If you’re a small business then the Gartner Symposium 2016 probably wouldn’t be the first place you’d look for advice on what technology you should implement or what trends you need to take note of. While Gartner is known for its expertise in the enterprise market, on the other hand GetApp – a Gartner company – specializes in helping small businesses select the cloud-based solution that is right for their situation. As such, we scoured Gartner’s 2016 Symposium in Barcelona to bring you the key trends and how they will be relevant for your small business.

1. Gartner Symposium 2016 roundup:
key trends for small businesses

2. Are you a small business looking
for technology & software advice?

3. Here are the 9 key trends discussed
at Gartner's Symposium/ITxpo
2016 in Barcelona...
...and how they will be relevant for your small business

4. Key trend #1
Customer experience is worth paying for
Consumers are willing to pay more in
exchange for a better customer experience.

5. Turn your salespeople into product experts
Focus on the needs of the customers
Guide them along the buying journey
Contact them on the touchpoint of their choice
Differentiate your business through customer experience.
Small business takeaway

6. Key trend #2
Hiring & managing talent needs process overhaul
Take lessons from marketing and see candidates as
customers who you need to sell your business to.

7. If small businesses want to attract top talent they need to
define their brand to candidates
Small business takeaway
Mission
Nature of work
Lifestyle, benefits and environment
Management style
Top talent will choose to work for you, not the other way around.

8. Key trend #3
Ecosystems: be friends with your enemies
“An active community of developers can create
more products in a week than you can in a year”
- Peter Sondergaard

9. Partner with your rivals and competitors
Tap into the skills, experience and resources of larger
organizations
Get access to tools and technologies
Small business takeaway
For small businesses especially, it’s important to partner
with frenemies.

10. Key trend #4
Embrace cognitive diversity
Think outside the box when it comes to recruitment.

11. Recruit a range of people who think and work
in a different way
Recruit people from different countries
Recruit people from different fields of work
Recruit people with a different profile
Small business takeaway
Reach innovation through cognitive diversity.

12. Key trend #5
Focus on IT agility through cloud computing
Gartner recommends a bimodal IT approach.

13. Insight

14. Small business takeaway
This may sound like a lot of effort for small businesses...
...but the idea of embracing cloud computing & focusing
on faster application development & implementation can
bring new levels of agility and efficiency to your small
business!

15. Key trend #6
Blockchain is not just for the enterprise
Gartner predicts that by 2022, an innovative business
built on a blockchain will be worth $10 billion.

16. Signing legal contracts
Identity verification
Energy management
Cloud storage
Tracking the source and location of goods
Insight
Blockchain was the key word of the Gartner Symposium
Blockchain refers to the ledger that records all bitcoin
transactions, but has now moved on to other uses:

17. Small business takeaway
Partnering with an enterprise can help you apply
Blockchain to your business:
You can learn from and piggyback off their initiatives,
and take advantage of the increased security in legal
matters that blockchain can offer.

18. Key trend #7
The Internet of Things
In an increasingly connected world, everything
is now a “thing”, even your customers.

19. Small business takeaway
Better understand & communicate with your customers
Improve efficiency through remote monitoring of devices
Bring new ideas to market quicker
Monitor business processes better if you scale across
different locations
Diversify revenue streams
With all these connected devices comes a mountain of data
that you can use to:

20. Key trend #8
Intelligence will be artificial
Gartner predicts that by 2018, 45% of the
fastest-growing companies will have fewer
employees than instances of smart machines.

21. Small business takeaway
Your business probably already uses algorithms to
automate mundane tasks in areas like sales and marketing.
Other useful areas of AI where you might think of
investing include customer interaction analysis,
smart scheduling, and recruiting.

22. Key trend #9
Your next customer service assistant will be virtual
Gartner predicts that by 2019 the use of virtual
customer assistants will triple.

23. Small business takeaway
Customer service is a key area where small businesses
can differentiate themselves to compete against their
larger competitors.
Virtual assistants will enable better customer service in
a more efficient and cost effective way.

24. Consider these key trends to gain
a competitive advantage in 2017!

25. Which Gartner Symposium 2016 trends are
important for your business?
Share your opinion with us!