5 Enterprise Software Industry Predictions for 2024

As part of Solutions Review’s Contributed Content Series—a collection of contributed articles written by our enterprise tech thought leader community—Rick Rider, the SVP of Product Management at Infor, shares some enterprise software industry predictions for the upcoming year.

As we peer into 2024, a tapestry of uncertainties at the intersection of business and technology looms large. With its transformative yet controversial potential, the generative AI hype continues to shape industries. Economic uncertainty remains a constant companion, injecting dreaded unpredictability into the business world. The widening skill gap and labor challenges are pressing concerns demanding more aggressive innovative solutions. These macro trends are trickling downstream, impacting organizations of all sizes across industries. Our predictions for 2024 shed light on how these complex forces manifest in enterprise software. 

The Innovation Imperative Amidst Surging Cloud Costs 

2024 is the year to finally aggressively adopt innovation or subsidize those that are; either way, you will be paying for it. Overall, cloud costs are increasing due to increasing usage. As evidenced by the escalating pricing from major cloud providers, it’s getting increasingly expensive to scale, particularly as these providers prioritize innovators. With innovation a must-have instead of a nice-to-have, there is a delicate balance between supply and demand.

While addressing this scaling challenge, it becomes evident that those engaging with innovative services will derive substantial business value from the price hikes. New revenue streams within SaaS investments become imperative to bridge the ever-growing gap between the cloud capacity haves (those getting insights from their data, automating, etc.) and have-nots. From our perspective, the market compels us to accept that innovating with the latest technology is not a mere choice anymore; it’s an imperative for sustainable growth and industry leadership in 2024. 

Redefining Business Operations with Digital Control Towers and Process Intelligence 

The rise of the business operations control tower is essential. Traditionally, when we think about digital twins and control towers, we mean manufacturing production. However, business operations are fundamentally no different regarding the power of process intelligence. Digitization and automation should prevail in tactical areas like pricing, inventory, accounts receivable, supplier relations, and more.

Vulnerabilities in these areas can cost millions of dollars in lost opportunities if not correctly governed. The adoption of digital business platforms will be on the rise to support this area, given the ROI on harmonizing operations around a centralized control tower with a composable ecosystem. A digital control tower with embedded AI and agile automation ready at all times is the answer. 

Democratized Platforms Bridging the Industry Technology Divide 

Democratized, complete platform capabilities are set to level the playing field between companies large and small. As machine learning, automation, and digital experiences are increasingly adopted at a faster rate with fewer barriers and technical skill gaps, opportunities for expansion into new markets will appear. The traditional forms of differentiation based on size—like economies of scale—are giving way to a new paradigm where success hinges on executing swiftly, with more precision, and at the most advantageous price and experience. We expect blurring of lines between lower, mid-tier, and enterprise organizations. 

Resurgence of Governance, Risk, and Compliance 

A resurgence of governance, risk, and compliance (GRC) is on the horizon. With greater access to technology and subsequent systematic data handling with AI innovation, stricter data privacy laws around the world will require systematic approaches to monitoring, extending beyond the traditional human-centric approach for which the GRC tooling was originally intended and built. This shift will be necessary to establish trust in the latest AI data innovation and safeguard business investments in an era where data protection is paramount.  

Generative AI Supercharging No-Code Tooling 

In the quest for business agility, systems that facilitate content creation, not just pure development, have taken center stage—hence the growing popularity of no-code tooling. However, this takes on an entirely new meaning now with generative AI. Everyone knows code can be produced with GenAI, but we believe that will be abstracted even further to where full-fledged content in the form of dashboards, new workflows, or even AI models will start to be produced on the fly based on simple business intent inputs. Therefore, instead of writing code that can inherently break within a lifecycle process, AI uses platform tooling to construct content at a more stable level away from the source in a more durable fashion.  

In summary, these predictions share a common, resounding message—a call to action. As we stand on the threshold of 2024, the future belongs to those who recognize the emerging challenges and opportunities and actively position themselves to navigate this transformative era. Adaptability and innovation aren’t mere strategies; they are the keys to unlocking sustainable growth and achieving industry leadership.