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Accenture Technology Vision 2014 Every Business Is a Digital Business From Digitally Disrupted to Digital Disrupter CONTENTS FOREWORD 3 INTRODUCTION 4 TRENDS 01 04 Digital–physical blur: Harnessing hyperscale: Extending intelligence to the edge 12 Hardware is back (and never really 02 went away) 56 From workforce to crowdsource: 05 The rise of the borderless enterprise 28 The business of applications: 2 03 Software as a core competency Data supply chain: in a digital world 72 Putting information into circulation 42 06 Architecting resilience: “Built to survive failure” becomes the mantra of the nonstop business 84 CONCLUSION 98 RESEARCH METHODOLOGY 102 END NOTES 104 CONTACTS 111 #techvision2014 FOREWORD FOREWORD When we declared “every business is a digital business” in the Accenture Technology Vision 2013, we didn’t see it as a trend for last year or this year. We saw it as the future. The future of technology. The future of business. Enterprises are embracing technology in the way they do The future of our increasingly interconnected and business and also as a catalyst to create something new— interdependent world. new markets, new products, and new areas of growth Last year, we saw the beginnings of business transformation and revenues. based on a digital model. Organizations looking to The change is revolutionary. Industrial companies are reimagine themselves in a technology-driven world set becoming customer service companies. Consumer forth on their journey to becoming digital businesses. 3 products companies are becoming Internet companies. Many organizations were experimenting, while others Energy companies are becoming information companies. were making larger investments. But all were counting Pierre Nanterme And media and entertainment companies are becoming Chairman & CEO on technology to fuel their next waves of growth. logistics companies. This year, we see a marked uptick in digital. The Accenture For our clients and for any organization, the Accenture Technology Vision 2014 lays out bold trends that are Technology Vision 2014 points toward an exciting time becoming characteristic of larger enterprises, which have of new opportunities driven by the power of technology. been perceived by some as lagging in converting to digital We hope that you find the Accenture Technology Vision Paul Daugherty businesses. While social, mobile, analytics, and cloud still insightful as you continue on the journey to become a Chief Technology Officer drive these trends, the focus now is on new ways that digital business. these technologies are being woven into the next generation of business strategies across every industry. ACCENTURE TECHNOLOGY VISION 2014 INTRODUCTION 4 #techvision2014 INTRODUCTION INTRODUCTION Every Business Is a Digital Business: From Digitally Disrupted to Digital Disrupter Big companies are back in the digital game. Procter & Gamble, Tesco, Disney, GE—these are just a few of the global 2,000 that are now in a race to become digital. Those that get there first will 5 be able to disrupt their existing markets and penetrate new ones. They will be in control of their new digital destinies. This year’s report represents the latest iteration of Accenture’s Technology Vision, which declares that “every business is a digital business.” In last year’s report, we laid out the imperative for every business to reimagine itself in this digital world, and we charted the increasing appetite of leading enterprises for exploring the opportunities that emerging technologies provide. ACCENTURE TECHNOLOGY VISION 2014 INTRODUCTION Big is the next big thing Tesco, GE, and Disney This year we see something more. We see the first wave show how of large traditional companies starting to use technology as a driving force—in some situations, the driving force— Consider Tesco. In the last two years, the global for how they grow strongly and effectively. If the last supermarket chain not only has created interactive decade has been seen as the playground of the digital grocery stores in airports and subway stations but also startups—overnight sensations such as Instagram and has expanded into new industries. Tesco now offers Twitter, Zipcar and YouTube, TripAdvisor and Airbnb— movie streaming, e-books, and even its own seven- 1 then the coming decade will see the emergence of the inch tablet priced as low as $91. The grocery retailer traditional companies as digital giants. Backed by their is well on its way to becoming a truly digital business. More than 20 percent of Tesco’s online sales now come 6 deep resources, enormous scale, and process discipline, these new digerati are about to rewrite much of the through smartphones, and 10 percent of all orders from 2 digital playbook. Tesco Direct come through its mobile website. For business leaders everywhere, the next three years In the manufacturing arena, GE is betting on the will be about determining their organizations’ pace in industrial Internet, building cloud-based services with this digital race—and their place in the new world of intelligent analytics so that it can collect