Technologies that will reposition businesses in 2017, by Accenture

Accenture Research in partnership with Technology Vision has revealed some disruptive technologies that are going to shape business development in 2017.

‘Technology for people’ became the central theme after surveying more than 5,400 business and IT executives across 31 countries globally between November 2016 and January 2017.

This is in order to understand their perspectives on the impact of technology on their organisations, and to identify their priority technology investments over the next few years.

It was realised that all the latest trends showed that the biggest innovations will no longer be in the technology tools themselves, but in how they are designed with people in mind. Some of the disruptive tendencies include:

Artificial Intelligence (AI): about to become a company’s digital spokesperson or the new user interface (UI). Moving beyond a back-end tool for the enterprise, AI is taking on more sophisticated roles within technology interfaces.

Ecosystems as Macrocosms: Companies are increasingly integrating their core business functionalities with third parties and their platforms. But rather than treat them like partnerships of old, forward-thinking leaders leverage these relationships to build their role in new digital ecosystems – instrumental to unlocking their next waves of strategic growth.

Workforce marketplace: The future of work has already arrived, and digital leaders are fundamentally reinventing their workforces. Driven by a surge of on-demand labour platforms and online work management solutions, legacy models and hierarchies are being dissolved and replaced with open talent marketplaces.

Design for humans: The new frontier of digital experiences is technology designed specifically for individual human behaviour. Business leaders recognise that as technology shrinks the gap between effective human and machine cooperation, accounting for unique human behaviour expands not only the quality of experience, but also the effectiveness of technology solutions.

Discussing the trends at the technology vision launch in Lagos, at the weekend, the Managing Director for Technology at Accenture Nigeria, Niyi Tayo, said: “85 per cent of business executives surveyed said that they would invest extensively in Artificial intelligence integrated technologies in the next three years. This is because they believe and agree that AI will revolutionise the way they gain information from customers as they need to know how customers are thinking and reacting so as to interact better with their customers.”