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Enterprise 2023 Resolutions To Stay On Steady Ground Amid Market Uncertainty

By Prasad Ramakrishnan, SVP of IT and Chief Information Officer at Freshworks

As the year comes to a close, enterprise organizations should reflect on successes and key takeaways to glean what businesses might expect in 2023. So what are some of the areas that leaders should pay extra attention to, as the economy tightens and companies reassess priorities? It's a good practice to ask, "What do we actually use, and are we using it in a meaningful way?" Often, doing so lays low on the priority list, but when budgets are constrained, having full visibility of your organization's applications is fundamental in making investment and divestment decisions. 

So what should C-suite executives and IT leaders keep in mind as we head into the new year?

Cut bloatware - the #1 priority for CIOs

Bloatware is an $84B money pit for businesses-that's $10M every hour of every day-and increasingly under scrutiny in a rocky economy, rightfully so. For IT, it means doing more with less, and cutting out discretionary bloatware spend. According to our recent ‘State of Workplace Technology: Bloatware' report, 89% of IT professionals waste time weekly due to bloated applications and 54% say their company pays for software they never use. On top of that, 40% say too much of their tech stack is hard to use. Just about every CIO I speak with is planning to review (or in some cases is already in the process of reviewing) their app inventory across the enterprise. It's important to know which apps should be retired, maintained, replatformed or postponed.

Company headcount will increase in 2023...with bot workers

Customer expectations remain high and to meet demand, companies will need to increase efficiency. This means the deployment of more bot workers in 2023. Not only will this reduce human dependence on mundane tasks, but it will reduce costs and lower the margin for human error. We've started to see this trend with understaffed retailers, but it'll soon be mainstream. Bots are a way to assist live workers while enabling companies to achieve efficiency without increasing headcount. According to a recent ‘CX Trends Report 2022: Looking back at a year's worth of data,' businesses that offer chat support with both agents and bots save over 37 hours in average resolution time. That's 93% faster than email support only. Bonus: human agents have more time to focus on the more complicated tasks at hand.

Automation rewriting automation 

Despite many IT professionals saying their organizations pay for tools they don't need, there is still a disconnect between the tools accessible to them vs. what they actually need. In fact, 47% of developers report not having access to tools needed to build applications fast enough to meet deadlines. However, next year we can expect to see the next wave of automation, technology automating its own development. Code will be written by AI engines, intelligently generating its own code. As low code and no-code platforms continue to enable the technology behind these innovations, we'll see more maturity, more time savings, cutting down development time by 90%, and fewer errors and faster development.

Beware of deal sweeteners 

With the broader macro environment we're in, expect to see creative sales offers in an effort to secure longer-term contracts, but buyers beware. My recommendation is to review and reevaluate your contracts on any subscriptions often to ensure you still need them and know what the cancellation terms are if you aren't using them. Being mindful of what you are subscribed to gives organizations more flexibility when it comes to renewal time and stops you from buying more than you need.

While we don't know for sure, signs are pointing toward a challenging 2023, which means executives need to be laser focused on efficiency and cost. Reevaluating what technologies your organization uses and benefits from, as well as encouraging feedback from IT professionals involved in the day-to-day activities, will help keep bloatware at bay. To keep them on steady financial ground, business leaders need to recognize continued technological breakthroughs changing how organizations approach strategic direction and customer experiences.

 

Prasad Ramakrishnan serves as the SVP of IT and CIO for Freshworks,  where he leads the company's IT vision, strategy and execution. A seasoned IT professional, SaaS evangelist and go-to thought leader on all things cloud and security, Ramakrishnan's expertise is critical to the success of Freshworks' products as well as global work culture.

Prior to joining Freshworks, Ramakrishnan served as CIO at Veeva where he took a democratic approach to software adoption and empowered his employees - the would-be users - to decide on the software they would use. His team voted for Freshservice, Freshworks' ITSM (IT service management) offering. As an early adopter, customer and advocate of Freshworks, it was only natural for him to join the company.

Outside of Freshworks, Ramakrishnan serves on multiple boards and enjoys spending time mentoring and advising other IT practitioners to help them become IT leaders, as well as advising startup CEOs on GTM, product, IT and security strategies to help them succeed in the world of startups.