and combine digital. Large companies are making a push to transform vast amounts of industrial-machine data and equipment themselves from followers to leaders in digital. The first data, extracting unique insights that it can use to set contenders out of the gate are already poised to take new performance standards in major industries such as advantage of the many recent technology advances in energy and aviation. ways that promise to upend expectations of industry observers and consumers alike. #techvision2014 INTRODUCTION In the business-to-consumer realm, Disney is introducing a collection of tools including a wireless tracking Much more than an wristband to create an entirely new personalized and investor relations game enriched experience for visitors to its amusement parks. For visitors wearing the MagicBand, Disney offers a During their years of experimentation, industrial better guest experience with much less waiting. But the powerhouses such as GE, Disney, P&G, Tesco, Walmart, technology goes beyond just giving preferential places and Shell have learned by doing—steadily gaining in queues: for example, it allows Disney park-goers to the skills and the competencies to pull ahead of their simply “touch to pay” for food and merchandise and to competitors, blunting the startups’ advantages, and make and share plans with family and friends in a travel proving to their stakeholders that they absolutely have group. The technology is also transforming the dining what it takes to excel in the new digital economy. experience, enabling patrons to preorder food, which is Of course, the big players know it’s far more than an 7 3 then prepared and served as they walk into a restaurant. investor relations game. They are acutely aware that And of course, Disney captures a comprehensive digital digital expertise can confer exceptional strategic record (or storybook) of its customers’ activities. advantage. They realize that not only can they control their own markets, but they can actually disrupt and establish footholds in others, often creating new business and market models in the process. For example, General Motors is already raising anxiety in the car rental business by partnering with RelayRides, a startup whose use of mobile phones makes ride sharing easy. And AT&T is entering the home security market with its Digital Life service, allowing customers to remotely control everything in the home, from alarms to lights to door locks. ACCENTURE TECHNOLOGY VISION 2014 INTRODUCTION When boundaries blur A huge shift is under way. Boundaries are blurring in many dimensions—not just between IT leaders and their business colleagues, but between digital assets and physical resources and between enterprises and their customers, suppliers, and other stakeholders. IT strategy and business strategy are no longer separate; they have Hallmarks of tomorrow’s become inseparable. It’s this kind of mindset that we see across the digital spectrum. digital disrupters In many ways, digital is unlocking a renaissance for large The concept of the “fast follower” is becoming obsolete. 8 companies, allowing them to reconnect with what made In a world of nonstop change, there is no time to catch them industry leaders in the first place. There is a vast up. Instead, we expect the emerging digital leaders to variety of opportunity before them. Just as technology be master orchestrators—uniquely able to strive for leveled the field for the newcomers of the last decade, so convergence on a huge scale as they capitalize on a wide the incumbents can now leverage those same forces of array of technology breakthroughs to rapidly advance digital democratization to charge back. Lower barriers to and innovate with their systems and strategies. entry for one are lower barriers to entry for all. Many will In turn, this new pace will force corporate leaders to use their new digital prowess as a potent differentiator— think about new operating models that might yield resetting the bar for consumer interactions, for instance, further advantage. Here too, many experiments are under or providing unprecedented levels of supply chain way—from new cross-functional roles for data scientists effectiveness, or perhaps developing groundbreaking new to chief digital officers whose influence extends beyond pricing models. the four walls of the enterprise. #techvision2014 INTRODUCTION 9 ACCENTURE TECHNOLOGY VISION 2014 INTRODUCTION FIGURE 1: Every Business Is – a Digital Business: The Evolution 10 - #techvision2014 INTRODUCTION And throughout every organization, we anticipate a Individually, each theme, from each year, highlights the re-estimation of the skills that will be most valuable, evolution of a key technology, some of which are already at all levels. central to the digital explorations of many leading enterprises. Viewed in aggregate, the themes represent This year’s Technology Vision report highlights six a fundamental shift in the assumptions that companies emerging themes that reflect the shifts being seen now now must make as they plan for success in the decades among the digital power brokers of tomorrow: large to come.