are

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“self-managing physical or software systems that learn from their environments. But unlike autonomous or automated systems, they can dynamically modify their own algorithms with no software updates.”

“Dynamically modify” is the game-changer here, as this will facilitate speedy responses to any sort of change, permitting scalable management of the sort of distributed environments discussed above. To underline further the level of autonomy, here is another Gartner prediction:

“By 2024, 20% of organisations selling autonomic systems or devices will require customers to waive indemnity provisions related to learned behaviour of their products.”

Should that not be clear, what it means is that tech companies are saying that the level of learning is so advanced with these systems and devices that it will be solely the responsibility of the client to ensure that they are doing what they want them to do over time. This will be possible due to the advanced level of autognostics (self-knowledge) exhibited by the devices. Furthermore, this prediction obviously suggests a high level of confidence from tech providers.

In some ways, there’s nothing new to see here overall: advancing technology has always driven economic development; it’s just that it’s been accelerating exponentially in the last two years, as globally business looks to transform following the most intense crisis. We have seen in the last two years how crisis can be the motor of innovation, and the digital revolution is so central to business now that it shouldn’t be any sort of bubble. It’s only going to increase.

From the Ritz to Zoom: TEN’s transformation story

The story of how the Covid pandemic pushed a physical events business into the digital world and started enabling new connections in a whole new way.

If you’ve been to one of our events, it’s likely you’ve been involved in a discussion of digital transformation. The pandemic set in train by Covid-19 last March forced us to put our money where our mouth was and transform ourselves in double-quick time. Here’s what happened.

What to do

It became clear 10 months ago that we were dealing with something that was going to have a significant impact on the business environment in general, and our operating model in particular. We had seen that as early as the start of the month, when a couple of events has suffered unusually high drop-out rates.

Following that, on the 11th, a client had almost decided against travelling over from Amsterdam for a dinner at Sexy Fish in London. The next morning, a group of 25 at a breakfast in Stockholm dwindled to 12, as many organisations began advising their people against non-essential travel. We now know that this was the first step towards national lockdowns, making physical events an impossibility.

What to do, then? The pressing challenge was that we had a number of events already in the diary, with audiences built. We had a further number at the booked-in stage, with audience recruitment about to commence. Cancelling events meant no revenue, which wasn’t an option. The first key point, and one we hear from our clients and guests: don’t panic, keep your focus and think straight. Everyone’s in the same boat. You want the events to happen, your clients want them to happen, so what needs to be done? Business can’t stop.

That was easier said than done, though. We had no experience whatsoever in running digital events; indeed, we’d always been somewhat dismissive of them. They seemed inferior. How could a digital gathering be anywhere near as good and provide the same value as face-to-face interaction? We’d not even really embraced video platforms for internal calls and meetings. What did we need to do first?

The steps

Change the mindset and culture and embrace new technology: this is the future, so make it work. Ask yourself tough questions: why can’t digital interactions deliver all or the majority of what our physical events could? What if there was added value that we’d been missing?

The next step was to develop the requisite vision and achieve clarity of purpose. We’d changed the mindset and embraced the opportunity to grasp the new; now, we needed calmly and soberly to decide exactly what we wanted to achieve. It couldn’t be just a short-term replacement for what we used to do; what was needed was a bespoke, viable new product that would yield new experiences for our clients and guests.

It’s with our customers that we began. We knew that they were the base upon which we needed to construct the product and the experience. What was required was throwing out what we’d done in the physical world and a sharp focus on what would work best in the digital arena: don’t mimic what’s gone; innovate.

Look at the key elements:

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• Timing

• Structure

• Feel

• Pace

• Interactivity

Look at the key outcomes:

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• Fresh insights

• Real examples

• Good new connections

Next, it was the technology. We needed to find the right platform at speed and test it thoroughly, in so doing attempting to foresee every eventuality. The new format we had developed had one key element to it that facilitated this choice: we wanted to be able to split audiences into smaller groups for a focussed discussion. In a sense, this was one element where our thinking was based upon replicating the physical experience, in this case, the intimacy of a dinner table of six. This made the technology choice straightforward; it had to be Zoom, given it’s the only game in town if you want robust and simple breakout room functionality. This was also prominent in our minds: after 20 years of high-end venues, we were about to find out just how much the venue was a part of our offer. First, though, was testing.

We did this internally in the first instance, then took it to the next stage by bringing in as many of our friendly contacts as we could to run dummy events. Once we’d got that initial confidence, the trick was to keep trying new things: listen to participants’ feedback and act upon it. We had a matter of days to prepare for the first events and we knew we weren’t going to get everything right the first time. With each occurrence, we observed and listened, then tweaked, amended and improved it. After about a month, the Dynamic Digital Event we offer now was fully formed.

The finish? Not really…That doesn’t mean we don’t keep looking to change it for the better, of course. Transformation should be a perpetual process of change. Constant evolution is the key to success. We’d seen the marketplace change, and we expected it to evolve further as the months went by. We were also very conscious that novelties wear off and fatigue can set in. If our offer is to remain compelling, we need to keep our eye on the ball, move at the same pace as out target audience, and, if necessary, catch them up on occasion. What we can’t do is lag behind. Then and now, we remain mindful of the changing business environment, and our customers’ place within it.

What have we learnt, then? Be fearless. Don’t be afraid of getting it wrong first time. You’ll need to try things, test them, change, then test again. You will get it right. Whatever you choose to do, do it agilely and at speed, and don’t assume you’re ever finished.