Those old enough would remember the days of correspondence courses, where textbooks and other materials were couriered to students who studied in the evenings and worked during the day. Advances in technologies soon led to distance learning via radio and TV; and now we have National Open University that uses a mix of channels to deliver education including internet, web, satellite TV, instructor-led, and classroom-based.
In more developed economies, social media is now a veritable channel of instructional delivery. Khan Academy is a non-profit educational organization created in 2006 by educator Salman Khan to provide “a free, world-class education for anyone, anywhere”. Khan Academy produces micro lectures for over 15 courses and practice exercises in the form of YouTube videos now translated into 65 languages. Coursera is a for-profit educational technology company that offers massive open online courses (MOOCs). Established in 2012, and now with less than 200 employees, Coursera works with universities to make some of their courses available online, and currently offers over 12 courses in 12 languages and to over 12,000,000 users. This education example shows how technology can transform the way we live, work and interact; and has significant implications for discerning minds.
Recently Accenture, a global consulting and technology solutions firm, held a breakfast meeting in Lagos with chief information officers (CIOs) of leading Fast Moving Consumer Goods (FMCG) companies in Nigeria with a thought-provoking theme: “Leveraging Emerging Technologies…Are You Winning?” It was an avenue for IT leaders to brainstorm with peers in an environment facilitated by a trusted IT solutions partner.
For nearly 15 years, Accenture has taken a systematic look across the enterprise landscape to identify emerging IT trends that hold the greatest potential to disrupt businesses and industries. In 2015, a global survey of 2,000 C-suite business and IT executives across several countries and industries to capture insights into the adoption of emerging technologies indicate an emergence of digital ecosystems that are re-shaping markets and creating the “We Economy”.
The “We Economy” focuses on how businesses are creating a hyper-connected world where companies, consumers and even everyday objects have instant capabilities to act and interact with each other digitally across the globe. Imagine a retail shop with a refrigerator embedded with sensors that do many things including tracking purchases of drinks stored in the refrigerator, sending alerts to the shop-keeper on SKUs that are trending/heavily purchased, alerting the accredited supplier to deliver new stock once the reorder level has been reached, alerting the maintenance man if certain components of the fridge are malfunctioning and automatically turning off power at non-peak period to improve energy efficiency.
Huge efficiencies can and will be gained as businesses continue to master digital technologies internally. Visionary companies, however, are recognizing that as every business becomes a digital business, together they can effect change on a much bigger stage. Working together, they can shape experiences—and outcomes—in ways never before possible.
These pioneering businesses see great potential to make a difference—and to make a profit—by operating as ecosystems, not just as individual corporate entities. By mastering the shift from “me” to “we,” these leading enterprises are shaping a new economy—the “we economy”. Leading companies are stretching their boundaries by tapping into a broad array of other digital businesses, digital customers, and even digital devices to improve their offerings to the consumer.
Accenture’s research shows that the We Economy is underpinned by five very keys trends:
The “internet of me”
The Internet of Me emphasizes the fact that the “customer is still king”. Much of the internet’s appeal has been in the way it enables each of us to personalize our lives: My newsfeed; My playlist; My book recommendations; My new car, customized online by me, etc.
As everyday objects are going online, so too are experiences, creating an abundance of digital channels that reach deep into every aspect of individuals’ lives.
Forward-thinking businesses are changing the ways they build new applications, products, and services. To gain control over these points of access, they are creating highly personalized experiences that engage and exhilarate consumers without breaching the customer’s trust. The companies that succeed in this new “Internet of Me” will become the next generation of household names. Gartner research shows that 89 percent of companies believe that customer experience will be their primary basis for competition by 2016, versus 36 percent four years ago.
For instance, the new connected car from Mercedes-Benz has over 100 embedded sensors and includes application programming interface (API) connections to Nest thermostats at the driver’s home. 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. Appliance-maker Whirlpool is making similar Internet of Me moves: its smart dryers include a func tion that allows environmentally-conscious consumers to schedule energy-intensive tasks for off-peak periods when electricity is more abundant and rates are lower.
To truly become a leader in the Internet of Me space, businesses will have to figure out how the customer experience they “own” relates to other experiences in the customer’s life or how they can help to deliver the outcomes that a customer is trying to achieve.
The “outcome economy”
The Outcome Economy is defined by the ability of companies to create value by delivering solutions to customers that in turn lead to quantifiable results. Digital disrupters know that getting ahead is no longer about selling things—it’s about selling results.
The hallmarks of the outcome economy are only made possible through the integration of hardware with existing capabilities. In this context, the definition of hardware is not confined to traditional IT categories—servers, networking gear, PCs, and so on—the concept is far broader than that. It includes the IoT (internet of Things) and devices that range from smart washing machines, wearables, and security cameras to autonomous cars and intelligent buildings.
The outcome economy is exemplified in the smart city of Los Angeles, where there are about 7,000 smart parking spaces. The hockey puck-sized sensors, which a company called Streetline Inc. 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, increasing parking revenue by 2 percent, while simultaneously decreasing the average cost of parking by 11 percent and increasing space utilization by 11 percent. Those seeking to build technology parks, business hubs and intelligent buildings in Nigeria will benefit from such smart parking technology.
Platform revolution
Platform-based ecosystems are the new plane of competition. Rapid advances in cloud and mobility not only are eliminating the technology and cost barriers associated with such platforms, but also are opening up this new playing field to enterprises across industries and geographies.
The key characteristic of a platform-based business is that others outside the company are creating value for the enterprise—in many cases enabling entirely new digital models for the company (Apple, Alibaba, Amazon, Google, Uber, Airbnb, etc).
