According to a joint global report by professional services Accenture and HIS Research, most organisations are unable to make data-driven decisions due to a paucity of skills and technology to process data.

And in nearly 80% of respondent organisations, 50% to 90% of data is reported as unstructured and largely inaccessible.

It is also revealed that half of the organisations surveyed also say their back office is not keeping pace with front office requirements to support digital capabilities and meet evolving customer expectations.

“To win in today’s market and ensure future viability, it is essential that organisations capture value quickly, change direction at pace, and shape and deliver new products and services. Organisation also need to maximise the use of ‘always on’ intelligence to sense, predict and act on changing customer and market developments,” says Debbie Polishook, group chief executive, Accenture Operations.

“Our research suggests technology alone is not a magic bullet. To successfully transform their operations, organisations must take a holistic approach that integrates business process and industry expertise, human ingenuity, and intelligent technologies. This enables the agility, flexibility and responsiveness needed to drive superior decision-making, business outcomes and customer experiences. It’s about responding swiftly to change and how to steer a new course with confidence.”

When it comes to digital disruption, 42% of executives report that they see more opportunities than threats now compared with two years ago and a robust customer experience strategy is identified as the most significant driver of operational agility.

“Breaking down the silos between the front and back office is now essential to delivering a modern customer experience. More than half of survey respondents state that it takes months or even years for their business functions to make changes to evolving business needs”, said Phil Fersht, chief executive and chief analyst at HfS Research.

“The market leaders of the future will be businesses that operate on a OneOffice model: an intelligent, single office characterised by seamless processes and digital capabilities centred on creating, enabling and supporting the customer experience.”

Accenture and HIS say the research suggests the future belongs to organisations with “intelligent operations” that enable them to have a 360-degree view of their operations enabling quicker, insight-led decision making.

The five essential components of Intelligent Operations identified by the research include:

1.    Innovative talent. The talent of the future will need to bring creative problem solving in addition to digital expertise. Organisations will need a more agile human resources function and a recruiting approach that heavily leverages an open talent marketplace.

2.    Data-driven backbone. Organisations need to capitalise on the explosion of structured and unstructured data from multiple sources to gain new insights for the innovative talent to use in order to achieve stronger outcomes.

3.    Applied intelligence. Using integrated automation, analytics, and AI-based solutions, organisations need innovative talent who can understand the business problem and then apply the right combination of tools to find the answer.

4.    Leveraging the power of the cloud. The cloud will enable the plug-and-play digital services with better integration of diverse data, can scale up and down, and help organisations move toward an as-a-service environment.

5.    Smart partnership ecosystem. Organisations of the future will develop symbiotic relationships with start-ups, academia, technology providers and platform players to achieve their goals.