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From Digitally Disrupted to Digital Disrupter
Accenture Technology Vision 2014
A Malaysia Perspective
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Every Business Is a Digital Business: The Evolution
ACCENTURE
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As the pace of technological change accelerates, we are seeing a
profound shift taking place. Start-ups are no longer the only ones
disrupting their markets. Instead, larger enterprises are now
taking advantage of their size, knowledge and position as leaders
in their physical markets to transform into truly digital
businesses.
For Malaysia to remain competitive, we need to ensure this
change is occurring here as quickly as it is in other markets. The
theme of this years Accenture Technology Vision is that every
business is now a digital business, which is seeing many
organisations going from being disrupted by digital to becoming the
new digital disrupters.
This is especially the case in Malaysia, where internet and
mobile usage continues to surge and the country is positioning
itself as a regional technology leader. This report focuses on the
findings of the Accenture Technology Vision 2014 that are most
pertinent to Malaysia and our business sector. We also highlight
examples of these trends in action.
Business is changing fast as technology becomes more deeply
ingrained in everyones day-to-day lives. Consumers are no longer
passive shoppers; huge amounts of data are being collected by
companies; and new marketing channels are constantly being
created.
These changes present both great risks and great opportunities
to reap rewards. We are already witnessing the impact of digital
technologies on conventional business models in every sector of the
economy here in Malaysia and around the world. And while companies
are embracing digital technology, theres still more to do.
Our challenge is to move beyond conducting transactions with
customers to building relationships with them as the line between
the physical and digital world becomes more and more blurred. We
must also relentlessly pursue the right mix of solutions to
understand big data and make the most of the opportunities
presented by enterprise mobility. Finally, with digital business,
there is also higher susceptibility to technology-related risk.
Therefore, it is important to remain resilient and plan to ensure
business continuity.
Globally, we see companies using the strategies described in the
Accenture Technology Vision 2014 to differentiate themselves,
surpass their competitors and enter new markets. We hope you find
this report useful in developing strategies to make your
organisation even more successful as a digital business.
Big Is The Next Big Thing
The Accenture Technology Vision 2014 Malaysia Perspective,
details how companies can use cutting-edge digital technology to
create sustainable platforms for growth.
Our research shows that many Malaysian companies already
understand the power of technology in enhancing their operations.
They see the benefits of an increasingly tech savvy, mobile
workforce and the increased productivity and cost savings that come
with adopting big data technologies and digital solutions.
However, some Malaysian companies have only implemented these
solutions to a limited degree. They have the opportunity to deploy
technology in more widespread and integrated ways across their
operations to boost customer satisfaction and drive expansion
strategies.
In this report, we focus on six emerging technology trends and
how Malaysian businesses can harness them to succeed.
Introduction
Janet YapCountry Managing Director and Technology LeadAccenture
Malaysia
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The physical world is coming online. Smart objects, devices and
machines are revolutionising the way business is conducted
globally. This includes everything from intelligent personal
fitness devices to advertising that responds to a consumers
identity and location. Were also seeing technology become embedded
in our everyday lives. Every business is now a digital business,
with the opportunity to reinvent itself in the digital world.
Consumers are also empowered with a vast array of choices as the
line between the digital and physical world continues to blur. On
the other side, enterprises have unprecedented opportunities to
leverage their physical assets to leapfrog online competitors,
creating immersive real-world digital experiences for customers to
increase their market share.
To maximise these opportunities, however, business and
technology leaders must rethink how they engage customers in the
new digitalphysical world.
For global giants like Cisco, which predicts the industrial
internet market will be worth US$14.4 trillion by the end of this
decade,1 this means focusing on the Internet of Things, or as Cisco
describes it, bringing together people, process, data, and things
to make networked connections more relevant and valuable than ever
before.
In Malaysia, telecommunications giant Telekom Malaysia is a
strong proponent of the Internet of Things concept and is heavily
involved with initiatives such as internet-ready television with
high-speed connectivity (IPTV). With the ageing of Malaysias
population and increased urban migration, Telekom Malaysia is also
investigating ways to provide better medical support and enhanced
security to internet-ready homes.2
Telekom Malaysia is also developing data mining, analytics and
visualization solutions, applying artificial intelligence to data
generated by smart appliances to provide what it describes as
sensible and sense-able information. As the company says, The
challenge is to investigate how the data made available from our
day-to-day living can be presented in a simple and distributed
manner to make meaningful living decisions.2
MyTeksi, a Malaysian social startup, has successfully deployed a
taxi-dispatch service with GPS-enhancements. The application allows
users to make bookings powered by Maxis M2M SIM to communicate
wirelessly in real-time. Drivers listed under the MyTeksi system
are equipped with smartphones with GPS technology, while customers
simply download the app and register on the MyTeksi website. When
they turn on the app, the system pinpoints their location using the
MyTeksi software.
