From Looking Digital to Being Digital: The Impact of Technology on the Future of Work intelligent tools that make it possible to use real-time weather and navigation data Emerging work practices combine rich data streams with contextual to adjust ship-board entertainment, meal 12 In terms of work practice, the “who, when, knowledge—of specific countries, cities preparation and staffing. With intelligent how, where and what” receive different or even neighborhoods. They can thus digital processes, people and organizations answers if one is talking about intelligent make decisions about how to best serve can now do much more than react to digital processes rather than adaptable customers, whether they are retail change: they can anticipate it, even exploit ones. That’s why a new set of work consumers or businesses and governments. it to achieve unprecedented results while practices have emerged recently to take And, rather than pandemonium ensuing, minimizing risk. advantage of new possibilities. the rest of the organization will see and understand the improvisation happening at the edge and, where necessary, replicate it Human and digital recombination Edge-centric decision-making or accommodate it. Advances in machine vision and software Centralized corporate managers now controls for robots are behind new command terabytes of data. So, as Real-time adaptation approaches to work design that are masters of the data, they should control growing in popularity and impact. The decision making when it comes to work The evolution of sensor technology has first is relatively familiar: Humans “project” organization, right? Well, yes, up to a point. brought with it the opportunity to exploit themselves into situations that are hostile But technology that gathers localized data the pervasive digital connections between or toxic through remote control robots— can empower local decision making, or systems, people, places and things— bomb disposal, for example. Increasingly, what we refer to as edge-centricity. sometimes referred to as the “internet another sort of remotely guided vehicle is of everything.” The promise resides in showing up in medical and even educational With edge-centricity, information and rapid awareness of change based on applications. Telerobotics enable doctors decision-making authority are pushed a dynamic flow of digital information to “visit” patients by maneuvering a robot out to the most customer-facing points about where machines and people are, equipped with a camera and video screen in the organization where intimate what they are doing, and how they are through hospital corridors. Children sick knowledge of context resides. It means, for doing. An oil pipeline leak can be detected at home can still participate in classrooms example, that employees are armed with immediately and repaired. Fluctuations in through similar devices. the performance of a jet engine can be monitored and failure can be prevented long before it might occur. A cruise line can The rest of the organization will see and understand the improvisation happening at the edge. 20 | Accenture | Copyright 2014 Accenture. All rights reserved. ©