The biggest trends I'm following in 2019

In this post, our CEO Chuck Ganapathi, shares technology predictions for 2019

These three converging trends reflect a paradigm shift we’re experiencing with enterprise software, whereby the frictionless experiences we’ve grown accustomed to in our everyday lives have changed our expectations of the tools we’re asked to use in the workplace.

How will organizations find the balance they need to make their employees’ experiences richer and more productive?

Voice Apps Hit the Road. Let’s first make this clear, most 2019 predictions around voice in the enterprise are wrong. Where will this ongoing battle for assistant and voice spill over to? The third dimension; not in-home, not on a desktop, but in-car. Last year brought a number of new developments like Apple CarPlay and Android Auto that laid out the groundwork. Automobile manufacturers like Audi, Chrysler, Ford and others are responding by integrating these services into their experience. Our friends at Amazon have also just launched the Echo Auto to bring Alexa experiences into the car

BMW is packaging Amazon Alexa so customers can enable voice-driven experiences right off of the lot. As Google, Amazon, Microsoft and others deepen their digital assistant deployments into workplace technology -- particularly within large organizations -- they’ll target specific use cases to solve within B2B environments. And no B2B department spends more time on the road than salespeople. Voice apps will offer salespeople a new meaning to the term, “road warrior.”

Enterprise Apps Lose Their Heads. I’m not talking about a Game of Thrones Season 8 prediction either. Did you know the average salesperson uses a minimum of seven-to-eight tools per day? What person wants to log in and out of different tools like CRM, LinkedIn, Zendesk, Box and others when they need one bit of information from each instantly before a meeting?

Software providers are curbing potential app fatigue by designing for edge and connected devices instead of traditional desktop. As a result, vertical integration may no longer be necessary as digital assistants can blend different app experiences natively on a user’s device of choice.

Messaging and Texting Become the Great Equalizer. Messaging and texting have already become the preferred medium of communications among gen Z. Yet as I reflect on the what I’ve seen from family, friends, partners and customers around Europe and China, is that messaging has also become the transactional platform for everyday users regardless of age as well.

While users of products like WhatsApp or WeChat turn to their workspaces for communicating with friends and family, they also utilize the same platform for business. Whether shopping, booking and managing travel, approving and signing documents, or even apply for a loan everything can be done in WeChat. Expect B2B to follow what B2C companies have been doing, giving customers a direct line into the brand at the moment of need in the medium they most commonly use.

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