A drone waiter flies dirty dishes from a customer’s table in a restaurant in Singapore. (YOUTUBE GRAB)
Drones as waiters that fly dirty dishes off customers’ tables. Non-human banking staff that serve clients. These are not scenes from a science fiction movie or novel but part of this year’s technology trends that will fundamentally shift how businesses will apply digital innovations in their enterprise.
This is according to Technology Vision 2016, which is an annual technology outlook of Accenture, a global management, consulting, technology services and outsourcing company.
JP Palpallatoc, managing director of Accenture’s PDC Digital Group Lead, who presented the technology outlook last week through a teleconference with Cebu media, cited five critical technology trends in 2016 and these are: Intelligent automation, liquid workforce, platform economy, predictable disruption, and digital trust.
AUTOMATION
These drone waiters and non-human banking staff are part of the intelligent automation trend.
Palpallatoc said that this trend is now realized in Singapore in a company called Timbre, which utilizes autonomous drone waiters that fly dirty dishes off customers’ tables and in Japan, particularly the Bank of Tokyo, which employs non-human banking staff.
According to the technology outlook, intelligent automation shows how business leaders embrace automation in their businesses through artificial intelligence, robotics, and augmented reality.
The report also said that this technology helps companies to fundamentally change the way they operate and establish a productive link between people and machines.
LIQUID WORKFORCE
Another technology trend is the liquid workforce which focuses on the “building the workforce of the future for the digital era.”
“The characteristic of being able to know more things and being able to shift gears are the skills leaders in these companies (are looking for). (These companies are) using technology to help employees, customers and partners to have the skills in order to be agile and to be flexible,” Palpallatoc said about how companies can unleash the power of technology in order to create a more fluid workforce.
He said that the competitive edge promised by a liquid workforce is apparent as companies indicated that the ability to quickly learn or the ability to shift gears with technology were ranked higher over an expertise for a specialized task at hand.
PLATFORM ECONOMY
According to the report, platform economy is another technology trend to watch out for in 2016 because this is where industry leaders nurture the potential of technologies by developing platform-based business models to capture new growth opportunities.
“When we asked the leaders globally, 81 percent said that platform (economy) is one of their strategy. It is also a way for companies to link for more growth and innovation,” Palpallatoc said.
He cited Airbnb, Uber, Grab and Lazada as businesses following the platform-based business model.
DISRUPTION
Another key technology trend in the report is the predictable disruption which is looking to digital ecosystems for the next waves of change.
Palpallatoc said that by demarcating industry boundaries, innovative business leaders can proactively predict trajectories that would gain them competitive advantage.
He said that 81 percent of the companies surveyed have already experienced significant or moderate disruption of their ecosystem.
DIGITAL TRUST
The fifth key trend presented in the report is digital trust, which 83 percent of those surveyed considered as the cornerstone of the digital economy
“With the speed and the pace of the changes, how digital transformation is enabling the scale and pace of change, and the amount of risk that we are exposing as well because of that transformation is interesting,” Palpallatoc said.
Palpallatoc also emphasized that these trends are anchored on the “people first” principle, believing that “digital means people too.”
“We should talk about people first when we are talking about technology vision. We believe that the companies and enterprises that put the people as the prime factor will be the one that will be winning in this digital age,” Palpallatoc said.
He also said that the emergence of these technology trends won’t eliminate humans in workplaces but will help humans instead to be more effective and efficient, and focus on more complex tasks.
The report was consolidated from survey results of 3,100 top level business and IT executives worldwide./UP Cebu Intern Patrick Byron G. Gattoc