That technology affects our economy at all levels may now be considered a truism. Nevertheless, the health crisis last year made it clear that some companies are only at the beginning of their digital transformation. “The pandemic and the resulting disruptions showed the limits of long-term norms on how companies work and how people live,” writes Accenture in the study “Technology Vision 2021”. In it, the consulting company wants to examine which technological decisions favor the transformation and maintain competitiveness.
Tech training for everyone
As part of the study, more than 6,200 executives from the business and technology sector from Switzerland and worldwide were surveyed, Accenture reports. 92 percent of them said that innovation was the number one priority in their company this year. Almost as many are of the opinion that their company has to help shape the market of tomorrow if it wants to conquer it.
Technology is increasingly being democratized, write the study authors, and refer to developments in the areas of natural language processing, low-code platforms and robotic process automation (RPA). This turns all employees into innovators.
With regard to tech democratization, Switzerland does particularly well: 80 percent of the Swiss executives surveyed agree with the statement that it is central to promoting innovation in the company. 83 percent think it is important to teach all employees to think like a technologist – that is, to use and adapt technology solutions at an individual level, without having any highly technical knowledge.
Entrepreneurs see digital transformation as necessary. (Source: Screenshot BCW)
A full 85 percent of Swiss companies are planning to invest in tech training for employees outside of IT. On this point, Switzerland scores massively higher than the global average (77 percent) and also compared to Germany (69 percent) and Austria (59 percent), Accenture emphasizes.
A third rely on the cloud thanks to Corona
In the meantime, it has been shown that technological goals and corporate strategy often do not match: only a good third of managers state that the technology goals of their company match the overall strategy. According to Accenture, there is some catching up to do here: “Only those who interlink technology and corporate organization will remain competitive in the long term and be able to advance the transformation as a whole,” warn the study authors.
Another gap emerges with regard to specific technologies: Around 78 percent of local executives believe that digital twins will be essential for their organization’s ability to work together in strategic ecosystem partnerships. But only 55 percent want to invest more in digital twins in the next few years. Worldwide this figure is 65 percent, and in China as much as 88 percent of executives expect an increase in investments.
87 percent of executives in Switzerland agree that their companies need to drive digital transformation with the cloud as the core piece in order to be agile and resilient. In contrast, only a third of those surveyed said they could use cloud technologies as a direct response to the pandemic – 45 percent worldwide agreed with this statement.
In a previous study, Accenture identified five ways companies can adopt technology successfully and sustainably. You can read about them here.
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