Over the coming weeks, Templafy will be exploring the topic of business enablement.

Business enablement as a concept has been floating around over the last few years. It’s been described as a set of technology-driven processes and initiatives that help businesses run better – often via employee productivity efforts. But this is just the tip of the iceberg. According to a new study by Accenture,

“89% of executives believe that their organization’s ability to generate business value will increasingly be based on the limitations and opportunities of their technology architecture.”

But before we go into the details of business enablement, it’s helpful to understand the context in which it has developed.

A brief history of how we got to where we are

Over the last two decades, digital transformation in enterprises has progressed at different speeds. Industries like retail and transportation led the way, while others like construction and healthcare lagged behind. Because of this – and because of the many different initiatives digital transformation can touch across one given organization – a lot of cloud-based enterprise solutions have emerged.

A recent study from Okta found that large organizations offer an average of 175 applications to their employees. On top of this, consumer trends in entertainment led to a boom in subscription services which has caused an outcry for less tech to keep track of.

With so many personal and professional tech solutions, people have become overwhelmed with options and therefore more critical of the value of technology. In fact, a 2021 report by Templafy found one in four employees feel that the number of tools they have to use in their workflow actually decreases the amount of work they’re able to complete.

The SaaS-lash

With the exponential rise in subscription services came the inevitable backlash – aka SaaS-lash. There’s growing consumer fatigue around paying for multiple subscriptions, and therefore this sentiment is likely going to impact business choices.

A TechRepublic article states:

“Customers were saying that buying software wasn’t an end in itself. They wanted software to business-enable them–and they didn’t want lock-in to proprietary software brands that required large upfront purchases.”

Rushing into the future

Enterprises started 2020 with certain ideas and goals around how tech solutions would move them forward in their digital transformation journey, but when COVID-19 hit, everyone was forced to re-evaluate fast. Enterprises took stock of their situation: those who were drastically behind on digital transformation had to condense years’ worth of work into just weeks to simply keep business running. In contrast, others ahead in their digital transformation roadmap focused on optimizing dispersed teams.

A year later, it’s still not apparent if anyone has figured out what the future of work is going to look like. Some things look certain: we will not go back to working the way we did prior to the pandemic, nor will we continue as we have throughout the last year. So the burning question is: what does the future of work look like?

Business enablement: the technology stack of the future

The future of work is materializing as we speak, and the goal must be to ensure technology stacks are built to enable it. Business leaders and employees are beginning to center around one theme in their quest for the ideal tech support in the workplace: They’re looking for less software that does more to enable a unified, connected business experience.

The business enablement tech stack empowers people to do better work more efficiently and it includes solutions from Sales Enablement, to team Collaboration to Content Enablement – and much more.

Business enablement solutions are usually:

• Company-wide: they offer benefits that impact entire organizations.
• Intuitive: they fit into the companies processes and are optimized for the end-user to support high adoption.
• Integrated: they work well with each other to help the enterprise get the most value.

Ultimately, business enablement solutions focus on supporting employees in their drive to deliver high-value work more efficiently. If adopted and integrated seamlessly, the business enablement stack is likely to impact enterprises in the following ways:

• Streamline IT spending and implementation.
• Align entire workforces and enable high-value work.
• Allow organizations to truly focus on scalability and growth.
• Provide a tech solution that enables a unified business experience for organizations and their employees.

The shift towards business enablement is already happening

A recent trend we’re calling the Platform Play is seeing tech leaders like Salesforce, DocuSign, Box acquiring other solutions to help them add more value for their customers. Behind this trend is a desire for companies to be able to add more to their offerings through more tools that cover multiple capability areas in a less fragmented IT infrastructure.

We predict this trend will continue, and knowing this, we at Templafy, believe business enablement is so much more than a set of initiatives. This is what we envision the future of business enablement- and the tech stack that powers it – will look like.

To learn more about business enablement, download our free report here. And don’t forget to check in regularly as we explore topics around business enablement over the coming weeks.