Gartner Highlights Top Trends Impacting Technology Providers in 2024
Gartner, Inc. has unveiled the leading trends that will have a significant impact on technology providers in 2024. The emergence of Generative AI (GenAI) is set to dominate the agendas of tech providers, reshaping their growth strategies and everyday tools, according to Eric Hunter, Managing Vice President at Gartner. However, GenAI is not the sole influence affecting technology leaders.
Growth strategies within the high-tech industry have historically focused on capturing growth at any cost, without considering the full measure of associated expenses. As macroeconomic conditions create uncertainties and investors shift their focus to margin growth, Gartner forecasts a shift towards efficient growth strategies. These strategies aim to strengthen current profit margins while capitalizing on future revenue opportunities.
The increasing demands placed on enterprise IT by businesses necessitates the creation of new relationships and revenue streams. This includes expanded provider roles within enterprise IT and the establishment of outcome-centric provider-enterprise relationships, resulting in enterprise-wide tier-1 relationships.
Sustainability efforts are evolving beyond mitigating internal risk and ensuring compliance, as product leaders must now embrace double materiality and leverage emerging technologies to meet sustainability objectives effectively.
Responsible AI and AI safety are critical considerations due to the rapid development of GenAI technologies. To stay competitive in this GenAI market, product leaders need to build solutions that incorporate safety principles. This includes model transparency, traceability, interpretability, and explainability aspects, as well as pre-empting regulatory and compliance issues to establish trust.
Outdated go-to-market (GTM) models are colliding with new buyer behaviors, resulting in negative sales pipeline effects for tech providers. Adapting sales and marketing approaches to detect and respond to buyer pessimism is crucial to avoiding decline in GTM operations.
While general-purpose models are effective for many GenAI applications, they may not be practical for enterprise use cases that require domain-specific data. Tech providers should explore industry-focused models that can be adapted to meet specific user requirements more efficiently.
To navigate the complexities of procuring, implementing, and integrating solutions, specialized niche digital marketplaces are emerging. Product leaders who fail to offer their services through personalized digital marketplaces limit their findability for target customers. It is predicted that by 2025, 80% of sales interactions between suppliers and buyers will occur in digital channels.
Industry cloud platforms are set to drive growth for service providers, hyperscalers, ISVs, and SaaS providers, who are increasingly turning to vertical solutions to deliver desired customer outcomes. Gartner predicts that by 2027, over 50% of tech providers will employ industry cloud platforms, a significant increase from less than 5% in 2023.
Product-led-growth (PLG) strategies, which aim to demonstrate value to product users, require the involvement of sellers to convert deals. Buyer needs for business value and outcome justification will merge PLG tactics with value management and realization initiatives in hybrid go-to-market (GTM) strategies.
As technology continues to evolve, tech providers must adopt precision marketing and sales techniques to stay relevant. Failure to adapt to new approaches may result in limited growth within established accounts and a decline in overall deal quality.
These trends identified by Gartner will shape the strategies and operations of technology providers in the coming years, requiring them to adapt to changing market dynamics and leverage emerging technologies to maintain their competitive edge.
Analyst comment
Positive news: Gartner highlights top trends impacting technology providers in 2024, such as the emergence of Generative AI (GenAI), efficient growth strategies, expanded provider roles, and the importance of sustainability and responsible AI. Analyst perspective: Tech providers need to adapt to these trends, leverage emerging technologies, and navigate the complexities of the market to maintain their competitive edge.
