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2025 Forecast: Expert Predictions For The Year

As 2025 begins, businesses and industries worldwide are poised for a year of transformation, innovation, and new challenges. In this blog, Cyferd’s thought leaders share expert 2025 predictions, shedding light on the trends and developments that will define the year ahead.

From the growing role of AI in personalization and automation to the rising importance of sustainability and adaptability, these forecasts spotlight the critical areas where businesses must focus to stay ahead of the curve.
Whether it’s navigating supply chain disruptions driven by geopolitical shifts, harnessing composable platforms for greater agility, or integrating AI-powered tools for enhanced efficiency, 2025 promises both opportunities and disruptions.

Read on to explore our predictions for the future of technology, business strategy, and innovation.

Atanu Roy

SVP Customer Service

US administration changes will have unpredictable and widespread consequences on many nations across a wide spectrum of operations. 

With a focus on implementing US trade tariffs, this is likely to lead to changes in supply chain for many multinational businesses. These businesses should look closely at their existing supply chain risks and act quickly to diversify and mitigate them. Information systems that can provide actionable insights will be critical, as will be an ability to make nimble business decisions based on those insights. 

Defence spending in many developed western economies is likely to feel increased pressure, as the US increases focus and budget on internal priorities. As a result, we can expect to see increased governance in procurement and supply chain operations across multiple government departments as well as increased pressure to drive internal efficiencies. The role of Artificial Intelligence will be amplified in these scenarios to provide automated and increasingly autonomous decisions in non-strategic spend categories to drive overall procurement savings with existing levels of staffing.  

Antimicrobial resistance will become elevated as a global concern, driving developments in new antibiotics, vaccines and diagnostics.  This will have implications not just for the Pharma companies, but also in agriculture and livestock production. The pace of many processes within these industries is likely to require a step-change, with significant pressure on existing systems to meet demands for capacity, speed and collaborative usability across multiple groups. Artificial Intelligence to accelerate research and optimised workflow technologies able to handle the increased complexity and pace required will be essential. 

The Evolution of AI: Applied Personalization at Scale 

In 2025, AI will continue to dominate innovation, but the focus will shift from standalone capabilities to applied personalization. This shift presents a promising future, as businesses will increasingly adopt AI to craft unique, data-driven customer experiences, from real-time insight generation to proactive support systems anticipating issues before customers know them. The rise of generative AI integrations into workflows will make automation an operational efficiency differentiator. Industries like retail and manufacturing will see AI as a driver to increase the throughput of their back-office operations, be ahead of potential disruptions, and seize opportunities. 

Composable Platforms Take Center Stage 

With the growing need for agility and innovation, composable platforms will become a staple in enterprise technology. Organizations will demand solutions that are not only customizable but also interoperable with existing tools, empowering teams to create tailored applications without extensive coding. These changes will transform procurement, supply chain management, and overall operations, enabling companies to address unique challenges faster. Composability will also play a crucial role in simplifying complex ecosystems, breaking down silos, and fostering collaboration across departments, creating a more interconnected business environment. 

Shifting Customer Expectations: Speed and Sustainability 

Customers will enter 2025 with heightened expectations for speed, transparency, and sustainability. Faster response times, real-time tracking, and instant gratification will no longer be optional but mandatory for businesses aiming to stay competitive. Sustainability will move from a “nice-to-have” to a critical purchasing criteria. Companies that fail to demonstrate their commitment to environmental and social responsibility will lose market share to those that make sustainability a core part of their value proposition. 

