4. Why Now
• Experience matters most: 89 percent of business leaders surveyed by
Gartner believe that customer experience will be their primary basis for
competition by 2016.
• Beyond mobility: The connected world—including cars, homes, and
wearables—are creating a rapidly expanding world of access to the customer.
• Rising consumer demand: Two-thirds of consumers are expected to
purchase a connected home device within the next five years, and the
ownership of consumer wearables is expected to double year over year by
2016.
• Contextual experiences: Big data analytics solutions, combined with the
proliferation of edge devices collecting highly contextual data, are allowing
businesses to craft experiences that are unique for each user.
• Personalization everywhere: Businesses everywhere, not just “tech
companies,” are using personalization to build a better experience.
Companies integrating personalization with their core product or service are
finding a significant competitive advantage.
Trend 1: The Internet of Me
Talking
Points
Relevant 2013 Trends
Relevant 2014 Trends
#TechVision2015
Nest & Mercedes 49er Stadium PhysIQ Platform
6. Why Now
• Hardware is approachable: More businesses and individuals are able to leverage a vast ecosystem of
tools to design, produce, and distribute hardware than ever before. It’s no longer necessary to be a
tech firm to build hardware.
• M2M economics: Cost reductions are driving machine-to-machine (M2M) investments: 45 percent of
global consumer electronics executives cited declining costs as driving their M2M investments in 2014,
up from 27 percent in 2013.i
• Sensor efficiency: Sensors are cheaper, smaller, and more energy efficient than ever before, allowing
more sensors to be installed in more places and maintained for longer periods of time at the edge of
networks without the need to service or replace them for two to five years.
• M2M standards: Machine-to-machine communication standards are closer to reaching maturity,
allowing for more localized and real-time decisions at the edge of networks. In 2014, 22 percent of
organizations had M2M solutions in place, and 42 percent of the rest expect to implement M2M
solutions by 2016; by 2017, 75 percent of organizations will have M2M as part of their strategic
roadmaps.ii
• Ubiquitous bandwidth: High-bandwidth, wired, and wireless communications are now ubiquitous in
most markets. Traffic from wireless and mobile devices will be 54 percent of all traffic, exceeding traffic
from wired devices by 2016. By 2018, global fixed broadband speeds will reach an average of 42
Mbps, up from 16 Mbps in 2013.iii
Trend 2: Outcome Economy
Relevant 2013 Trends
Relevant 2014 Trends
Harnessing
Hyperscale
#TechVision2015
Proteus LA smart Parking Telsa Teatreneu
I mentioned that we are evolving last year’s themes and this is a slide to show you the connections at the trend level.
One of the most common questions I get from our leaders within Accenture and our clients is about last year’s Vision. They ask if last year’s trends are now obsolete given we’ve launched a new Vision with new trends. The short answer is no.
Trends from 2014, and 2013, are just as relevant now as they were in the last two years. We’re not saying that those go away. We are saying there are new trends to consider for their businesses in 2015.
What you can see is that continuity between the trends. For example, looking at Workforce Reimagined – one of our new trends – that is an evolution of From Workforce to Crowdsource from last year, and Seamless Collaboration from 2013. Workforce Reimagined also incorporates new concepts that make it a new trend
One of the things we are reinforcing this year is how the trends build on one another – so if you are not yet ready for Intelligent Enterprise, for example, you can start by looking at last year’s trends such Data Supply Chain and Business of Applications.
On outside you’ll see the 5 trends this year (read through). I’ll spend a few minutes on each one.
So let’s talk about our first trend.
As everyday objects are going online, so too are experiences. Much of the internet’s appeal has been in the way it enables each of us to personalize our lives: my news feed, my playlist, my book recommendations, customized online by me. The Internet of Me is the new wave of personalization, placing the end user at the center of every digital experience and changing the way people around the world interact through technology.
Connected devices are creating brand new, untapped, points of access to the consumer, and forward-thinking businesses are battling for control of these channels in order to drive unprecedented levels of mindshare with consumers. Businesses that excel are doing so by delivering highly personalized unique experiences that engage and exhilarate. In fact, in a Gartner survey 89% of executives believe that experience will become their primary mode of competition by the end of 2016.
