Download the Tech Trends 2021 report

Mindful that the COVID-19 pandemic’s impact continues to ripple across societies, markets, and lives, we present Tech Trends 2021. 

The theme of this year’s report is resilience. To us, this means a stubborn determination to adapt and thrive in the face of change. We have seen countless, inspiring examples of resilience this past year as organisations and entire sectors assessed their circumstances, revised their strategic plans, and marched toward the future.

Dive into the nine trends and macro forces

Discover key insights and actionable advice for business and technology leaders. Over the course of the year, we will discuss some key trends with our clients to hear their insights and experience.  

Rebooting the digital workplace

A significant shift was caused by the COVID-19 pandemic to the ways we work and to our workplace. From this experiment we can shift focus to the creation and enablement of a future-proof digital workplace that allows for hybrid working while maintaining workforce productivity. Organisations are embracing technology to optimise individual and team productivity, collaboration, and the employee experience at large.

How has Telenet transformed its ways of working and created an innovative, future-proof workplace? Steven Plehier, Digital Transformation & Employee Experience Leader at Deloitte sat down with Kris Legroe, Director of Employee Services and Sophie Pollet, VP Strategy Portfolio & Marketing at Telenet. 

Strategy, engineered

As business and technology strategy become increasingly inseparable, technology choices bear a greater role in enabling—or potentially constraining—organisational strategy. All companies must prepare now to ensure that they can capture the value of tech-enabled strategy tomorrow, be it to make their leader more tech-savvy, dare to resolve their technology boundaries, or review their strategic planning process all together.

How do you prepare for a tech-enabled strategy tomorrow? Yves Rombauts, Business Operations Practice Leader sat down with Bernard Geubelle, Deputy General Manager at Mutualités Libres/Onafhankelijke Ziekenfondsen, to discuss how his team have put technology at the heart of the organisation’s strategy and how they deal with the challenges of renewing legacy systems and bringing innovating solutions. 

MLOps: Industrialised AI

The era of artisanal AI must give way to MLOps—the application of engineering discipline to automate ML model development, maintenance, and delivery—to shorten development life cycles and industrialise AI. Machine learning or AI is increasingly becoming a mainstream component of day-to-day business processes to drive organisational performance.

How is Fluvius embedding AI in their operational processes to drive organisational performance? How has it generated value? Watch Jeroen Vergauwe, Technology Partner discussing MLOps with Jean-Pierre Hollevoet, Director of Grid Management at Fluvius. 

Core revival

As the C-suite increasingly views technology modernisation as an imperative to enable strategic change, pioneering IT leaders are embracing new approaches, technologies, and business cases to revitalise core assets. This year, in what we recognise as a growing new trend, organisations are exploring several innovative ways to redefine the core modernisation business case.

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Supply unchained

Acting as one of the important logistics gateways to Europe, Belgium continues to rise in the ranks of most desirable locations for companies to establish the centre of gravity of their (digital) supply chains. Pioneering companies are using advanced digital technologies, virtualised data, and cobots to transform supply chain cost centres into customer-focused, value-driving networks.

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Machine data revolution: Feeding the machine

If the future is digital, then data will be the motor. To achieve the benefits and scale of AI and MLOps, data must be tuned for native machine consumption, not humans, causing organisations to rethink data management, capture, and organisation. Incorporating forward- thinking technologies such as cloud, IoT, 5G as well as strategic, society-focused data governance, will be essential to reap the potential, as well as avoid the pitfalls, of the data revolution.

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Zero trust: Never trust, always verify

Traditional network security architecture has failed at securing systems against insiders. The perimeter defence approach to cyber security, which has been the most commonly deployed by Belgian organisations until now, is not enough anymore. A zero trust cybersecurity posture provides the opportunity to create a more robust and resilient security, simplify security management, improve end-user experience, and enable modern IT practices.

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Bespoke for billions: Digital meets physical

When we look back, 2020 will likely be the turning point when most of the population adapted to digital interactions to conduct their everyday lives whether working from home, online schooling, or ordering groceries. Forced to embrace digital faster than ever, organisations are recognising the desired human experience strikes a balance between making traditional physical human experiences more digital, and digital experiences more physical.

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DEI tech: Tools for equity

Many organisations are placing diversity, equity, and inclusion at the core of their talent strategy, with a growing number adopting holistic, organisation- wide workforce strategies that address biases and inequities to enhance enterprise and employee performance. Organisations have access to increasingly sophisticated tools to support their diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives across the talent life cycle. The tools seek to make DEI decision-making and processes more data-driven.

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