Caique Zaniolo

VP Product

Matt Heys

SVP AI and Neural Genesis

My predictions for 2025: 

Research and innovation into foundational models will continue to increase throughout the year as it has done for the last few years. We will see bigger language models being released by the likes of OpenAI, Google, Anthropic and Meta, with more capability than ever before and with a bigger focus on multi-modal functionality (i.e. ingesting/producing images, audio, video, etc.). Albeit they’ll still mostly be being used to craft epic poems in the style of Dante or Homer about which of your friends smells the most…  

I’m also hoping there’ll be more research into the architecture of models to improve on the current transformer design. At the moment, it feels that the answer is to just throw more computing power at the problem; but given training the Llama 3.1 family of models produced about the same CO2 output as the lifetime of 475 medium size family cars, we need more innovative solutions for the sake of the planet. Having said that, I predict there’ll be more focus on smaller models too, being used for specific purposes, and being deployed on end-user devices (edge computing) enabling offline usage and quicker responses. 

At Cyferd, the focus will be on continuing to support customers to implement AI into their own solutions in an easy and intuitive way. There’s lots of great stuff coming in 2025, so it’s going to be a brilliant year. 

AI: Evolving from mundane bots or wildly creative image or text generators to purposeful business-critical process enablers 

AI-powered automation is set to transform various business processes, from finance and human resources to supply chain and customer service. In 2025, we’ll see AI handling tasks that require judgment and decision-making, moving beyond simple rule-based automation. However, the transition won’t be without challenges. Organizations will need to carefully integrate AI into their existing workflows and processes, ensuring that it complements rather than disrupts. 

 

Corporate Readiness for Change 

Successful companies in 2025 will be those that embrace this flexibility and engage proactively with modern platforms and AI technologies. They will need to foster a culture of continuous improvement and innovation, breaking down silos between departments to facilitate seamless integration of new technologies. ‘Change manager’ should really be the university grads dream job, the new ‘prompt engineer’, as they are often the missing glue that’s needed to make a modern, innovative, agile organization tick!  

 

The evolution of organizational data assets (data lakes) in this AI world 

The real breakthrough will come for those organizations who can combine the power of generic LLMs with context-rich organizational data, putting those data lakes to work! This fusion could lead to AI systems that truly understand the nuances of a specific organization and its place in the world, making AI significantly more useful for business-critical process challenges. 

Rich Byard

Chief Technology Officer

David Thorpe

Director of Sales Engineering

SaaS Applications are Evolving

The landscape of software delivery is undergoing a transformative shift. For over a decade, fragmented SaaS (Software as a Service) applications have dominated the tech ecosystem, offering businesses streamlined tools to manage everything from CRM to ERP, HR and project management. However, the rise of interconnected services and agents; AI-driven, modular systems that communicate seamlessly with one another, are beginning to reshape how we think about software functionality and user experience.

As AI becomes more commonplace, business logic will migrate to an AI layer, which is predicted to disrupt the role of these traditional SaaS apps. Instead of relying on a monolithic platform for project management, for example, companies can deploy agents that independently manage scheduling, task allocation, and progress tracking while dynamically sharing data across systems. This modular approach offers unparalleled flexibility, allowing organizations to customize workflows and scale interconnected functionalities.

The potential to disrupt traditional SaaS models becomes increasingly clear. These agents leverage advanced AI and machine learning to anticipate needs, automate processes, and improve decision-making. For businesses, this means fewer manual integrations, faster adaptation to changing needs, and cost savings. For developers, it offers an opportunity to innovate by focusing on highly specialized tools rather than competing in an oversaturated SaaS market. The shift from standalone SaaS platforms to interconnected services represents not just an evolution in technology but a reimagining of how software can drive business success.

As we look ahead to 2025, the business and technology landscape is set to evolve at an unprecedented pace. From the transformative power of AI and automation to the growing emphasis on sustainability and adaptability, the predictions shared by our thought leaders highlight the critical areas where businesses must focus to thrive. By staying agile and embracing innovation, organizations can position themselves to succeed in a rapidly changing world.

These 2025 predictions serve as a roadmap for navigating the challenges and opportunities that lie ahead. We encourage you to leverage these insights to inform your strategies and prepare for what’s next. The future is here – and it’s full of potential.

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