According to a recent Accenture report, “From Digitally Disrupted to Digital Disruptor,”the industry is experiencing the first wave of large companiesusing technology as a driving force for strong and effectivegrowth. Supporting Accenture's vision that “Every business isa digital business,” the previous decade, marked by digital startupcompanies that sparked phenomena, such as Instagram, Twitter andTripAdvisor, will be followed by a period of emergence, astraditional companies begin taking on the role of a digitalgiant.

In nearly every industry, business leaders are searching todetermine their organization's place in the digital landscape.Companies are pushing for transformation, from technologicalfollowers to leaders, prepared to take advantage of recent digitalinnovations that promise growth and development.

Accenture's Technology Vision Report highlight six themes thatreflect the current shifts in technological trends being used bythe digital power brokers of the future. Companies such as GE,Disney and Tesco, for example, recognize the importance ofredefining their companies' digital integration to further redefinedigital in their industries: Big is the next bigthing.

The insurance industry is not exempt from this fundamental shiftto the digital realm. Becoming a digital business is more than justincorporating technology into an agency through mobile applicationsor web portals. Agencies that succeed in the future will be theones that determine how technology can be used to reinventthemselves, staying ahead of other businesses in the industry, andalso getting in front of dramatic changes in evolvingtechnology.

Accenture's six themes highlight the evolution of keytechnologies, some of which are already central to digitalexplorations of leading enterprises. As a whole, the themes arerepresentative of the fundamental shifts in assumptions thatcompanies must make as they plan for the future.

Insurance industry leaders can use these six themes as they planfor the future success of their business. Accenture's detailed viewof digital trends and capacities can help leaders in every industrydraw insight and inspiration to become the innovative agencies oftomorrow.

Click through the following slides for more on the six themes.

Digital–physical blur: Extending intelligence to theedge

The interconnectedness of the digital and physical worldscontinues to grow, as intelligence, automation, and digitalmachinery become more important to daily business, impacting theway we participate and control the physical world.

These connections have allowed customers to become more informedand better equipped to influence the ways the experience everythingaround them, and for businesses, real-time connections to thephysical world allow both machines and employees to respond morequickly, and more intelligently.

Why now?

• Explosion of connected devices: The installedbase of the Internet of Things is estimated to reach approximately212 billion in 2020. This will include 30 billion “connected(autonomous) things” that same year.
• Increased bandwidth: Global IP traffic isexpected to nearly double between 2013 and 2016, and broadband isexpected to speed up more than twofold.
• Advanced robotics: From agriculture tooilfields, advances in robotics are empowering human-robotcollaboration in industries beyond the factory floor. Severalleading car manufacturers have committed to bringing autonomous cartechnologies to market by 2020.
• Rise of real-time analytics: Data sources aregrowing at an unprecedented velocity, and the ability to loopinsights immediately back into the decision process is supportingautomating responsive actions like never before. By 2017, more than50 percent of analytics implementations will make use of eventstreams generated from instrumented machines, applications and/orindividuals.

Next Steps

Accenture predicts that there will always be individuals who areeager to acquire new technologies to become better informed, whilealso enjoying different (and hopefully better) userexperiences.

For insurers, this means staying ahead of the technologicaldevelopments, and being eager to respond to the needs and desiresof customers who are looking for new experiences for conductingbusiness.

In the insurance industry, much of this is emerging withmillennials, who represent a new demographic of clients, as well asagents. Millennials are keen on self-service and automatedprocesses for doing business, but Accenture predicts thatbusinesses' embrace of the next generation, overall, will becautious.

Accenture anticipates three phrases of uptake. The first is tomake business more efficient. In the second phase, businesses willsee digital-physical systems create industry disruptions, as users'expectations evolve. The agencies that can proactively alter theusers' experiences to fit these changes become the disrupters.

The third phase stems out of organizational response. Agencieswill need to ask the right questions about how technologicalintegration, such as automation, impacts customer interactions andexpectations. Questioning whether or not the implementations openup new business opportunities, or whether the productivity equationchanges in the workplace, are just some of the things that shouldbe considered.

