Digital Transformation has graduated from being a differentiating advantage to now being the price of admission. Enterprises must now use the data and experiences collected in the earlier phase and use powerful new technologies to innovate in their business models and personalize experiences for their customers.

According to a recently released Accenture Technology Vision 2019 report, nearly four in five (79 percent) of more than 6,600 business and IT executives worldwide  surveyed believe that digital technologies ― specifically social, mobile, analytics and cloud ― have moved beyond adoption silos to become part of the core technology foundation for their organization. Respondents were C-level executives and directors at companies across 27 countries and 20 industries, with the majority having annual revenues greater than US$6 billion.

5 technology trends identified in the report, that can provide the elusive competitive edge to the willing enterprise are as follows:

1. DARQ Power: This newly coined phrase stands for distributed ledgers, artificial intelligence, extended reality and quantum computing (DARQ). Amongst these 41 percent of executives ranked AI as number one in terms of impact.
2. Unlock new opportunities: Leverage data captured from interactions to deliver rich, individualized, experience-based relationships. More than four in five executives (83 percent) said that digital demographics give their organizations a new way to identify market opportunities for unmet customer needs.
3. Human+ Worker: The typical employee is digitally savvy with two-thirds (71 percent) of executives believe that their employees are more digitally mature than their organization, resulting in a workforce “waiting” for the organization to catch up.
4. Security Flow: Security is no more limited to enterprise boundaries. The interconnectedness between these connections increase companies’ exposures to risks. Only 29 percent of executives said they know their ecosystem partners are working diligently to be compliant and resilient with regard to security.
5. Meet consumers at the speed of now: Direct digital access to customers and powerful analytics capabilities enable innovative personalization strategies. Six in seven executives (85 percent) said that the integration of customization and real-time delivery is the next big wave of competitive advantage.

The focus on personalisation as a differentiator is foremost in the report. I had highlighted a similar trend in an interview with Marketing with Maveriks podcast in Jan 2019.

From my universe, Sitefinity is a wonderful digital marketing tool that provides for static and dynamic personalisation across channels.

Have thoughts around where we are headed? Leave a comment below..