How Tech Change Ramps Up Business Pressures

The vast majority of IT and business executives are bracing for what's expected to be unprecedented tech changes over the next several years, according to a recent survey from Accenture. Accenture's 2016 Technology Vision Report, titled "People First: The Primacy of People in a Digital Age," addresses the need to overhaul strategies—and staffer skillsets—to remain competitive in light of these changes. With digital initiatives/projects driving one-quarter of the world's economy by 2020 (up from 22% in 2015), most survey respondents said companies are under pressure to reinvent themselves to avoid any fallout from tech disruption. They also indicate that their IT department must broaden its scope to keep up with the pace. Meanwhile, an influx of big data is creating serious business and cyber-security risks, findings reveal. "The real deciding (success) factor in the era of intelligence will be a company's ability to evolve its corporate culture to not only take advantage of emerging technologies," according to the report, "but also, critically, embrace the new business strategies that those technologies drive." The report covers a broad range of business and tech topics, including personnel needs and Internet of things (IoT) investment, and we've included some of those findings here. An estimated 3,100 IT and business execs took part in the research. Additional findings included here were compiled from published research from organizations such as Gartner and RedBrick Research.