Accenture Technology Vision 2016: Focus on ‘People First’

Paul Daugherty, CTO, Accenture, stated, “We try to take a different approach from others. We look at the implications of what we are seeing. We really do live in amazing times. We have a supercomputer in our pockets. We have software-defined cars where we can download updates to them. These are part of changes that are leading to a tremendous disruption in business.”

The Accenture Technology Vision 2016 investigates five trends behind a ‘people first’ approach:

Trend 1: Intelligent Automation

Intelligent automation is the launching pad for new growth and innovation. Powered by artificial intelligence (AI), the next wave of solutions will gather unprecedented amounts of data from disparate systems and—by weaving systems, data, and people together—create solutions that fundamentally change the organization, as well as what it does and how it does it.

Trend 2: Liquid Workforce

Companies are investing in the tools and technologies they need to keep pace with constant change in the digital era. But there is typically a critical factor that is falling behind: the workforce. Companies need more than the right technology; they need to harness that technology to enable the right people to do the right things in an adaptable, change-ready, and responsive liquid workforce.

Trend 3: Platform Economy

The next wave of disruptive innovation will arise from the technology-enabled, platform-driven ecosystems now taking shape across industries. Having strategically harnessed technology to produce digital businesses, leaders are now creating the adaptable, scalable, and interconnected platform economy that underpins success in an ecosystem-based digital economy.

Trend 4: Predictable Disruption

Every business now understands the transformational power of digital. What few, though, have grasped is quite how dramatic and ongoing the changes arising from new platform-based ecosystems will be. It’s not just business models that will be turned on their heads. As these ecosystems produce powerful, predictable disruption, whole industries and economic segments will be utterly redefined and reinvented.

Trend 5: Digital Trust

Pervasive new technologies raise potent new digital risk issues. Without trust, businesses cannot share and use the data that underpins their operations. That’s why the most advanced security systems today go well beyond establishing perimeter security and incorporate a powerful commitment to the highest ethical standards for data.

“How do we build trust in an era where information is more pervasive and invasive?” Daugherty said. “It’s dealing with the way you interact with your customers,” he concluded.