Accenture’s Tech Vision 2020 Findings

To compete and succeed in a world where digital is everywhere, companies need a new focus on balancing “value” with “values”, aligning their drive to create business value with their customers’ and employees’ values and expectations, according to Accenture Technology Vision 2020.

The 20th edition of Accenture’s annual report predicts the key technology trends that will redefine businesses over the next three years. COVID-19 has made the five trends even more relevant, as opportunities that businesses expected to have years to prepare for are quickly approaching and previously slow-growing pain-points are pushed to the surface.

According to the 2020 report, even though people are embedding technology into their lives more than ever before, organisations’ attempts to meet their needs and expectations can fall short. The pandemic has amplified the pace of innovation to historic levels and a new mindset and approach is required to succeed.

“Dazzled by the promise of technology, many organisations created digital products and services just because they could, without fully considering the human, organisational and societal consequences. While some have referred to today’s environment as a “tech-lash,” or backlash against technology, the report highlights that this term fails to acknowledge the extent to which society is using and benefitting from technology.

Rather, it’s a tech-clash — a clash between business and technology models that are incongruous at odds with people’s needs and expectations. The potential for a tech-clash has never been greater. It is exacerbated by the pandemic with people relying on technology more than ever before to connect, work and live,” said David Kirwan, head of technology at Accenture in Ireland.

“Today we’re seeing a tech-clash caused by the tension between consumer expectations, the potential of technology, and business ambitions — and are now at an important leadership inflection point. COVID-19 is the greatest challenge the world has faced in decades and has transformed people’s lives at an unprecedented scale, impacted every industry and co-opted enterprises’ ambitions for growth and innovation. Companies need to innovate, invent and redefine more quickly than ever before,” Kirwan continued.

Accenture surveyed over 6,000 business and IT executives worldwide, including more than 100 Irish executives and directors, for this year’s Technology Vision report. The research found that 83% of Irish business leaders acknowledge that technology has become an inextricable part of the human experience. As part of the research this year, Accenture also surveyed 2,000 consumers around the world — 70% of whom expect their relationship with technology to be more or significantly more prominent over the next three years.

According to the report, continuing with existing models doesn’t just risk irritating customers or disengaging employees, but could permanently limit the potential for future innovation and growth. Tech-clash is a challenge that can be solved and Accenture’s Technology Vision report identifies five key trends that companies must address over next three years to defuse tech-clash, meet people’s evolving needs and realise new forms of business value that will be driven in part by stronger, more trusting relationships with stakeholders:

— The “I” in Experience. Three in four Irish business and IT executives surveyed (75%) believe that competing successfully in this new decade requires organisations to elevate their relationships with customers as partners. Organisations will need to design personalised experiences that amplify an individual’s agency and choice.

This turns passive audiences into active participants by transforming one-way experiences — which can leave people feeling out of control and out of the loop — into true collaborations. This remains true in a post-pandemic world, with one caveat: COVID-19 has transformed the role and importance of digital experiences in people’s lives. Enterprises should update their personalisation strategies to keep up.

— AI and Me. Currently, only 34% of Irish organisations report using inclusive design or human-centric design principles to support human-machine collaboration. Artificial intelligence (AI) should be an additive contributor to how people perform their work, rather than a backstop for automation.

As AI capabilities grow, enterprises must rethink the work they do to make AI a generative part of the process, with trust and transparency at its core. In today’s environment, the need for AI in the short-term is readily apparent.

With enormous challenges facing companies and the world at large, we need AI to help get work done, beyond automation needs. Long term, COVID-19 will let us see human-AI collaboration at its best, potentially easing people’s concerns about the technology.

— The Dilemma of Smart Things. Nearly three-quarters (74%) of Irish executives report that their organisation’s connected products and services will have more, or significantly more, updates over the next three years. Assumptions about who owns a product are being challenged in a world entering a state of “forever beta.”

As enterprises seek to introduce a new generation of products driven by digital experiences, addressing this new reality will be critical to success. Now the pandemic is increasing our need for these smart and updateable products, which have great public health potential. The beta burden isn’t gone, but fighting the pandemic is temporarily taking precedence.

— Robots in the Wild. Irish executives are split in their views of how their employees will embrace robotics:50% say their employees will be challenged to figure out how to work with robots, while 50% believe that their employees will easily figure out how to work with them. Robotics is no longer contained to the warehouse or factory floor.

Now, as more people stay home, and distancing becomes the new normal, robots are moving faster than we could have expected by taking on new responsibilities during the pandemic. They are critical to “contact-less” solutions and governments. With 5G poised to rapidly accelerate this fast-growing trend, every enterprise must re-think its future through the lens of robotics

— Innovation DNA. Two-thirds (67%) of Irish executives believe that the stakes for innovation have never been higher, so getting it “right” will require new ways of innovating with ecosystem partners and third-party organisations. Enterprises have access to an unprecedented amount of disruptive technology, such as distributed ledgers, AI, extended reality and quantum computing.

To manage it all — and evolve at the speed demanded by the market today — organisations will need to establish their own unique innovation DNA. The pandemic has shifted the balance, accelerating these technologies beyond previous expectations.

Whether they are rolling out technology to keep the world running or working to prevent industry collapse, the partnerships, products, and services that enterprises are building today have the potential to last long after the crisis, defining business and technology for years to come. Long term, the rules around innovation will never be the same – businesses need to be more flexible and innovative than ever.