Through answering these questions, insurers can leverage thestrengths of the machines alongside the strengths of the people,and set themselves apart from the rest with market-leadingadvantages.

Your 100-day plan

In 100 days, promote decisions at the edge by completing thefollowing:

• Take an inventory of devices at the edge of your network;segregate them by those used by humans and those that act on theirown, such as sensors and embedded intelligence.
• Catalog how data is currently being collected in yourorganization to drive business decisions. Understand how havingmore data about daily operations could improve businessoutcomes.
• Define and prioritize both the ways in which consumers engagewith your products or services and the locations where they engage.Brainstorm ways to deliver compelling user experiences that offernew insights into their decision-making.
• Consider how you can influence behaviors or decision making tohelp consumers arrive at a favorable outcome for your mission orbusiness.
• Look to early adopters to learn what businesses in differentindustries are doing to enhance consumer experiences, enable fieldworkers, and embed intelligence into their physical assets.
• Organize a cross-functional mobility team between your IT andbusiness organizations. Their objective will be to pilot relevanthardware innovations and test new consumer and employeedigital-physical experiences.
• Collaborate with your customer-facing business units to capturethe types of edge decisions they often make. Determine how theywill benefit by adding data with real time analytics at the pointof action and create a strategy to deliver that solution.
• Reevaluate your corporate privacy policy to address the newdigital-physical interactions for your business. Data collection,usage, transparency, and user control (opt in/opt out) guidelinesshould be clearly addressed.
• Uncover the types of decisions that can alleviate oversightobligations from middle management and start to build decisionspaces for front-line workers to take autonomous actions.

From workforce to crowdsource: The rise of theborderless enterprise

Modern workforces will extend beyond human employees. Rather, itwill consist of any user connected to the Internet. Cloud, socialand collaboration technologies allow organizations to tap intodifferent resources around the world that are ready to help.

According to Accenture, channeling these efforts to drivebusiness can be a challenge, but the opportunities are enormous:Insurers can gain access to an immense workforce that is bettersuited for solving some of the industry's daily struggles, and inmany cases, they will do it for free.

Why now?

• Accelerated pace of IT change: The increasingpressure to rapidly deploy new technology is accentuating some ofan enterprise's biggest pain points: market insight, innovation,and a need for highly specialized skills. These are areas for whichcrowdsourcing solutions are well suited.
• Maturation of crowdsourcing platforms:Communities of shared interest have organically formed or areforming around almost every product, service, and idea that can beimagined. Crowdflower, Spigit, and Mechanical Turk are just a fewof the collaboration platforms that are rapidly evolving to enableand orchestrate efficient solutions.
• Strong case studies from early adopters: Someof the biggest market disrupters, such as Facebook and largeenterprises including GE, are currently using crowdsourcingservices to solve their most complex problems, and everyone istaking notice.

Next Steps

The report indicates that there is no shortage of people whoare, surprisingly, ready and willing to work for little or no moneyby participating in online experiments such as contests andchallenges, if they can be rewarded, whether it is through prizes,recognition, or a sense of pride.

The use of this extended workforce, however, can be challenging.Accenture provides guiding principles for planning and implementingplatforms for crowdsourcing. Keeping clear objectives forcrowdsourced exercises is critical for success, which stems fromobjective planning, as well as technology solutions that can driveusers through the process.

It is also imperative to engage the expanded workforce.Providing motivation and a community feel is important for actuallyaccomplishing tasks. When leveraged correctly, the benefits areimmense. Insurers will find that they have better insightconcerning the needs of their customers, and are able to producemore innovative products and services that serve client needs.

Your 100-day plan:

In 100 days, learn about the variety of options that contributeto the borderless enterprise and begin to create a strategy for howyou can harness the crowd moving forward.

• Identify any existing enterprise connections to establishedexpanded workforce platforms.
• Determine how your competitors are using crowdsourcing.
• Evaluate the benefits your market research, product developmentand innovation functions could reap from using expanded workforceplatforms.
• Develop an initial strategy to engage existing onlinecommunities in support of your core functions. Where it aligns withyour core business, create a catalog of existing online communitiesthat are specific to market-research and product-developmentfunctions.
• Consider assets from the open-source software community thatare usable for your core IT functions and begin planning how tointegrate them.
• Design and implement a pilot to leverage the establishedexpanded workforce that most aligns with the nature of yourbusiness.

