Enterprises that scale technology innovation and use future systems strategically are able to generate 2X more the revenue as compared to laggards, according to a new report by Accenture.
Accenture recently released ‘The Future Systems’ report that surveyed over 8,300 organizations across 20 industries in 22 countries. The aim of this survey is to help companies understand the importance of technology adoption for the financial growth of organizations. It also sheds light on the major issues that are stopping companies from achieving these goals.
“Today’s C-suite is investing staggering amounts of money in new technology, but not every company is realising the benefits of innovation as a result of those investments,” said Bhaskar Ghosh, chief executive officer, Accenture Technology Services, in a statement.
“Competing in today’s data-driven, post-digital economy means organisations need to have a carefully calibrated strategy toward technology adoption and a clear vision for what their companies’ future systems should look like. Our newest research reveals that the world’s leading companies are investing in boundaryless, adaptable and radically human systems to maximize innovation, business performance and value,” Ghosh added.
What do leaders do?
Invest more on innovation
Leaders have a clear vision on how they want their company’s future systems to look like and adopt technologies accordingly. The report says that the leaders have spent much higher proportion of their IT budget on the IT innovation when compared to the laggards over the past five years. The investment is expected to rise in the next five years.
Besides this, leaders manage the technology investments well across the enterprise. For instance, 94% of leaders systematically track return on investments in automation across the organization, compared to only 47% laggards.
For this, leaders use automated platforms to create more visibility and track the activities and investments in real-time, which also saves time for them.
Adopt new technologies
When compared, leaders have been found to be adopting new technologies faster and earlier than laggards. By doing this, they develop technology proficiency, prioritize and implement technologies as per requirement of the company in an optimal way.
Laggards, on the other hand, are fast followers and adopt technologies without envisioning how the technologies will affect their organization. Thus, they fail to scale new technology innovations.
The survey found that leaders adopt AI at a rate of 98% along with the other complimentary technologies like data lakes and cloud services, whereas laggards adopt AI at just 42% rate.
Have a look at the technology adoption rates- Leaders Vs Laggards.
83% of leaders want to move to decoupled data from legacy infrastructure, which is more than double the rate of laggards. It was also found that 70% of laggards are far behind when it comes to adoption of DevOps, automation and CI/CD.
Adopt cloud services
Leaders understand that cloud computing is essential for the future systems of their business. They have adopted cloud services at 95% rate, compared to 30% of laggards.
Follow security measures
Leaders make sure they have data quality, and have created security measures to protect and manage data and AI. The report says that only 40% of laggards are ensuring data quality, compared to 90% leaders.
51% of laggards don’t follow a systematic manner to manage AI in a responsible way. 94% of leaders do.
Invest in talent
Leaders find creative ways to advance their IT workforce. In the survey, the respondents said they believe IT workforce training is an essential part. Without it their workforce skills will be obsolete in three years.
For this, leaders use experiential learning method to train – three times higher the rate of laggards (Leaders – 73%, Laggards – 24%). Leaders use many other techniques like Artificial Intelligence and Extended Reality to predict skill lacking and create training modules for workers. More than 60% of laggards don’t use these methods.
“To maximise the return on their technology investments, leading organizations are improving their technology quotient, going beyond building pockets of excellence, to implementing a strategy for achieving enterprise-wide transformation,” added Ghosh in a statement.
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