A recent joint survey by Internet and Mobile Association of India (IAMAI) and Accenture India shows that Chief Digital Officers can ensure significant savings and efficiency via digital investments.
34 percent of the companies are focusing on digital to improve efficiency and 44 percent utilize digital to drive new sources of growth.
13 percent companies use digital to drive both growth and efficiency.
64 percent of the executives fear for their company’s survival if they are unable to deliver on these two imperatives with their digital investments, according to a recent joint survey by Internet and Mobile Association of India (IAMAI) and Accenture India.
The survey interviewed 931 senior executives from large companies mostly with turnover exceeding $1 billion and spread across 12 manufacturing and production industries.
It covered companies in Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, India, Ireland, Japan, Mexico, Norway, South Korea, Singapore, South Africa, Sweden, Switzerland, The Netherlands, the UK and USA.
29 companies were headquartered in India, representing industries such as automotive, communications & Hi-Tech, consumer goods, oil & gas, and life sciences.
96 percent of the senior executives say that they are investing in digital to pursue these twin goals. Some of the leading retail companies have started leveraging digital technologies such as virtual reality to enhance in-store customer experiences and drive sales simultaneously adopting digital to optimize operations and achieve higher operational efficiencies.
84 percent of executives across sectors believe that delivering differentiated customer experiences will strengthen their competitive advantage. HDFC, for instance, uses a combination of technologies to create OnChat, a virtual customer-service assistant, to deliver improved customer experiences.
India has over 400 million internet users including 300 million mobile internet users.
“Digital transformation is very important to understand how your consumers are evolving, how their behaviours are changing, how their purchasing journeys are changing and then evolve your products and services to be able to delight the consumers,” said Rajan Anandan, chairman of IAMAI and managing director of Google India.
How to save
The research shows that combining technologies leads to higher savings and greater enterprise value.
Indian automotive sector can use autonomous robots, artificial intelligence, blockchain, big data analytics, and 3D printing to raise productivity equivalent to $63,000 per employee in savings or more than $2 billion per company, on average.
Oil and gas companies could gain more than $16 billion in market capitalization if they combine augmented and virtual reality, big data, artificial intelligence, digital twin and autonomous robots.
“Chief Digital Officer will play a critical role in defining the digital reinvention roadmap which complements the organization’s business journey,” said Nachiket Sukhtankar, senior managing director for Accenture’s technology practice in India.