Data supply chain: Putting information intocirculation

Data technologies rapidly evolve, but most innovations areadopted in a piecemeal fashion, resulting in underutilizeddata.

The Accenture report describes data ecosystems as “complex andlittered with data silos,” which limits the value that insurers canget out of their own data, simply because it is difficult toaccess. In order to leverage the value of their data, companiesshould consider treating data as a supply chain.

The supply chain method will allow data to flow easily throughthe entire organization, and eventually through each company'secosystem of partners, according to Accenture's theory.

Why Now?

• Corporate data silos: Data is the lifeblood ofevery digital organization, but businesses are struggling toaccess, share, and analyze much of the data they already have.Through 2015, 85 percent of Fortune 500 organizations willbe unable to exploit big data for competitive advantage.1
• Rising data volumes: In addition to the datathat organizations already collect, new external data sources areavailable, providing new opportunities for data insights. Thedigital universe is doubling every two years and is expected togrow to 40 trillion gigabytes (more than 5,200 gigabytes for everyman, woman, and child in 2020).
• Maturing data technology: The tools andtechnology required to build a data platform, ensuring data accessand velocity, are available and in use. For example, a reported 20percent of enterprises are already using NoSQL. With the foundationof these technologies, the integrated, end-to-end data supply chainis possible.

Next Steps

As the sheer volume of data begins to grow, so does the scaleand complexity of the data supply chain. It can become difficult toadd to data, and leverage the data's value once it has beenmanipulated.

The solution, according to Accenture, may come from cognitivecomputing. Rather than being programmed for a specific task, themachine learning systems would gain knowledge from data as“experience,” and generalize what it has learned in upcomingsituations.

Cognitive computing builds on the concept by incorporatingcomponents of artificial intelligence to convey insights in waysthat allow humans and machines to accomplish what they previouslycould not accomplish alone. At its most advanced, according toAccenture, cognitive computing will be the truly intelligent datasupply chain, masking complexity by harnessing the power of data tohelp business users and answer strategic questions in a data-drivenway.

For many insurance companies, large-scale cognitive computingmay be out of reach. However, there are more practical andaffordable ways to leverage this technology. Insurers should focuson tackling defined problems on a smaller scale. Machine learningtechniques can be leveraged to accomplish practical, cognitivegoals, not just large-scale issues.

Your 100-day plan

In 100 days, begin to develop a comprehensive strategy aroundlaying the foundation for your data supply chain.

• Start to build an inventory of your data, beginning with yourmost frequently accessed and time-relevant data— which will begiven first access to your data platform and accelerated onit.
• Identify any manual, time-consuming data curation processes(e.g., tagging, cleansing) for potential replacement with machinelearning algorithms.
• Identify data silos within your organization (e.g., HR,finance, engineering), along with corresponding data needs that arecurrently unmet across the business.
• Begin to simplify/federate access to trusted data. Create astrategy for standardizing data access via the data platform.Solutions may be hybrid, utilizing a combination of traditionalmiddleware and API management, or even a PaaS offering.
• Prioritize your individual data supply chains to develop a roadmap for implementing the data supply chain at scale.
• While building your platform, start looking outside yourcompany for external data sources that can be incorporated tocomplement existing data and help lead to more complete insights.

Harnessing Hyperscale: Hardware is back (and neverreally went away)

The last decade was marked by innovation in software, but thehardware world is gaining steam as a hotbed for new developmentwith demand for bigger, faster, and lower-cost data centers.

Now, more than ever, hardware matters in transformingorganizations into digital businesses with access to unlimitedcomputing power that can be turned on and off as needed.

Why Now?