In our survey of IT and Business executives, an astounding 95 percent reported personalized customer experience fit among within their top five organization’s priorities – with 38 percent reporting it as their TOP organizational priority.
Over time, new market ecosystems will emerge to deliver these experiences. Finding new partnerships that combine channels and services to benefit the individual will open brand new opportunities to inform, sell, and service customers. The companies that act now and succeed in this new “Internet of Me” will become the next generation of household names.
A good example illustrating successful partnerships in this new market ecosystem is the new connected car from Mercedes-Benz. It includes API connections to Nest thermostats at the driver’s home so the car can notify the thermostat when the driver will arrive, and the thermostat in turn adjusts the in-home temperature to the driver’s desired settings. Similarly, appliance-maker Whirlpool’s smart dryers offer a function that allows environmentally conscious consumers to schedule energy-intensive tasks for when electricity is more abundant and rates are lower.
As consumer adoption grows, businesses have the opportunity to define how people will use these new devices; how they will connect with one another; and what form the interactions will take. Controlling those experiences is a profitable position for business, and it’s entirely up for grabs.
Let’s explore a few more examples.
Take AT&T Drive, it’s AT&T’s connected car platform, and illustrates how businesses can find multiple opportunities within a single channel. AT&T Drive provides auto manufacturers with a suite of features that they can pick from rather than having to build everything themselves. But AT&T is also using the connected car as a platform to grow consumer mindshare: The company now allows customers to include connected cars—such as the Audi Q3—in its shared data plans for no more than it costs to add a tablet to a plan.
And Lowe’s is thinking even bigger, actively shaping the smart home market by building on its existing position as a trusted home goods retailer. The company found that sales of “smart products” (thermostats, lights, timers) were limited because customers needed to control each device with a separate app. Keen to put the consumer first, Lowe’s developed Iris, a “smart home hub” that can communicate with any device using networking technologies like Wi-Fi, ZigBee, or Z-Wave. The hub was intentionally designed with an open API so that manufacturers could integrate with the platform. Because the retailer resells more than $50 billion of goods each year, manufacturers eager for shelf space have a strong incentive to be compatible. Now, Lowe’s customers can shop for a wider range of products, all controllable through a single app.
[optional trust section below:]
However, as customers increasingly want better, faster, and cheaper all at once now, more than ever, they’re having to build their apps, products, and services without breaching the customer’s trust. Our Vision survey shows, however, the nuances in trust from the customer perspective. 67 percent of individuals are willing to share data with companies, but that percentage drops to 27 percent if the business is sharing data with a third party. Businesses must commit to security, privacy, and transparency to build trust with the consumer as they become more intimately involved with their lives.
Building off the last one, this is a particularly interesting trend. Here we explore how the digital devices on the edge are powering an Outcome Economy and enabling a new business model that shifts the focus from selling things to selling results.
So one of the ways to think about this is humor. How much you would pay to laugh out loud. Can you put a financial number to that? Well, if you were a patron of the pay-per-laugh Teatreneu theater in Barcelona, the answer would be €0.30 for each instance. Teatreneu uses facial recognition technology to register each laugh and charges customers accordingly—up to €24 per show, a 25 percent increase over previous ticket prices.
As leading enterprises come face-to-face with the internet of things, they are uncovering opportunities just like Teatreneu theater, to embed hardware and sensors in their digital toolboxes. They are using these intelligent hardware to give customers what they really want: not more products or services, but more meaningful outcomes.
We surveyed 2000 business and technology execs, and 87 % agreed that the advent of more intelligent hardware, sensors and devices on the edge of networks, will lead them to shift from selling products or services to selling outcomes.
So let’s take a look at what is driving this in more detail. The cost of sensors has plummeted. Between 2006 and 2013, shipments of micro-electromechanical sensors (MEMS)—analog microchips for measuring things in the real world—for consumer devices grew 32 percent year-over-year to eight billion units. And in just four years, the Samsung Galaxy smartphone went from having three sensors in the first-generation model in 2010 to 10 in the fifth-generation model in 2014.
