Emerging digital disruption – How prepared are Nigerian businesses?

The Outcome Economy
The Outcome Economy is defined by the ability of companies to create value by delivering solutions to customers that in turn lead to quantifiable results. Digital disrupters know that getting ahead is no longer about selling things—it’s about selling results.

The hallmarks of the outcome economy are only made possible through the integration of hardware with existing capabilities. In this context, the definition of hardware is not confined to traditional IT categories—servers, networking gear, PCs, and so on – the concept is far broader than that. It includes the IoT (internet of Things) and devices that range from smart washing machines, wearables, and security cameras to autonomous cars and intelligent buildings.

The outcome economy is exemplified in the smart city of Los Angeles, where there are about 7,000 smart parking spaces. The hockey puck-sized sensors, which a company called Streetline Inc. installs in the roadbeds of the cities and campuses where it operates, communicate real-time parking conditions to smartphone apps, telling drivers where parking is available. These connected parking spaces have delivered tangible outcomes to drivers and to the city, increasing parking revenue by 2%, while simultaneously decreasing the average cost of parking by 11% and increasing space utilization by 11%. Those seeking to build technology parks, business hubs and intelligent buildings in Nigeria will benefit from such smart parking technology.
Platform Revolution

Platform-based ecosystems are the new plane of competition. Rapid advances in cloud and mobility not only are eliminating the technology and cost barriers associated with such platforms, but also are opening up this new playing field to enterprises across industries and geographies.

The key characteristic of a platform based business is that others outside the company are creating value for the enterprise—in many cases enabling entirely new digital models for the company (Apple, Alibaba, Amazon, Google, Uber, Airbnb etc)

Among the Global 2000, digital industry platforms and ecosystems are fueling the next wave of breakthrough innovation and disruptive growth. Increasingly, platform based companies are capturing more of the digital economy’s opportunities for strong growth and profitability.
Platforms now serve as business model strategies that create competitive differentiation
“In 2013, 14 of the top 30 global brands by market capitalization were platform oriented companies – companies that created and now dominate arenas in which buyers, sellers, and a variety of third parties are connected in real time.”
Companies must apply their industry knowledge to build platforms that allow them to rapidly innovate, develop, and deploy the products and solutions needed to drive their digital business strategies.

Intelligent Enterprise
Until now, advanced software has been geared to help employees make better and faster decisions. But with an influx of big data—and advances in processing power, data science and cognitive technology—software intelligence is helping machines make even better-informed decisions.

Software “intelligence” describes a class of technologies that enables machines to make decisions, to self-evolve, and to discover. Cognitive computing will take this to an even greater level, extending a machine’s ability to sense, comprehend, and act.
The catalysts for the software intelligence is data. Having more data usually beats using a better algorithm, and this enables big data to catapult the performance of even relatively simple algorithms to new heights of intelligence

Accenture envisions a way to make sense of these new capabilities: a software intelligence maturity curve that starts with automation, moves into machine learning, and then extends to cognitive computing.
A good example is Google Translate – which has made leaps and bounds in what is possible in language translation today, and it has done so by exploiting big data—scouring hundreds of millions of documents and billions of word sequences to determine the best translations.
Workforce Reimagined
Human and machine, each on its own, won’t be enough to drive business in the decades to come. Tomorrow’s leading enterprises will be those that reimagine their workforce and effectively blend humans and technology as partners
Smart machines now have the ability to interact with, train, and learn from humans, and this enables them to perform better over time. By creating a positive cycle of collaboration between humans and machines, enterprises can drastically improve the outputs of both and embrace the digital age with a reimagined workforce.

Businesses must recognize that technology is no longer just a set of tools—it is now a partner in a new collaborative workforce. Humans are using machines to take on more challenging physical tasks while achieving greater operational efficiency.
For instance, the US space agency NASA is teaming astronauts and robots together to face the difficult and dangerous task of cleaning up derelict satellites.

Are these trends relevant in the Nigerian context?
Absolutely Yes! – The Nigerian technology landscape has changed significantly in the last few years. Research shows that there are over 83.36 million internet users in Nigeria (NCC – Feb 2015) and that 76% of these use the internet everyday via mobile devices with huge potential for business. E-commerce is booming (with the advent of businesses like Jumia, Konga, Kaymu and other e-commerce platforms) suggesting increasing sophistication of the Nigerian consumer and opening new avenues for reaching consumers wherever, whenever.
The growth in internet/mobile adoption amongst Nigerians present huge opportunities for businesses that take advantage of new technologies such as Social, Mobility, Analytics and Cloud, popularly called SMAC.
Nigerians of all shades are active on the social media as we all witnessed during the recent 2015 National elections. Social media is now an acceptable platform for interaction, entertainment, marketing, customer service delivery and communicating at the speed of light. With over 140m subscribers and over 100% penetration, Nigeria is the largest mobile market in Africa and the use of mobile devices provides an opportunity for companies to gain more analysis and insights about customer preferences – what they do online via their mobile devices, when, where, and for how long – and how companies can improve the customer experience to gain their loyalty and continued patronage.

Cloud adoption for instance has witnessed key improvements building on the back of the internet penetration. It is estimated that Nigeria will witness about 80% growth in cloud adoption by the end of 2015. In addition to soliciting customer feedback, many organisations now use cloud based applications to announce vacancies and screen candidates who post their CVs in response. Cloud improves the agility of businesses and their ability to respond to changes.

CIOs at the Accenture forum all agreed that power and connectivity remain key challenges. Infrastructural deficiencies, particularly with electricity/power accounting for 30% of operating costs of some companies and also indirectly impairing network connectivity and quality. Mobile broadband penetration is currently low at 8% nationwide but it is more available and reliable in some geographical clusters. Opportunity exists for companies to pilot innovative solutions in select locations/cities in the country with seemingly better infrastructure.

Cloud security and data privacy also remain concerns as voiced by some of the CIOs at the Accenture forum – although research by Rightscale has shown a drop by 6% between 2014 and 2015 of security fears expressed by top IT executives, highlighting appreciation of improvements in cloud security.

Data privacy concerns are addressable via technology solutions like multilevel encryption, data anonymity, and also by legislation to drive residency of sensitive data in country as mandated in the recently released draft guidelines on data protection published by the National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA).

The wise businesses though see opportunities in these challenges – for instance, Broadband penetration although low at the moment (8%) is planned to reach 30% by 2018 going by the approved Nigerian National Broadband Plan 2013 – 2018. With renewed consumer confidence in Nigerian economy and growing number of internet enabled Nigerians, the opportunities are limitless.

We are living in an age of the empowered consumer – who demand hyper relevance (“know me”), Personalised Relationships at scale (“Show me you know me”), Seamless customer experience (“Delight me”) and is inherently mobile (“Enable me”). At Accenture we believe that Social, Cloud, Mobility and Analytics will be key to meeting the needs of the increasingly sophisticated customers and ultimately, these will be the key to business success.
In an environment of increasing technological disruptions, it is not a matter of if, but of when. Hence, there are just two options – disrupt or be disrupted- the question is which of these options will determine the fate of your business. The choice is entirely yours!

Niyi Yusuf is the Country Managing Director of Accenture Nigeria and Joe Ujoh is a Manager in the technology group of Accenture Nigeria