• Rising demand for scale: Across industries,demand for processing at scale is surging. Businesses need reliablehardware to support the immense amounts of data processed forpredictive analytics and real-time insights.
• Hardware and server architecture innovationsurge: From advances in storage to power consumption toprocessors to server architecture, infrastructure innovations suchas nonvolatile memory are paving the way for faster, cheaper, andbigger hyperscale systems.
• Open source: Facebook's Open Compute Projectis accelerating the adoption of infrastructure innovations bysharing those breakthroughs freely. Founded in 2011, the OpenCompute Project has already grown to more than 60 official membersand thousands of participants.

Next Steps

In this shift in IT strategy, many companies are leveraginghardware innovation on a piecemeal basis. Some are going as far tobuild their own hyperscale systems to give their companies acompetitive edge.

But even if insurers do not decide to take on the task ofbuilding their own infrastructure, it is important to consider thefuture of the company as a digital business, and whether or not theinfrastructure and skills to support it are present.

Going forward, businesses will see the advantage of hyperscaletechnology. It provides the opportunity to decrease operationalcost of running data centers, and for high performance companies,hyperscale systems have become a vital part to their business.

Your 100-Day Plan

In 100 days, make sure your organization is informed about theavailable hyperscale technology options.

• Ensure that your IT organization is aware of consortiums and/oris testing the benefits of the latest hardware innovations.Identify those that are most important to your business.
• Identify your data storage needs and the magnitude of devicesproducing data in your network (including sensors, smart meters,devices, and data centers). Forecast their expected usage based onone-year and three-year business growth strategies.
• Create a plan that allows key data assets to be portable acrossarchitectures.
• Explore participation in open-source communities such as theOpen Compute Project to leverage emerging hardware innovations.

The business of applications: Software as a corecompetency in a digital world

With the increase of mobile technology, many businesses aremoving from enterprise applications to apps. While there willalways be large, complex company software systems to support largeorganizations, it is necessary for IT developers to customize thesystems with updates and patches.

However, the current shift requires developers to createsimpler, more modular, and custom apps as large businesses movetoward greater IT agility. For business and IT leaders, determiningthe application development roles in digital businesses isimportant, but so is the transformation of the applicationdevelopment.

Why Now?

• Digital transformation of enterprises: ITapplications have become the primary driver for growth anddifferentiation for enterprises.
• Accelerated pace of IT change: The increasingpush to rapidly deploy new technology is increasing the pressure onIT to provide a faster way to develop and deploy the applicationsthat are driving corporate digital strategies.
• Maturation of application platform providers:PaaS players are offering ready-made data service platforms, withsets of services already connected and instant sets of app familiesavailable. Tibco, Apigee, and Salesforce are already offeringsolutions that provide the foundation for a customized enterpriseapp experience.
• Rising consumer and user expectations:Customers and employees are looking for consumer-grade experienceseverywhere. They are pressing IT to give them, in the workplace,the kinds of low-cost, accessible, and often intelligent apps theyuse every day on their own mobile devices.

Next Steps

IT and business executives need to re-examine the skills andorganizational structures that need to be in place to support thesenew technological arrangements. As insurers become more aware oftechnologies and opportunities, IT will also need to develop abetter understanding of the insurer's business strategies that willbe impacted by technological development.

From what Accenture predicts, in the future, business strategieswill become inseparable from technological innovation, andmultidisciplinary teams will become common in business settings.User experience skill will become a necessity to drive the adoptionof new applications, and as data is collected from theseapplications and distributed throughout the organization, userexperience skills will need to be cultivated and honed throughhiring and training.

However, Accenture notes that it is not just tech skills thatwill be in demand, as business processes are not set in stone inthe world of apps. This gives insurers the opportunity to movebeyond technology innovation, enabling them to seek innovation inthe underlying processes, emphasizing the roles of the businessprocess orchestrator and program manager.

Additionally, apps also have different expectations formaintenance. With traditional software, deployment is the end ofthe development cycle, but with apps, deployment is just the firstiteration. Applications will, essentially, be “forever beta,” oralways evolving.

Your 100-Day Plan

In 100 days, begin to develop a comprehensive strategy that willlay out the foundation for enterprise app development.

