WHY IT MATTERS: Digital Transformation

Capgemini’s 2017 Edition of TechnoVision presents 37 compelling technology trend building blocks of inspiring, challenging, and disruptive perspectives.

The most anticipated slide deck of the year is here. Key takeaways:

• Global smartphone growth is slowing: Smartphone shipments grew 3 percent year over year last year, versus 10 percent the year before. This is in addition to continued slowing internet growth, which Meeker discussed last year.
• Voice is beginning to replace typing in online queries. Twenty percent of mobile queries were made via voice in 2016, while accuracy is now about 95 percent.
• In 10 years, Netflix went from 0 to more than 30 percent of home entertainment revenue in the U.S. This is happening while TV viewership continues to decline.
• Entrepreneurs are often fans of gaming, Meeker said, quoting Elon Musk, Reid Hoffman and Mark Zuckerberg. Global interactive gaming is becoming mainstream, with 2.6 billion gamers in 2017 versus 100 million in 1995. Global gaming revenue is estimated to be around $100 billion in 2016, and China is now the top market for interactive gaming.
• China remains a fascinating market, with huge growth in mobile services and payments and services like on-demand bike sharing. (More here: The highlights of Meeker's China slides.)
• While internet growth is slowing globally, that’s not the case in India, the fastest growing large economy. The number of internet users in India grew more than 28 percent in 2016. That’s only 27 percent online penetration, which means there’s lots of room for internet usership to grow. Mobile internet usage is growing as the cost of bandwidth declines. (More here: The highlights of Meeker's India slides.)
• In the U.S. in 2016, 60 percent of the most highly valued tech companies were founded by first- or second-generation Americans and are responsible for 1.5 million employees. Those companies include tech titans Apple, Alphabet, Amazon and Facebook.
• Healthcare: Wearables are gaining adoption with about 25 percent of Americans owning one, up 12 percent from 2016. Leading tech brands are well-positioned in the digital health market, with 60 percent of consumers willing to share their health data with the likes of Google in 2016.

Alphabet’s artificial intelligence outfit, DeepMind, plans to build a blockchain-style system that will carefully track how every shred of patient data is used. The company, which is rapidly expanding its health-care initiatives, has announced that it will build a tool that it calls Verifiable Data Audit during the course of this year. The idea: allow hospitals, and potentially even patients, to see exactly who is using health-care records, and for what purpose. By logging how every piece of patient data is used, the company hopes to leave behind an indelible audit trail.

• 70% of retail decision makers globally are ready to adopt the Internet of Things to improve customer experiences.
• 73% of retailers rate managing big data as important or business-critical to their operations.
• 78% of retailers say it is important or business-critical to integrate e-commerce and in-store experiences, so an omnichannel experience is delivered to every customer.
• 87% of retailers will deploy mobile point-of-sale (MPOS) devices by 2021, enabling them to scan and accept credit or debit payments anywhere in the store.
• 90% of retailers will implement buy online, pickup in store by 2021.

Now a new breed of software applications is reshaping sales force management. Their common characteristic: Using digital data exhaust, which is the data generated from the regular activities of a sales force or their customers, to change the behaviour of frontline sales representatives in ways that dramatically improve sales productivity and effectiveness.

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Capgemini Consulting's digital transformation business journal looks at the digitization of operations, taking in robotics, 3D printing, and the second machine