The start of this year marks our 10th anniversary in business. A few weeks ago, for the first time in Devbridge’s history, teams from our five global offices descended upon Lithuania to reflect, collaborate, and plan for another year of solving complex problems for some of the world's largest companies.
More than 300 professionals from Chicago, Toronto, London, Kaunas, and Vilnius convened and discussed how we’ll approach those challenges for Fortune 1000 companies. On Feb. 2, the week culminated with the opening of a new office in Kaunas and our annual Kickoff event.
At Kickoff, we discussed goals and predictions for 2018. In this article, I’ll outline those predictions, the challenges we see organizations facing, and how we’ll solve them.
Themes for 2018
I’m excited to announce that, in addition to financial services and manufacturing, we have expanded into healthcare, AgTech, and hospitality. Many companies—regardless of industry—are facing the same digital challenges. These challenges are nearly universal, and we’re now taking our expertise and applying it to new, exciting areas.
Financial services
There are two sides to the proverbial coin: On one side, new opportunities are presenting themselves through AI, blockchain, and other emerging technologies. All are trendy discussion topics, but the majority of heavy investment should still flow into the fundamentals—the other side of the coin. These fundamentals include furthering DevOps capability, transitioning core to the cloud, introducing automation to enable the self-provisioning of environments, as well as testing, and thus lowering overall costs. In 2018, more companies will continue restructuring into product organizations, building delivery capabilities around the maxim that the customer is the North Star.
Agriculture technology
Smarter digital products will pave a way for increased grower profits. Data-driven decisions will help growers maximize yield, while mobility will allow service companies to maximize machine uptime and be more responsive to their customers. Workflow digitization will continue to shorten the contract-to-revenue cycle both for growers and commodity resellers.
Health care
Organizations that chart a course where the patient is the North Star will continue disrupting the health care industry. This is especially true in data ownership, availability, and the championing of positive patient outcomes through digital platforms. Custom software will enable providers to focus on the experience of the customer without having to compromise service due to the limitations of an off-the-shelf product. Finally, HIPAA-compliant Internet of Health and Wellness applications will allow a seamless transition for the patient in the provider ecosystem.
Hospitality
Mobility reigns supreme as far as guests are concerned. The focus on an elevated customer experience results in aesthetically pleasing, self-serviced, location-aware, push-enabled mobile applications the delight the user. The challenge for companies is to move off of terminal-based legacy platforms in favor of web-based tools. Many are starting to leverage service design as a part of the holistic experience of the brand.
Manufacturing
Compared to other industries, manufacturing is playing catch-up due to underinvestment in technology. Historically a cost center, IT in today’s manufacturing is a means of staying competitive and differentiating. Internet of Things capability is becoming the expected standard, while Big Data is helping progressive manufacturers maintain higher uptime and utilization. Enterprise mobility is becoming a standard for distributed networks of technicians, increasing throughput while elevating the customer experience.
Near future
Bringing all of our employees to celebrate kickoff is part of a wider theme—a theme that celebrates high performance. We’re privileged to have worked with fearless organizations that, despite their large size and risk aversion, have looked beyond the status quo and partnered with us to bring on change.
In 2017 we scaled our management structure and introduced the role of Managing Director. Each of our MDs specializes in one or several of the above verticals and bring an additional strategic insight into the challenges companies within those verticals face. We believe that the future success of our clients hinges on two things:
Our ability to facilitate strategic alignment
Nimble delivery of exceptional software to the end customer
I want to thank all of our clients for the incredible opportunities. Our relentless growth over the past 10 years would not be possible without you. You took a chance on Devbridge, and together we created lasting, meaningful change in your organizations.
And, if you haven’t worked with us? Isn’t it time to actually ship great software to your customers in time, and deliver more value than the business expects? Take a look at our recent white paper on digital transformation and let's schedule a lean requirements workshop!