• Appoint a digital champion to coordinate development of yourapp strategy across organizations in your enterprise.
• Determine your ability to enable cloud and mobile apps againstyour existing SOA, API Management, and PaaS investments. Based onthis evaluation, start preparing a strategy to separate yourback-end services from front- end apps.
• Start creating a list of enterprise-level apps to be developed.Work cross-functionally across business units to prioritize theitems on your list.
• Start planning a pilot for your highest priority apps that willdeploy in conjunction with the enterprise app store. Aim tovalidate the readiness of your app production environment.
• Review and begin to update your app process and app governancestrategy. Prepare to shift toward a hybrid buy and buildenvironment, where your IT buy for front-end functions willdecrease.

Architecting resilience: “Built to survive failure”becomes the mantra of the nonstop business

Digital businesses need to be able to support a number ofdemands for nonstop processes, services and systems. Shiftingclient and employee expectations will create the need for an“always-on” IT infrastructure and security. Resilient practices inthese situations can mean the difference between success andfailure.

IT must adopt a new mindset to ensure that systems remaincontinuous, dynamic and accessible, but are also resilient tofailure and attack.

Why now?

• Digital transformation of enterprises:Transforming to a digital business implicitly increases a company'sexposure to risk through IT failures. More business processes areinterconnected and automated, all of which become potential pointsof failure. The average cost of data center downtime by minute hasrisen by 41 percent since 2010.
• Increased cyber threats: It's not just aboutgaining access to systems; cyber criminals are also trying to bringthem down. Denial of service attacks are increasing in frequencyand size. The number of attacks has increased by 58 percent in thelast year.
• Increased IT complexity: More systems arebeing integrated, and continuous improvement is becoming the ITnorm. But constant change to increasingly complex systems isintroducing more risk than ever before.
• The expectation of “always on”: In a digitalworld, whether your system is under attack, hit by a storm, or justbeing updated, the expectation is that it always works.

Next Steps

According to the report, resilience is the new high ground forCIOs who take their strategic business roles seriously.

But this calls for more than just putting in the right securitystructures and deploying the best systems. Instead, a wholesaleshift in mindset is necessary. Accenture claims that this mindsetshould be rooted in the context of business risk and stem from adeep understanding of the constant threats of business disruptions,such as hackers or internal updates, and the risks that thesethreats pose to the operational community and brand value.

Insurance leaders should look beyond simple compliance whenaddressing resilience. Compliance, according to Accenture, meanscomplacency. Leaders do not follow compliance frameworks; they setthem.

Your 100-Day Plan

In 100 days, consider where you can make the most impact inbuilding a more resilient company.

• Shift conversations with senior executives about security toconversations about mitigating business risks. Talk about thebenefits of designing for failure.
• Map and prioritize security, operational, and failure scenariothreat models to existing and planned business operations.
• Develop a strategy to handle elastic business demand for ITservices.
• Reaffirm a force-ranking alignment of IT systems and theirdependent components with business-driven KPIs for success anddownside revenue risk. Evaluate the top five for resilience.
• Test your resilience by planning a “game day” exercise for IToperations.
• Consider hiring an outside security firm to attack yourinfrastructure, monitor the events internally, and reconcile withlogs from the security firm to see where your defenses aredeficient.
• Perform a data security review. Determine from a businessrisk perspective where data can reside; consider using the publiccloud as a disaster recovery solution.
• If not already doing it, plan a pilot for software-definednetworks and a software-defined data center. Start small and scaleover time.
• Create a governance model for auditing and testing the entireecosystem of IT system and process dependencies— both internallyand externally. Be sure it includes policies for managing capacityutilization and using hybrid infrastructure.

Conclusion: The pace of technologychange is accelerating

Over the last decade, we have witnessed a technologicalexplosion. From cell phones, to tablets, to Twitter, to Netflix,digital technologies have evolved at lightning speeds.

Accenture's Technology Vision witnessed more and more largeorganizations, outside of the IT industry, becoming digitalbusinesses, instead of being pressured by it. Leveraging theirresources, these companies are not just reacting to technologydisruption, but embracing digital development as a vital part tothe success of their business.

Within the coming decade, traditional companies, includinginsurers, will need to transform their views of technology,becoming digital giants instead of following the trends. Examiningthe future of the insurance industry's digital journey will benecessary for staying competiti