SiliconANGLE’s Smart World Round-up

A new study from Accenture Plc and General Electric Corp. (GE) has concluded that digital technologies offer a level of opportunity that’s unprecedented in the history of business. So disruptive are these technologies that over 66 percent of executives believe there’s an urgent need to adopt Big Data technologies to avoid losing their market position.

Accenture and GE’s study, How the Industrial Internet is Changing the Competitive Landscape of Industries, focus on how Big Data and the Internet of Things (IoT) are combining to redefine the competitive landscape in a variety of industries. The Industrial Internet is set to become a $500 billion a year market by 2020, according to an earlier study from Wikibon.

The Industrial Internet is compelling because of the opportunities that arise from analytics, cloud, mobile and social media. These technologies disrupt how consumers, employees and organizations interact with each other in numerous ways. For example, businesses can create better experiences for their customers, improve their level of service, increase staff productivity and reduce costs.

Fueling this digital transformation is Big Data. According to the study, some two-thirds of enterprises worldwide have already begun implementing Big Data projects.

More than 1,000 data, financial, marketing, operations and technology leaders were interviewed during the study. Of those, some 90 percent said they’re satisfied with the business outcomes from using Big Data, and that those technologies are a vital part of their digital transformation. Moreover, 88 percent of respondents said Big Data is a “top priority” for their company, while 93 percent admitted seeing rivals in their industry using Big Data to differentiate themselves.

On the downside, there’s still plenty of work to be done. Just 29 percent of execs said they are currently using predictive analytics to optimize their businesses, and just 49 percent have plans to generate new revenue streams from Big Data. Another 40 percent said they weren’t currently looking to use Big Data as a means of improving resource management.

The upshot of this seems to be that while organizations and CIOs see the opportunity in Big Data, many of them are struggling to come up with a viable strategy to take advantage of it.

“To get there, many [organizations] must work through a multitude of issues to use their machine data for more advanced forms of predictive data analytics,” said Matt Reilly, a senior managing director at Accenture. This will require “sourcing the right analytics talent to ensure effective execution and scaling of analytics programs.”

There’s no longer any doubt about whether Big Data will revolutionize industries. Now, it’s just a question of who will get there first. CIOs will need to step up and prioritize their Big Data initiatives or risk ending up on the losing team.