As intelligence moves steadily and rapidly toward the network’s edge, it effectively builds a bridge of data-rich feedback loops that span the “last mile” between customers and businesses. Companies that incorporate this next generation of edge intelligence are seeing their performance per unit cost soar.
The network infrastructure is ready too. Traffic from wireless and mobile devices will be 54 percent of all traffic, exceeding traffic from wired devices by 2016. Notably, high-bandwidth, wired, and wireless communications are now ubiquitous in most markets. By 2018, global fixed broadband speeds will reach an average of 42 Mbps, up from 16 Mbps in 2013.
Looking at some further examples, if you’ve visited the smart city of Los Angeles, there’s a good chance you have benefited from one of 7,000 smart parking spaces. The hockey puck-sized sensors, which Streetline installs in the roadbeds of the cities and campuses where it operates, communicate real-time parking conditions to smartphone apps, telling drivers where parking is available. These connected parking spaces have delivered tangible outcomes to drivers and to the city. They’ve also delivered financial rewards: increasing parking revenue by 2 percent, while also decreasing the average cost of parking by 11 percent and increasing space utilization by 11 percent.
And in healthcare, Proteus Digital Health is focused on improving patient outcomes as a new way to create value in the pharmaceuticals industry. The digital health company integrates a tiny, inert sensor in the pills it produces; the sensor acts in concert with a wearable device and mobile app to provide full “adherence transparency” for patients, healthcare providers, and payers. Not only can the Proteus hardware-based system determine when patients take their medications, but it also can send alerts and reminders to the individual if they forget to take a pill. With this approach, Proteus can help patients increase the effectiveness of their treatment, demonstrate cost savings over traditional methods of care, and drive better overall outcomes for patients, payers, and providers—the proverbial “win-win-win” situation.
Finally, in the auto industry, Tesla Motors found a way to use hardware on the edge to deliver safety outcomes to consumers beyond what was previously possible. In late 2013, the luxury electric car maker saw several instances of the battery packs in its Model S cars equipped with the Smart Air Suspension option catching fire. Instead of following the traditional auto industry protocol of issuing a costly recall and waiting for customers to bring their vehicles in for service, Tesla made use of the intelligent hardware in every car to distribute a firmware update to the affected cars, which increased their minimum ground clearance and prevented them from automatically lowering at freeway speeds. When Tesla devised a longer-term solution, it returned the original functionality to the affected vehicles and gave owners the option of bringing their cars in for a free retrofit of its sturdier undercarriage armor.
Soon, we’ll find that yesterday’s automobile firmware upgrade will become tomorrow’s baseline expectation. And that’s because companies can now gain quantifiable, end-to-end insights into the outcomes their customers are trying to achieve and use those insights to develop significantly more effective products.
Of course, one company cannot do it all—the new leaders will be those that can consistently collaborate with others to deliver excellence across a spectrum of capabilities that include hardware. The companies that make those kinds of connections—literally and figuratively—will outrun their rivals today and thrive for a long time to come.
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One thing that should be very clear is that non-IT companies are placing themselves in the driver’s seat. They are not waiting for the next wave of technology to wash through their doors. And there is no technology standard that needs to crystallize before they make their big moves. What’s new about those moves is that they are not directed internally—toward improvements in their current operations and business processes. Instead, these enterprises are stretching their boundaries to leverage a broader ecosystem of digital businesses, shaping the next generation of products, services, and business models.
As such, the digital movers are thinking big thoughts, asking big questions: How do we sell insurance in an age of driverless cars? Are we selling services, such as an electrical supply, or outcomes, such as warmth and comfort? Are we making and selling televisions or creating hubs for smart homes?
Leading companies are no longer thinking only about using technology to transform themselves into a digital business. They are thinking about how to combine their industry expertise with the power of digital technology to reshape their markets and define their new role in a “We Economy.”
The questions for leaders of traditional businesses are now these: How will your organization exercise its digital advantage? What will your company do to grow and expand to take on greater challenges? And ultimately—what will our future be, together as enterprises in the “We Econo