Among the Global 2000, digital industry platforms and ecosystems are fuelling the next wave of breakthrough innovation and disruptive growth. Increasingly, platform-based companies are capturing more of the digital economy’s opportunities for strong growth and profitability. Platforms now serve as business model strategies that create competitive differentiation
“In 2013, 14 of the top 30 global brands by market capitalization were platform-oriented companies – companies that created and now dominate arenas in which buyers, sellers, and a variety of third parties are connected in real time.”
Companies must apply their industry knowledge to build platforms that allow them to rapidly innovate, develop, and deploy the products and solutions needed to drive their digital business strategies.
Intelligent enterprise
Until now, advanced software has been geared to help employees make better and faster decisions. But with an influx of big data—and advances in processing power, data science and cognitive technology—software intelligence is helping machines make even better-informed decisions.
Software “intelligence” describes a class of technologies that enables machines to make decisions, to self-evolve, and to discover. Cognitive computing will take this to an even greater level, extending a machine’s ability to sense, comprehend, and act.
The catalysts for the software intelligence are data. Having more data usually beats using a better algorithm, and this enables big data to catapult the performance of even relatively simple algorithms to new heights of intelligence
Accenture envisions a way to make sense of these new capabilities: a software intelligence maturity curve that starts with automation, moves into machine learning, and then extends to cognitive computing.
A good example is Google Translate – which has made leaps and bounds in what is possible in language translation today, and it has done so by exploiting big data—scouring hundreds of millions of documents and billions of word sequences to determine the best translations.
Workforce re-imagined
Human and machine, each on its own, won’t be enough to drive business in the decades to come. Tomorrow’s leading enterprises will be those that re-imagine their workforce and effectively blend humans and technology as partners.
Smart machines now have the ability to interact with, train, and learn from humans, and this enables them to perform better over time. By creating a positive cycle of collaboration between humans and machines, enterprises can drastically improve the outputs of both and embrace the digital age with a re-imagined workforce.
Businesses must recognize that technology is no longer just a set of tools—it is now a partner in a new collaborative workforce. Humans are using machines to take on more challenging physical tasks while achieving greater operational efficiency.
For instance, the US space agency NASA is teaming astronauts and robots together to face the difficult and dangerous task of cleaning up derelict satellites.
Are these trends relevant in the Nigerian context?
Absolutely yes! The Nigerian technology landscape has changed significantly in the last few years. Research shows that there are over 83.36 million internet users in Nigeria (NCC – Feb 2015) and that 76 percent of these use the internet every day via mobile devices with huge potential for business. E-commerce is booming (with the advent of businesses like Jumia, Konga, Kaymu and other e-commerce platforms) suggesting increasing sophistication of the Nigerian consumer and opening new avenues for reaching consumers wherever, whenever.
The growth in internet/mobile adoption amongst Nigerians presents huge opportunities for businesses that take advantage of new technologies such as Social, Mobility, Analytics and Cloud, popularly called SMAC.
Nigerians of all shades are active on the social media as we all witnessed during the recent 2015 national elections. Social media is now an acceptable platform for interaction, entertainment, marketing, customer service delivery and communicating at the speed of light. With over 140m subscribers and over 100 percent penetration, Nigeria is the largest mobile market in Africa and the use of mobile devices provides an opportunity for companies to gain more analysis and insights about customer preferences – what they do online via their mobile devices, when, where, and for how long – and how companies can improve the customer experience to gain their loyalty and continued patronage.
Cloud adoption, for instance, has witnessed key improvements building on the back of the internet penetration. It is estimated that Nigeria will witness about 80 percent growth in cloud adoption by the end of 2015. In addition to soliciting customer feedback, many organisations now use cloud-based applications to announce vacancies and screen candidates who post their CVs in response. Cloud improves the agility of businesses and their ability to respond to changes.
CIOs at the Accenture forum all agreed that power and connectivity remain key challenges. Infrastructural deficiencies, particularly with electricity/power account for 30 percent of operating costs of some companies and also indirectly impair network connectivity and quality. Mobile broadband penetration is currently low at 8 percent nationwide but it is more available and reliable in some geographical clusters. Opportunity exists for companies to pilot innovative solutions in select locations/cities in the country with seemingly better infrastructure.
Cloud security and data privacy also remain concerns as voiced by some of the CIOs at the Accenture forum – although research by Rightscale has shown a drop by 6 percent between 2014 and 2015 of security fears expressed by top IT executives, highlighting appreciation of improvements in cloud security.
Data privacy concerns are addressable via technology solutions like multilevel encryption, data anonymity, and also by legislation to drive residency of sensitive data in-country as mandated in the recently released draft guidelines on data protection published by the National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA).
The wise businesses though see opportunities in these challenges – for instance, broadband penetration although low at the moment (8 percent) is planned to reach 30 percent by 2018 going by the approved Nigerian National Broadband Plan 2013-2018. With renewed consumer confidence in Nigerian economy and growing number of internet-enabled Nigerians, the opportunities are limitless.
We are living in an age of the empowered consumer – who demands hyper relevance (“know me”), Personalised Relationships at scale (“Show me you know me”), Seamless customer experience (“Delight me”) and is inherently mobile (“Enable me”). At Accenture we believe that Social, Cloud, Mobility and Analytics will be key to meeting the needs of the increasingly sophisticated customers and ultimately, these will be the key to business success.
In an environment of increasing technological disruptions, it is not a matter of if, but of when. Hence, there are just two options – disrupt or be disrupted. The question is: which of these options will determine the fate of your business? The choice is entirely yours!
Niyi Yusuf and Joe Ujoh