David Mills, Executive Vice President, Operations, Ricoh EuropeA recent executive summary just released by the Economist Intelligence Unit and sponsored by Ricoh has found some very interesting facts about the impact that technological change will have on companies up to 2020. The research conducted with over 567 senior business leaders in twenty sectors around the world, including Ireland, found that business leaders expect dramatic changes to their industry in the future due to the impact of new technology.
The research, set for full release in March 2012, has revealed that more than one third of leaders surveyed believe their organisation will be incapable of keeping up with technology resulting in a loss of their competitive edge. One startling discovery was that nearly 33% of IT industry leaders believe their businesses will disappear completely, while six out of ten survey respondents are convinced the markets where they operate will be significantly altered between now and 2020, bearing little similarity to today.
Business Structures:
Some 63% of interviewees predict a decisive shift to decentralised structures in the future. Respondents believe far-reaching devolution of business decision-making authority will move to the periphery of organisations. Interestingly they believe that customers will generate almost as many new ideas for the improvement of business processes as employees and that by 2020 these customers will generate the most new product or service ideas.
David Mills, Executive Vice President, Operations, Ricoh Europe commented:
“Over the last two decades we’ve experienced more technology-driven change in business than any other,” he said. ” It is also clear that more change will happen and it is employees and customers that will play a key role in driving the changes by the way they are using it. That is why we believe that the successful businesses of 2020 will be those that place greater emphasis upon process innovation.
The key to building a more agile business ready to embrace the changes is to have the right infrastructure in place to manage it successfully. Business leaders need to ask whether the information infrastructures inside their organisations are future proof. By understanding how business critical information connects across the entire business, an organisation can re-engineer its processes to ensure that it is maximising employee knowledge-sharing and is able to respond effectively to customer demands.”
With a further 59% of those surveyed agreeing that the concept of non-digital information will be utterly foreign to most employees by 2020, Mills feels that this acceleration means it is vital that both digital and non-digital critical business processes are integrated and easily accessed by employees across the organisation.
“This becomes even more crucial with the steady increase of mobile working and the need to access information across multiple locations,” he added.
Denis McCauley, from the Economist Intelligence Unit said, “Despite the uncertainty for some when anticipating the future, the majority of business executives (70%) agreed there were significant opportunities for technology to improve the way they conduct business and there are plenty of gains to be made in improving operating efficiency. What is certain is that technology will continue to be a source of continued change to markets and industries between now and 2020.”
The research, undertaken by the Economist Intelligence Unit and sponsored by Ricoh, is being seen by many as one of the most comprehensive analysis to date on the impact of technology on the future workplace. 46% of the senior business leaders hold C-suite positions, with 43% earning annual revenues of US$500 million or more.
The executive summary can be downloaded from -
www.ricoh-europe.com/thoughtleadership
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