Self-appraisal of our 2015 predictions

At RSG we don't future-gaze a lot but at the end of each year, we do make an exception and offer technology predictions about the various digital workplace and digital marketing technology marketplaces that we cover. Earlier this week, my colleague Jarrod published our 2016 predictions.

And rather uniquely, we try to see how we fared the previous year. 

That is, we go back and review our predictions to see how many times we hit the nail on the head. Here are assessments of our previous years’ predictions (2014, 2013, 2012 and 2011).

Below find a review of how we fared with our 2015 predictions.

RSG's 2015 Predictions

  1. DAM Vendors Will Roll out DAM Lite
    Yes. There is definitely greater action by vendors, especially newer vendors in SaaS-oriented DAM mirroring customer interest in DAM-lite.
     
  2. Hybrid ECM Will Come of Age
    Halfway Yes. "Hybrid" hasn't really come of age but organizations are increasingly experimenting with hybrid deployment approaches. For example, many enterprises employ a mix of public cloud for cloud-based file sharing scenarios but use on-premise or private clouds for documents that are more confidential or have security implications. ECM vendors are also improving hybrid cloud capabilities, although with different approaches and different level of capabilities.
     
  3. HR Will Rejoin the Digital Workplace Conversation
    Yes. There is a renewed interest and greater investments in employee-engagement and productivity solutions. This is being reflected in workplace technology procurements and there is a greater awareness to refresh/upgrade to workplace systems. Instead of an either-or approach (productivity vs. engagement), HR is looking for solutions that incorporate both elements in the technology.
     
  4. Enterprise Social – Hype around Unified Enterprise Messaging
    No. Unified Enterprise Messaging has remained a hype and we haven’t really seen any major push towards efforts to integrate multiple channels of communication such as email, IM, social, video hangouts and web meetings.
     
  5. Digital Workplace Will Say “Hello” to Analytics and Big Data
    Yes. We’ve seen numerous examples of analytics and big data being used for internally-facing scenarios such as recruitment and hiring, finding intelligence about competitors as well as suppliers, supply chain, inventory management, fulfilment, and so on.
     
  6. A SharePoint 2016 Yawn
    Yawn, Yes.  Even Redmond is a bit embarrassed about SharePoint on-premise.
     
  7. Marketing Virtual Data Warehouses Will Go Mainstream
    Yes and No.  We did see more marketing warehouses, although enterprises use different names for them. Most organizations operate several disparate marketing systems and they are now making efforts to integrate them, but the "virtual" system to provide one source of truth is still on the drawing boards at most enterprises.
     
  8. Drupal Split Will Characterize WCM Market Bifurcation
    Not really.  With delays in Drupal 8, there's been a postponement....but we still think a split is coming.
     
  9. Enterprise Mobile: Apps Will Get Unbundled
    Certainly Yes. Mobile-first and Mobile-only strategies are driving this behavior. Mobile devices have a specific context that is different from desktop environments. Enterprises  are increasingly avoiding monolithic apps that tried to replicate the functionality of their web application, and instead “unbundling” the functionality via  task-oriented, mobile-optimized apps that do certain things really well.
     
  10. Connected Devices Will Become a More Ubiquitous Channel
    Yes, this is a major trend. You not only have to consider mobile phones and tablets of varying sizes and capabilities but you also have to consider a host of other devices such as Apple TV, wearables, and other Internet-connected devices. This usually means investing in specialized tools as well as creating a more sophisticated publishing environments with flexible content, templates, and distribution vehicles.

Tallying the Score

Okay, so how did we do? I total it up to 7 out of 10 (Yes - 6 times, No - 2, Partial - 2).  That’s not as good as last year but not bad either...

If you're an RSG subscriber, let us know if you'd like to understand any of these trends in greater detail or if you'd like to talk to us about any of the marketplaces RSG covers.

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