Emerging Tech: Creating New Ways to Solve Business Problems

In this multi-part series, I will share insights from the work our brightest consultants pursue every day helping companies of all types transform the way they operate to tackle some of today and tomorrow’s biggest challenges to win new markets and achieve a sustainable competitive advantage.

Technology at the heart of business planning

Today we live in an era of pervasive technology – it engulfs every aspect of our lives, at home and in the office. And for today’s thriving business, programmes and investments that can steer a new era of digital transformation dominate conversation from the boardroom to the coffee room.  

For business leaders, so much of reality is in the now: figuring out how to operate stronger today to achieve quarterly targets and thrive in the present state. While certainly a necessity, much of the thinking we try to drive with our clients is how to also leverage emerging technology to solve tomorrow’s challenges.

These challenges could be big problems or opportunities that are yet unmet, or even undefined, but, if conquered, could win new markets, and perhaps shift the balance of power within an industry. And in some cases, it could even entirely reinvent the way a company operates.

Simply put, emerging technology is at the core of almost every strategic conversation business leaders engage in today.

Building a future-proof business

In today’s transformative business environment, emerging tech has a decisive role to play in an organisation’s innovation effectiveness, operational resiliency, customer experience and overall success. Leveraging new tech is no longer the role of the CIO – it’s table stakes for leaders across the entire enterprise to strategise and embrace to future-proof their business and ensure a strong operating model for the future.

However, for a number of market leading organisations, it’s become clearer than ever that business strategy and technology are forever linked, and major investment decisions around these topics must be treated as such, starting in the Boardroom and permeating top management. Why? One simply can no longer function without the other, and organisations that see technology as core to their business – without regard for the products and services they create – can set themselves up for competitive advantage.

Ultimately, technology is becoming core to how any organisation operates – and this approach is reshaping a number of company's go-to-market approach with innovative tech at the centre. When implemented with precision and efficiency, new technologies can be powerful accelerators to help companies solve critical business problems, scale on demand, improve resiliency and leverage insights for real-time customer planning.

Solving tomorrow’s challenges today

Today’s challenges are more diverse and widespread than ever. Market-altering dynamics are front and centre in the news, from supply chain disruptions, escalating energy costs, inflation, interest rate hikes and changing consumer demands. Workforce reskilling and cyber threats add to an ever-long list of challenges that companies face today – either opportunistically or reactively. Furthermore, topics like ESG and stakeholder capitalism are showing signs of transforming the ways companies approach a sustainability agenda for the future good of not only their company, but also society at large.

Beneath the surface of these topics sits a common thread; probably the single biggest element that encompasses so much of this is data – and more importantly, how to apply it smartly for a competitive advantage.

The numbers are stark. There are 2.5 quintillion bytes of data created each day, a pace that is only accelerating with the interconnectivity of digital products (e.g., Internet of Things). Over the last two years alone 90 percent of the data in the world was generated. Google now processes more than 40,000 searches every second (3.5 billion searches per day). A connected car produces 4 TB of data in just a day. And the global ecommerce space will exceed $5 trillion in 2022.

Simply put, businesses are sitting on their future, and the wealth of data generated by organisations and consumers alike will create an entirely new horizon for the pioneers that figure out how to best capitalise on it.

Capitalising today means solving critical problems or opportunities for stakeholders of all types – and emerging tech is likely to play a decisive role in this journey ahead. Today’s empowered enterprise likely sees this as their greatest lever for growth and innovation ahead.

Emerging tech will power our future

Cutting-edge new uses of emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML), augmented reality, the Internet of Things (IoT) and quantum computing can help organisations scale on demand, improve resiliency, minimise infrastructure investments, and deploy new products and services rapidly and securely. These technologies can help companies create powerful transformations to drive revenue streams and leapfrog the competition.

Leveraging the vast world of data will enable organisations to create a new circular economy with their supply chains and the products they create – which could power entirely new business concepts. Leveraging deep insights from connected products (IoT) will help launch new servitisation-based business models that will transform product companies into services-led organisations.

Integration of the factory shop floor will help manufacturers to evolve and change products in real-time, getting ahead of consumer demand with new offers, maximising sales opportunities and reducing inventory. AI and predictions-based models will create innovative new leaps in supply/demand forecasting which can also help them to reach and exceed sustainability targets. Advanced digitalisation is powering the renewables sectors and opening endless possibilities for buyers and sellers of new energy sources - something critical to our future.

These examples are just a few of the latest tech-powered innovations that will help organisations to differentiate and disrupt entire industries. There could not be a more exciting time to be a business or technology worker – the stakes for a sustainable future are at an all-time high, and sectors are likely to be completely reshaped through solving today’s known and yet unknown issues.

In my next article, I will explore in more detail how some of these ideas can take flight and where some of tomorrow’s challenges can potentially be solved through cutting-edge emerging technologies.