3. Mobile

“That ties in neatly with this phrase we heard from the Digital Workplace Group: ‘Work used to be a place – now it’s the space around us.’” 2017 Trends report

From how an app can best fit into your channel mix, to how we can borrow from the best consumer and B2B mobile experiences, we’ve talked about the importance of mobile technology in six years of our Trends reports. And that’s because our phones remain one of our most-used tools, with reports suggesting we spend anywhere from 2 hours to 4 hours on the addictive little devices each day. And yet, we see so few examples of strong mobile experiences at work. Next we’d like to see more organisations rethinking their classic approach, seeing how mobile channels and content can connect, particularly with younger generations and the hard to reach.

2. Artificial intelligence (AI)

“Digital tools are not a panacea: they must be part of a carefully considered communications mix, which builds on a clear understanding of your audience.” 2019 Trends report

While AI gets the award for ‘most talked about’ in comms circles in the last couple of years, we first had it as a top trend back in 2017. And while the technology may have developed, our core message hasn’t. As we said back then, the freedom and time that AI tools give us shouldn’t come at the expense of creativity or expert knowledge. We need to keep our focus on how AI can complement what we want to achieve, not use it in isolation.

1. Measurement

“With finite budgets, we need to be sure that every channel is justifying its place and supporting the bigger internal comms picture. And if it isn’t, we need to know so we can fix it.” 2014 Trends report

The trend that’s been the most prevalent over the last decade should be no shock. We’ve written about the importance of measurement and evaluation almost every year, and moved from conversations about whether we should be measuring more to widening the scope of our measurement methods. Hey, we even invented our own – DASH, our all-in-one analytics dashboard. Next up we want to see organisations actually using all the data that’s available to them to create insight-driven, impactful communications. Because if you’re not measuring, how can you demonstrate your impact to senior leaders?