The days of innovative, technology-focused start-ups being the only market disrupters and growing faster than their larger, more established competitors, may be coming to an end.
This is according to a new report by Accenture, which says large enterprises are starting to take advantage of their size, skills and scale to transform into truly digital businesses.
The Accenture Technology Vision 2014 identifies six technology trends that are enabling large enterprises to join those start-ups previously recognised as market disrupters in pushing the boundaries of innovation and taking advantage of digital technologies for competitive advantage.
The report finds leading enterprises are pursuing digital strategies that leverage mobility, analytics, and cloud to improve business processes, take advantage of real-time intelligence, expand the boundaries of traditional workforces, and transform the way data is managed and used.
"We're seeing large enterprises - armed with the resources, scale and drive to reinvent themselves through digital transformation - reasserting leadership in their markets," says Paul Daugherty, CTO at Accenture.
"Leading companies are adopting digital to drive their processes more effectively and transform how they go to market, collaborate with partners, engage with customers, and manage transactions. Digital is rapidly becoming part of the fabric of their operating DNA and they are poised to become the digital power brokers of tomorrow."
Lee Naik, MD for IT strategy at Accenture SA, says during the past decade, technology disruption has come from small revolutionary start-ups such as Facebook and Twitter, but that's all set to change.
According to Naik, this is a time where big businesses will start to use their immense resources and scale to leverage new technology trends introduced by small start-ups over the past 10 years. Enterprises will start to explore new business models, engage customers in new ways and optimise their supply chains and back offices in a way not previously imagined, he explains.
"In terms of timing, one doesn't have to look hard to see that the platform for this re-imagining has already been laid and the green shoots of technology embracement are clearly visible," says Naik. "Personal mobile smart devices are ubiquitous as is the more unseen Internet-enabled machine-to-machine sensors and controllers," he adds.
He also points out that the explosion of connected devices or the 'Internet of Things' is estimated to reach approximately 212 billion in 2020, which provides an exciting and unprecedented environment for consumers and big business to operate within.
For consumers, he notes, this provides new levels of empowerment. "They are now highly informed and can interact and influence the way they experience everything around them. Organisations now get real-time connections to the real world, allowing machines and employees to act and react faster - and more intelligently."
Naik also notes that the blurring of the digital and physical world may provide new opportunities, but also comes with a new set of challenges, adding that data is the lifeblood of every digital organisation, yet businesses are struggling to access, share, and analyse much of the data they already have.
Through 2015, 85% of Fortune 500 organisations will be unable to exploit big data for competitive advantage, he states. In addition to the data that organisations already collect, new external data sources are available, providing new opportunities for data insights.
"To provide some sense of scale to the challenge, the digital universe is doubling every two years and is expected to grow to 40 trillion gigabytes - more than 5 200 gigabytes for every man, woman, and child in 2020. The good news is that the tools and technology required to build a data platform, ensuring data access and velocity, are available and in use today. With the foundation of these technologies, the integrated end-to-end data supply chain is possible," Naik says.
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