INTELLIGENT SOFTWARE BUSINESS
Top business factors influencing investment include increasing field worker productivity 46%,
streamlining or optimising field operations and processes 40%, and improving customer service 37%.
Predictive analytics 55%
Machine learning 46%
Chatbots or virtual digital assistance 45%
Robotic Process Automation 44%
Despite being more established
technologies, mobile, business process
management and IoT seem to defy
their relative maturity in the market
with respondents indicating double-
digit growth across the board in both
investment and implementations through
November 2018.
While 67% of respondents have already
implemented mobile applications for
field service operations, an additional
19% plan to implement new mobile
applications, supported by a 20% average
expected increase in investment by certain
respondents. The outlook for business
process management and IoT is similar.
Respondents expect implementations
to grow from 61 to 81% for business
process management and from 53 to 73%
for IoT, fueled by 20 and 24% average
expected increase in investment by certain
respondents, respectively.
However, along with the appetite
for technology investment and
implementation growth, respondents are
keenly aware of the technical challenges
their organisations face in developing
and implementing applications for field
workforce management.
Access to timely and relevant data
is critical for field workers in remote
locations, harsh environments, or areas of
low network connectivity, as is the ability
to protect that data as it flows between
the field and back-end systems. As a
result, securing data access was the top
challenge identified in the survey at 34%,
followed by:
Pace of technological change 29%
Integrating solutions with legacy back-
end systems 28%
Lack of standardisation 27%
The good news here is that the
technology industry continues to make
progress in these areas. Independent
foundations continue to focus on the
need for greater standardisation and
interoperability among IoT devices;
integration technologies are becoming
more agile, distributed, and lightweight;
and the industry continues to focus on its
approach to data security.
The survey highlights the breadth of
opportunities facing organisations as they
take advantage of artificial intelligence,
mobile, business process management
and IoT to redefine and re-imagine their
field operations.
Red Hat, commissioned Vanson
Bourne to poll the views of 300 IT decision
makers from enterprise organisations with
at least 100 employees in the US, France,
Germany, the United Kingdom, Malaysia,
Thailand, India, Indonesia, Singapore and
Australia-New Zealand. The survey was
completed in November 2017, and was
carried out online.
Strong
technology
investment is
expected by
respondents
with an average
increase of
25% through
November 2018.
47