Every business must become a digital business. In the era of multiple innovation, where businesses have shifted from exploring emerging technologies to implementations of disruptive technologies like mobile, social, cloud, artificial intelligence (AI), and Internet of Things (IoT), the digital playing field will eventually even out. According to the Accenture Technology Vision 2019 research report -- based on a survey of over 6,000 business and IT executives, companies will need to find their competitive edge in this new 'post-digital' era.
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The Accenture Technology Vision 2019 report was written by Paul Daugherty, Accenture's chief technology and innovation officer (CTIO) and leader of the company's Technology Innovation and Ecosystem group, Marc Carrel-Billiard, Accenture's global senior managing director of Accenture Labs, the company's dedicated R&D organization, and Michael Biltz, Managing Director of Accenture's annual Strategic Technology Visioning efforts. Daugherty is also the co-author of 'Human + Machine: Reimagining Work in the Age AI'. Ray Wang, CEO and founder of Constellation Research and I interviewed Daugherty about his must read book. In the report, the authors identify significant technology trends that will reshape and define the post-digital era, and what businesses need to consider in order best positions themselves for success.
Paul Daugherty, CTIO at Accenture, Author of 'Human + Machine' and the Accenture Technology Vision 2019 Report
"A post-digital world doesn't mean that digital is over. On the contrary, we're posing a new question: as all organizations develop their digital competency, what will set you apart?" -- @PaulDaugh, Accenture CTIO
According to Accenture: "Doubling down on completing their digital transformations to get the most value from those investments—and at the same time, turning a strategic eye toward what's next. By moving the company's focus to targets of opportunity, finding a place among the ecosystems of the post-digital era, and mastering digital investments with an eye toward the post-digital future, leaders will position themselves for success for years to come. Your digitized organization will be the foundation from which you drive all future innovation."
The 2019 three-year set of technology trends relating to Accenture's Technology Vision is built upon the 2018 and 2017 trends.
This year's Accenture Technology Vision highlights five emerging trends that will shape businesses over the next three years. The five trends attempt to illustrate how businesses are looking for new ways to differentiate themselves as the world moves into the post-digital era. Here are the 2019 five tech trends:
"In the post-digital world, every moment will represent a potential new market of one. It's where demand is communicated instantly and gratification is expected immediately. What's more, both are constantly changing, creating an infinite and never-ending stream of opportunities to be met through business-to-business (B2B) and business-to-consumer (B2C) engagement, as well as in the public sector. The post digital world is one where technology is the fabric of reality, and companies can use it to meet people wherever they are, at any moment in time—if they rise to the challenge." -- Accenture Technology Vision 2019 Report
The Accenture Technology Vision 2019 report advises business leaders to do more than just complete their digital transformation. Digital trailblazers must set new goals, including:
Let us take a closer look at these 5 emerging technology trends and their impact on the digital transformation and the post-digital era.
The Accenture report begins with reminding us about the previous technologies that enabled digital transformation. During the digital revolution, social, mobile, analytics, and cloud (SMAC) combined to let businesses understand their partners and consumers at unprecedented depth, and together, SMAC helped companies create major differentiators. As we enter the post-digital era, the next set of technologies every company will need to master will be DARQ -- Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT), Artificial Intelligence (AI), Extended Reality (XR) and Quantum Computing.
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DARG -- The next set of technologies every company will need to master? Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT), Artificial Intelligence (AI), Extended Reality (XR) and Quantum Computing.
The reports notes that while quantum computing is the furthest from full maturity and impractical as a current investment for most companies, advances in quantum research are bringing costs down significantly. The report included several company example use-cases of DARQ technologies and business benefits.
"When asked to rank the technologies, forty-one percent of business and IT leaders report that AI will have the greatest impact on their organizations over the next three years, while 19 percent say their greatest impact during the same time frame will come from distributed ledgers. But to use the technologies to their greatest potential -- now and when all four have matured -- businesses need to think about the value in combining them." -- Accenture Technology Vision 2019 Report
Is your business ready for DARQ? Here are the key decision points that you need to consider:
"Globally, 1.7 billion adults are "unbanked," with no bank account or access to formal finance.1 They frequently end up in a financial catch-22: without any financial history, they can't qualify for a loan. Without any loans, they have no financial history." -- Accenture Technology Vision 2019 Report
According to the report: "As the world moves into the post-digital era, companies are beginning to build new products and services that shift the one-off, transactional exchanges between businesses and consumers to an ongoing, customized relationship. They are moving beyond personalized products to individualized experiences, creating a one-to-one relationship with each customer where technology plays the starring and ever-present role."