Banks such as CIMB are also unveiling initiatives enabling
state-of-the-art mobility for internet banking such as a mobile
card reader for credit and debit cards.
The Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission (MCMC),
the regulator for the converging communications and multimedia
industries, has set a goal of establishing Malaysia as a major
global hub for multimedia information and content services by
2020.3 Part of this initiative revolves around nurturing local IT
resources in a ubiquitous national infrastructure which includes an
abundance of robust applications for all Malaysians.
TREND 1
Digitalphysical blur: Extending intelligence to the edge
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TREND 2
From workforce to crowdsource: The rise of the borderless
enterpriseAround the world, organisations can access vast pools of
human resources like never before, thanks to advances in cloud,
social and collaborative internet technologies.
New digital platforms are making it possible to connect to what
Accenture calls the expanded workforce. While many organisations
are enjoying the benefits of digitally enabled forums such as
innovation exchanges and crowdsourcing platforms, few executives
fully grasp the idea of being able to access a truly liquid
workforce where pools of premier talent are gathered in virtual
communities working on specific business problems and initiatives.
The tasks may be as simple as data entry or as complex as
industrial design.
In addition, localised online communities are creating
opportunities across the cloud for collaborative business and
social initiatives through crowdsourcing. Technology is also making
it possible to engage with customers and prospects in new ways
changing both the way businesses should engage with those customers
and build their own teams.
Communities of shared interest have organically formed around
almost every product, service and idea imaginable and there is no
shortage of people willing to participate in online experiments,
contests and challenges. Companies should no longer rely on a group
of in-house individuals to drive market research, innovation and
product-development activities. Digital
technology has brought a global voice to those functions and is
pushing the boundaries that previously defined the enterprise
workforce.
However, relatively few organisations in Malaysia are involved
in crowdsourcing initiatives at the present time. In September last
year, Khoo Kar Khoon, the president of the Malaysian Advertisers
Association (MAA), said local marketers werent doing enough
crowdsourcing to benefit their brands.4 Khoo, who is also Nestl
Malaysias Communications Director, said his company had
successfully used crowdsourcing to accompany the Nestl 100 Year
Celebration, which invited consumers to discuss their most
memorable interactions with the brand, which was then incorporated
into a television ad campaign.
Charities and community-based organisations, however, are
leading the way with crowdsourcing initiatives designed to not only
raise money but raise awareness of causes. Socialsharity, a
charitable crowdfunding website service, uses social networking to
engage businesses and citizens in projects to support a range of
causes including helping children, the elderly, those with
disabilities, the environment and animals.5 Another Malaysian
website, pitchIN, uses crowdsourcing to raise funds to support
community-based projects in the arts.
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TREND 3
Data supply chain: Putting information into circulationData
technologies are evolving rapidly but most have been adopted in a
piecemeal fashion and enterprise data is greatly underutilised. To
unlock the true potential of data, companies need to start treating
it more as a supply chain, enabling its easy and useful flow
through their organisations and ecosystems of partners and
customers.
For that to happen, the data needs to be made visible and
accessible to those who need it when they need it, which requires a
data services platform. Fast data access is also essential, as
quick access to information means analyses and actions can be
performed in the often small window of opportunity businesses have
to be first to market with a new product or service.
As the volume and variety of data grows, so does the scale and
complexity of the data supply chain, making it increasingly
difficult to derive value from that information. However, with the
rise of machine-learning technologies, businesses can enhance their
supply chains by teaching computers, with little guidance, what to
do with data and where to store it. Cognitive computing technology
builds on that by incorporating components of artificial
intelligence to seamlessly convey insights to help people and
machines accomplish things they couldnt on their own.
In 2006, Telekom Malaysia initiated a major transformation of
its supply chain as part of its strategy to accelerate the growth
of its broadband business, at a time when broadband penetration in
Malaysia was at about 1 percent.6 What the company needed to do was
consolidate and retire
seven legacy systems in two years; map between the requirements
of new commercial products and the capabilities of the deployed
technologies; and establish, maintain and enhance an accurate
baseline of network inventory at nearly 1,000 sites.
In addition, the telco had to support the aggressive rollout of
new technologies across its network. The complete supply chain
overhaul also involved massive amounts of data migration while
consolidating inventory systems and file-based stores into one
centrally maintained database. The successful integration of all
these processes helped Malaysian broadband penetration reach 11
percent by late 2007.
