By Freya Purnell
Improved focus on customers, channels and markets, and driving business growth were seen as the core benefits of digital technologies such as interactive marketing, analytics, mobility and cloud by respondents to Accenture’s latest mobility survey, ‘Growing the Digital Business’.
Ninety per cent of respondents in 15 countries agreed they had clear expectations of digital technologies, while 70 per cent of respondents felt that digital technologies have greater potential for transformation when implemented together, rather than in isolation or one at a time.
Almost 2000 senior decision-makers in large enterprises were surveyed for the research.
When asked to select which benefits are being realised today or were expected from implementations combining digital technologies, the highest ranking benefits were:
- Creation of new revenue opportunities (48 per cent)
- Faster time to market for product/services (46 per cent)
- Increased customer engagement (46 per cent)
- Enabling of rapid responses to customer demands (45 per cent)
- Enabling penetration of new markets (45 per cent).
Despite these high hopes for digital strategies, the survey highlighted a possible issue with fragmented responsibility for digital across the business. Eighty-one per cent of respondents said that separate teams owned different parts of digital strategy within each function, rather than across the enterprise.
“The survey results do suggest some clarity is needed regarding responsibility for strategy definition and digital decision-making, as we saw overall control of both shared between central teams and individual business functions,” said Jim Bailey, global managing director, Accenture Mobility.
The survey also showed that there has been a shift in technology priorities.
In the 2015 survey, when respondents were asked which digital technologies they had successfully adopted, mobility ranked highest at 65 per cent.
Where mobility was a top two priority for 43 per cent of respondents to the survey, this year mobility was the most critical digital technology for 18 per cent. Analytics in 2014 was a top two priority for 27 per cent, and in 2015 was selected as the most critical priority for 34 per cent of respondents, followed by cloud at 30 per cent.
“The fact that analytics is such a priority for survey respondents reflects the understanding that digital businesses rely on data for generating insights and informing decision making across all business functions,” said Bailey. “The use of data in this way can bring businesses closer to their customers – whether consumers or other enterprises – and enable better targeted offerings for a more loyal customer base. In addition, cloud ranking as the second highest priority supports the notion that data should be collectible and accessible from anywhere, through the use of mobility tools.”