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The shift toward technology driven experiences has already begun. 83 percent of business and IT executives agree that digital demographics give their organizations a new way to identify market opportunities for unmet customer needs. In the post digital era, the customer experience is the product. We are in the age of the connected customer, where the expectations are that companies know and can anticipate our needs. Businesses today must leverage technologies to become trusted partners. To do this, businesses must adopt Trust as their number one core value. By better understanding how customers use technology, companies can delver meaningful experiences, while respecting their stakeholder's privacy and personal needs.
"The key takeaway: tailoring offerings to the individual also means figuring out just how much tailoring to do in the first place. Individual lines will range from "all personalization is creepy to me" through to "personalization is incredibly useful and I don't find it creepy at all," plus everything in between -- and the line will vary for each different offering. The honeymoon of unlimited technological access is over. Businesses need to understand how much technology people want to use, how much access they want to allow into their lives, and how much individualization they want companies to create without stepping over the line." -- Accenture Technology Vision 2019 Report
"The speed and constantly changing nature of human+ career journeys are making it harder for companies to add specific skills to their workforce through traditional hiring approaches. Top candidates are off the job market within 10 days, and a slow hiring process can lead to a new employee whose primary skills are no longer a good match by the time a role is filled." -- Accenture Technology Vision 2019 Report
The importance of training and employee engagement in the post-digital era -- Accenture Technology Vision 2019
The report strongly emphasized the importance of training and employee engagement.
Here are some of the key recommendations:
"If enterprises hope to collaborate on security across their ecosystem, the first step is reframing their understanding of threats and the subsequent risk those threats pose. In a recent Accenture survey, 71 percent of IT and business executives felt that cyberattacks were a "black box" and did not know how they would affect the organization. If leaders cannot assess the impact of an attack on their own organization, how will they understand the risk posed to their ecosystem partners—or the risks they are accepting through those partnerships?" -- Accenture Technology Vision 2019 Report
The report advises business leaders to better understand the risks they and their ecosystems face in the post digital era.
"In ecosystem-driven business, enterprises must understand the challenges faced by every participating company. Reframing risk to account for ecosystem relationships and proactively making security a part of business discussions will help companies begin to view their own business the way attackers do, leading to better preparation overall. But reconsidering what constitutes risks for the ecosystem is just the beginning. Security and IT operations teams can spend days fighting the wrong fires if they do not understand the business impact." -- Accenture Technology Vision 2019 Report
To better understand and manage security threats to the ecosystem, businesses must adopt a distributed responsibility model with a security from the inside out mindset and operational practices.
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"To combat this ever-growing challenge, businesses will need to spread responsibility for and ownership of security throughout their organization, giving security teams the agility to address the biggest challenges. By being more strategic with how they position security internally, companies can make it a business enabler rather than a catch-all." -- Accenture Technology Vision 2019 Report
"With companies, workforces, consumers, and industries now inextricably connected, being digital is no longer enough for a business to differentiate itself. But it does give organizations a foothold for their next big opportunity: capturing moments." -- Accenture Technology Vision 2019 Report
By levering customer analytics, companies can identify moments of truth and deliver real-time experiences to delight customers.
"Mastering momentary markets will be both an art and a science. Delivering for every moment is impractical and unnecessary; the art lies in picking the right opportunities to be both effective and welcomed by consumers. The science is in building a company that can create context-aware, customized products and services on demand." -- Accenture Technology Vision 2019 Report
Searches for "same-day shipping" have grown 120 percent since 2015, and there are high expectations around personalization as well, with 71 percent of consumers expressing frustration when shopping experiences are impersonal. In the post digital era, the new business currencies are speed, personalization and intelligence -- all powered by DARQ technologies.
"Before companies can deliver for a given moment, they have to know that the opportunity exists. That means identifying customer needs before their competitors do—and potentially before customers themselves do," according to Accenture. This is a very important concept -- building your company's anticipatory muscles, so that you can proactively identify ways to add value to your customers before others. This is why companies must invest in AI technologies -- mass personalization at scale and speed, cannot be achieved without AI. Consider the size and scale of networks that will ultimately redefine the age of the connected customer:
The Accenture Technology Vision 2019 report is a must read for all business leaders. Every business is a digital business. In a post-digital era, only the businesses that focus on these five technology trends can positions themselves for sustainable and meaningful growth. Unlocking your company's full potential will depend on a combination of factors including the multiplicative use of DARQ technologies and a commitment to stakeholder (employees, customers, partners and ecosystems) success.
To learn more about the Accenture Technology Vision 2019 report, visit here.
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