Malaysian organisations can also benefit from the work being
done by the Malaysia Institute for Supply Chain Innovation (MISI),
which focuses on identifying and solving the practical problems
associated with global digital supply chains.7 It brings faculty
members, graduate students and research staff together with
prominent global companies and organisations to engage in research.
Its primary objective is to help firms gain and sustain a
competitive advantage by investing in their supply chains. The
institution, which offers masters and doctoral programs in
effective supply chains and logistics, also conducts research and
outreach activities for global and local organisations that operate
in the Southeast-Asian region.
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TREND 4
Harnessing hyperscale: Hardware is back (and never really went
away) IT hardware technology has emerged from the shadows of
software innovation to once again become a hotbed of innovation and
development as demand soars for bigger, faster, lower-cost data
centres.
Across industries, the demand for processing data at scale is
surging and businesses are more reliant than ever on hardware
supporting the unprecedented amounts of data they need to process
in order to manage transactions and gain new insights from that
information.
Advances in storage, power consumption, processors and server
architecture have all combined to pave the way for faster, cheaper
and bigger hardware solutions. As a result, companies can reap the
rewards of hyperscale systems, which offer the physical
infrastructure of giant distributed systems and the computing power
to support the data centres that allow companies like Google and
Facebook to deal with vast volumes of data.
Hyperscale systems also give enterprises the ability to scale
computing tasks to achieve performance that is orders of magnitude
better than their current systems. These new data centres consume
storage, bandwidth, memory, and computing cycles on a scale
unimaginable to most.
In this new paradigm, hardware matters more than ever in
transforming enterprises into digital businesses with access to
unlimited computing power. Every company will see the benefits of
hyperscale innovation trickle into data centres in the form of cost
reduction, but as companies digitalize, more and more we will see
these systems as essential to enabling their next wave of
growth.
Malaysia is making a concerted push into the big data market
with the national Big Data Analytics (BDA) initiative through the
Product Development & Commercialisation Fund (PCF) as as part
of a government initiative to become a regional hub for IT and
digital innovation by 2020. Under the terms of the programme, the
government will work with partners across four projects to see how
data can be most effectively analysed and harvested. The
development of the National BDA framework will be overseen by a
taskforce chaired by the Ministry of Communications and
Multimedia.
Accompanying this push into big data, spending on Malaysian data
centres has surged. In 201213, total Malaysian data centre
investment was US$700 million,8 compared to US$665 million spent
the year before. According to Malaysias 2013 Malaysia Data Census
study figures, one of the most important investment drivers for the
Malaysian data centre community is a need to increase IT capacity
and to meet a growing number of corporate and technical
requirements.
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TREND 5
The business of applications: Software as a core competency in a
digital worldSoftware development is changing in ways which mimic
the shift in the consumer world, where organisations are rapidly
moving from enterprise applications to applications. There will
always be big, complex enterprise software systems providing
updates, patches and more. But now, as organisations push for
greater operational agility, there is a sharp shift toward simpler,
more modular apps for IT leaders and business leaders alike. They
will soon have to decide not only who plays what application
development role in their new digital organisations, but how to
transform the nature of application development itself.
IT applications have become the primary driver for growth and
differentiation for enterprises. The increasing push to rapidly
deploy new technology is increasing pressure on IT departments to
provide a faster way to develop and deploy the applications that
are driving corporate digital strategies. Customers and employees
are looking for consumer-grade experiences everywhere. They are
pressing IT to give them the kinds of low-cost, accessible and
often intelligent applications they use on their own mobile devices
in the workplace.
In Malaysia, Molpay.com, a multi-currency payments gateway, has
developed a suite of e-commerce products that accept cash payments
for online purchases through physical outlets such as convenience
stores and bookstores. It also offers payment solutions from online
payment acceptance and processing to fraud management to payment
security.
Mobile marketplace app Duriana provides a platform to buy and
sell used items, and currently has several thousand listings across
beauty, fashion, sport, arts, technology and gadgets. The
location-based technology allows users to find buyers and sellers
near them. Some of the early adopters include online boutiques and
instashops (users who buy and sell items via Instagram). Duriana
plans to become more involved with online buyer and seller
communities inside Malaysia.
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TREND 6
Architecting resilience: Built to survive failure becomes the
mantra of the non-stop businessTransforming to a digital business
will always include technology-related risk. As more business
processes become interconnected and automated by using IT, they
become new potential points of failure.
In the digital era, businesses must support wide-ranging demands
for non-stop processes, services, and systems. This has particular
resonance in the office of the CIO, where the need for always-on IT
infrastructure, security, and resilient practices can mean the
difference between business-as-usual and an erosion in brand
value.
