Vikram Walecha, chief technology officer for ServiceNow at IBM, co-authored this blog. 5G has opened the door to a wealth of new opportunities for communications service providers (CSPs), from higher speeds to new network technologies. Forward-thinking CSPs will be able to target new customers, new buyers, and new markets with innovative products and offerings that will leverage 5G capabilities to accelerate digital transformation across multiple industries.

We all know one bad experience can impact a customer’s perception of—and even willingness to deal with—an organization going forward. That’s why so many companies, in virtually every industry, have made investing in customer experience (CX) a top priority, according to ResearchAndMarkets.com. The problem is, for any given organization, there are a number of customer service processes along the entire life span of an interaction that need to be looked at and made great.

Although parts of life have been put on pause due to the pandemic, our relationship with work hasn’t stalled away from the office. But working from home has profoundly changed the structure and flow of work. Employers and employees are collaborating to define what “workplace” means in 2022 and beyond.

The pandemic created urgency for innovation and exposed us to what technology can do. But a shortage of developer skills left organizations grappling. Better integrations and low-code apps can help deliver transformation at scale, while citizen developers can ramp up automation. ServiceNow® Creator Workflows, including App Engine and IntegrationHub, offer a single, low-code platform that empowers citizen developers to deliver digital services fast without complexity.

From managing environmental, social, and economic crises to navigating remote and hybrid work, the last 18 months have challenged businesses to think differently about the way they support their employees and keep vital business functions up and running. ServiceNow rose to the challenge to provide the solutions that get the job done. The result: ServiceNow has been recognized as a Strategic Leader in the 2021 Fosway 9-Grid™ for Cloud HR. What makes a leader.

Running a customer contact center to meet the sky-high expectations of today’s customers is hard work. Success depends on having agents who can empathize with and advocate for your customers in order to give them satisfactory answers and resolutions. This is no small task, and the dynamic nature and complexity of all the factors involved make it even more difficult.

The future of healthcare is personalized, joined services shaped by actionable insights. That relies on building secure digital health services that customers can trust. Cyberattacks are getting more sophisticated and harder to detect, and the damage to businesses and their reputations can be difficult to recover from. Although security is complex, resources can be scarce. Getting the best return on investment is crucial to balance protecting customer data with safeguarding service delivery.

As the world emerges from the COVID-19 pandemic, improving the customer experience is critical. Nowhere is this more important than in the healthcare industry, where increased engagement can lead to better patient outcomes. “Pairing digital technologies with human coaching and clinical care can offer a dramatically better patient experience through personalized attention, on-demand access to support, and automated reminders,” explains a Workflow article.

When measuring the success of large-scale transformations—particularly in the technology space—it’s natural to look at hard metrics, such as cycle time, mean time to recovery (MTTR), and so on. In IT, for example, hard metrics are what we do all day long. But within any organization, change is ultimately personal. In my experience, relying exclusively on hard numbers often leads you to ignore the human side of transformation, and sometimes even action the wrong things.

Organizations across all industries are investing in digital transformation to unlock new levels of innovation, agility, and productivity as they look to adapt to the new world of hybrid work. According to Gartner, worldwide IT spending is projected to reach $4.1 trillion by the end of this year.1 However, many organizations are still struggling to identify where to start as they race to modernize systems of record and digitize operations.