What are the most important IT trends in 2022?

The last couple of years have been a struggle in many ways and the pandemic has challenged us on so many levels. Energy shortage is one, as well as component shortage. This affects both private individuals and companies. Why is this happening and what impact will it have on manufacturing and distributing companies in 2022? 

Someone that knows this is Radar Group’s CEO Hans Werner. Some time ago he gave a very appreciated webinar talking about the most important IT trends for companies to be on top of for 2022. Hans Werner argues that 2022 will be a significant year and that the importance of IT will increase for each year ahead. The importance of IT, when it comes to creating business power and economic growth, is well known but it will also be an important part of handling the green transition and the survival conditions of our planet. 

What is happening in our environment? 

IT, technology, data, and cyber security are all important players in the political and economic arenas according to Hans. And there is a power battle going on in the world where it is all about acquiring benefits from having access to those things other countries need. Like technology, energy, components as well as competence. One example that Hans mentions is Russia which uses energy as a powerful tool successfully since there is an energy shortage in Europe. Or China that has bought large stocks of semi-joint components from Taiwan which has led to a component shortage for the rest of the world. These power games in economy and technology will continue and the shortage of components will be a long-term problem putting increased pressure on companies and countries. Energy has become a powerful tool and Hans says that this lack of energy and components will have a greater impact than we think, with both increased prices and inflation.

Consequences on many levels

One thing that is often overlooked is the fact when there is a shortage of something it will lead to consequences on many different levels and stages. One example is how the energy shortage is affecting the agriculture industry. When a product becomes too expensive to produce there is inevitably a point where it is no longer profitable to produce it. An example is companies producing fertilizers for farms, with a lack of energy the price of producing fertilizers increases and as a result farms around Europe cannot afford to buy and use as many fertilizers as they are used to and because of that, they will produce less food. An unexpected consequence of increasingly expensive energy. 

The same applies to the car industry, because of the shortage of components many car manufacturers are forced to go back to old technology to be able to produce cars and meet market demand. If there are no semi-conductors available for touch screens, they will be forced to instead build cars with old-fashioned buttons and knobs, so-called reversed engineering. 

Digitalization and IT are increasingly important

Digitalization and IT are two other areas where Hans Werner says we will see an increasing demand from companies in 2022, with many wanting to invest in automation and digitalization. There is also a technology backlog from the beginning of 2019 when many companies decided to wait with investments due to the pandemic. Now, when they all want to invest in IT there is, unfortunately, a shortage of IT competence.

Radar Group recently asked Swedish companies what they are planning to invest in during 2022. 93 percent of the companies answered that they have set aside a budget for digitalization, 90 percent said they will spend their budget on cyber security and information security while 71 percent are planning to change their business – and operations models. More than one-third of all companies participating in the study are planning to implement AI in their processes. 

More companies are also moving towards Cloud solutions, this is something that traditionally has been pushed by the suppliers, but now there is a shift when customers demanding this. Infrastructure is increasingly important, and many companies see Cloud as a solution to the competence shortage in IT. 

What are the trends for 2022? 

To summarize what trends to be on top of for 2022, and what Hans Werner calls the “2022 Party crashers”, these are: 

• Lack of Components – a lack of semi-joint components when technology has become part of big politics
• Lack of Energy – the ability to distribute energy is crucial for the digitalization
• Lack of Competence – there is a significant lack of competence in the new technology areas. 

It might not sound uplifting or positive with a shortage of things, but it depends on how you see it, it could also be an opportunity to do things differently. To fill these gaps with innovation and forward-thinking. To try to see things from a different perspective and do things differently. For us, at Jeeves, we only see opportunities and we are convinced it will be an exciting year with companies demanding our competence within IT and ERP. 

Thank you, Hans Werner, for a very interesting webinar. 

If you missed the webinar, it can be downloaded here (in Swedish) 

If you are already a customer of Jeeves the webinar is uploaded to our customer portal.