The upshot is that IT departments must adopt a new mindset to
ensure that systems are dynamic, accessible and continuous for
resilience under failure and attack. Transforming to a digital
business implicitly increases a companys exposure to risk through
IT failures. More business processes are interconnected and
automated, all of which become potential points of risk and system
failure.
Cyber criminals are not just trying to gain access to systems,
they are trying to bring them down. Globally, the number of
denial-of-service attacks rose by 58 percent in the past year.9
In Malaysia, myCert received only 76 intrusion attempt reports
in 2013 compared to 258 for the first five months of 2014. However,
the actual attempts could be significantly higher as declaration of
intrusion attempts are voluntary and most enterprises do not report
such attempts. This correlates to Accentures own internal findings
that about 45 percent of global CIOs admit they are under-investing
in IT security.
More systems are being integrated and continuous improvement is
becoming the norm in IT. But constant change to increasingly
complex systems is introducing more risk than ever before and, in a
digital world, the expectation is that your system will always be
working.
For example, on 8 April 2014, the Malaysian Communications and
Multimedia Commission (MCMC) alerted all internet service
providers, the Government Emergency Response Team and other
regulators and banks about the threat posed by the discovery of
Heartbleed, a cryptographic library used to secure much of the
internets global traffic. MCMC said at the time that it would
continue to monitor and advise those who are vulnerable.
CyberSecurity Malaysia, the national cyber security government
agency, has been given the task of preventing or minimising
disruptions to critical information infrastructure to protect the
public, the economy and government services.10 To this end, it has
developed specialised cyber security solutions which provide access
to a wide variety of tools and education to assist in proactive or
forensic investigations. One of the bodys key goals is to convince
companies that increasing security is as vital in todays digital
economy as locking the doors at night has always been in the old
economy and not an investment black hole.
The Information Security Professional Association of Malaysia is
also at the forefront of educating businesses and members of the
public about the benefits of security with the support of the
Malaysian IT community, higher education centres and CyberSecurity
Malaysia.
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CONCLUSION
Whilst examples of each trend can be seen in Malaysia, very few
are embedding these concepts into their organizations DNA to become
truly digital and competitive.Telecommunications and information
technology companies are leading the charge, but other sectors need
to jump on board the digital train before they find themselves
falling behind their competitors.
For leading enterprises, 2014 will see a turning point in
relation to innovation, change and growth centered on the uptake of
digital technology. As a fast-emerging regional economy with
ambitions of becoming a regional IT hub in the near future,
Malaysian organisations have an unprecedented opportunity to gain a
competitive advantage both locally and internationally by driving
the adoption of digital technologies.
Now is the time for the digitally disrupted to become the new
disrupters, especially at the enterprise level.
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1 Technology Vision 2014, Accenture, 2014.
2 Telekom Malaysia R&D: The Internet of Things is fast
becoming a reality, telecoms.com, March 26, 2012.
3 Ubiquitous Malaysia and the Internet of Things, skmm.gov.my,
September 9, 2010.
4 Crowdsourcing can benefit marketers, The Star Malaysia,
September 28, 2013.
5 http://www.socialsharity.com/
6 Telekom Malaysia case study, clarity.com, September 6,
2011.
7 http://www.misi.edu.my/
8 Malaysian DCD Censuses, 20112014.
9 Technology vision 2014, Accenture, 2014
10
http://www.cybersecurity.my/en/about_us/corporate_overview/main/detail/2065/index.html
Notes
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Copyright 2014 Accenture All rights reserved.
Accenture, its logo, and High Performance Delivered are
trademarks of Accenture. 14-2649
About the ContributorsAdrian Lim is a Senior Manager and leads
the Infrastructure Services and Security practice with Accenture
Technology Malaysia.
[email protected]
Noor Hafizah Yusof is a Manager in the Emerging Technology
practice with Accenture Technology Malaysia.
[email protected]
Contact UsVisit www.accenture.com/malaysiantechvision or email
us at [email protected] to find out how your organisation
can benefit from applying the six trends of the Technology Vision
2014.
About Accenture Accenture is a global management consulting,
technology services and outsourcing company, with approximately
289,000 people serving clients in more than 120 countries.
Combining unparalleled experience, comprehensive capabilities
across all industries and business functions, and extensive
research on the worlds most successful companies, Accenture
collaborates with clients to help them become high-performance
businesses and governments. The company generated net revenues of
US$28.6 billion for the fiscal year ended Aug. 31, 2013. Its home
page is www.accenture.com.
