What is Industry X.O and Why Businesses Should Move Towards

The concept of digital transformation has been around for quite a while now. Organisations are starting to see the great potential that technological advancement and adoption presents to their ambitions of achieving business-wide transformation and development. And, now, as a result, many are making considerable investments in a wide variety of state-of-the-art technologies to create a more agile, effective, efficient, yet robust system.

With the advent of digital transformation, the fourth industrial revolution has emerged, also known as Industry 4.0. Industry 4.0 takes the impact of digital technology to a new level with the assistance of interconnectivity through the Internet of Things (IoT), access to real-time information, and the presentation of cyber-physical systems. Industry 4.0 is defined by versatility, flexibility and effectiveness that covers customers' needs in the genuine market. Truth be told, industry 4.0 utilises digital technologies to respond quickly to market changes, offer more personalised products and services, and improve operational efficiency.

The Challenge

The rate at which things around us are getting intelligent and connected is incredible. Gartner projects there will be an overabundance of 20 billion smart and connected things by 2021. There must be an organised and efficient way to deal with this dramatic development of our connected environment to such an extent that considering the new class of smart and living things into daily life is centred around expanding human functionality and productivity and eventually improving our way of life.

Nonetheless, even though organisations are ramping up their digitisation initiatives, many aren't getting the most out of their digital investments. That is, they're not changing their core operations or businesses while developing into new ones.

For this, Accenture proposes a new concept of Industry X.O.

What is Industry X.O?

Accenture puts forward Industry X.0 as "the digital reinvention of industry", changing fundamental operations, employee and customer experiences, and business models and strategies. Industry X.0 is understanding how the future is and combining changing effectiveness with looking at how we can utilise this change to make advancements and new developments within customers' businesses to create top-line value.

Accenture studied some medium and huge Italian organisations, pioneers in the production and manufacturing sectors. Through this study, an incredible awareness has emerged on the significance of the digital transformation around us, yet a feeling of doubt and dissatisfaction with results.

Just 13% said they were getting superior efficiency, cost savings and business growth from their digital investments. 13% is a low number. Fortunately, organisations can grab the opportunity, presently, to enhance both.

As a matter of fact, consolidating digital technologies is certifiably not an easy way of mix-and-match. Organisations should accomplish something other than changing themselves into digital organisations. They should recreate their working models, production and value chains to make more worth with digital initiatives. All this is possible through Industry X.o. It's a model for becoming more capable of embracing technological change and benefiting from it.

This new vision would make tasks more proficient by saving, simultaneously reinvesting in valuable resources, paying little heed to the organisation size.

Why Should Business Move Towards Industry X.O?

At the present moment, it's a highly befuddling world. We're moving into an existence where the business ecosystem is undeniably more significant than it was before. Everything is travelling at pace. So the infrastructure organisations are working with today will be outdated in 90 days, without any doubt. 

Hence, to limit the impacts of technological obsolescence, which we have witnessed as perhaps the greatest snag to investment, it is essential to utilise a blend of digital technologies to multiply profits instead of implementing a single one.

Industry X.0 organisations embrace consistent technological change as well benefit from it. They move beyond trying different things with IT groups or SMAC (social, mobile, analytics, cloud) stacks, consolidating digital innovations to drive top-line and bottom-line growth. With Industry X.0, organisations join Industry 4.0's fundamental operational efficiencies yet harness the benefits when digital technologies are combined to persistently make new, hyper-customised experiences in both a B2C and B2B context. 

Organisations operating with the Industry X.O concept have pretty much every part of their production self-monitored, data-generated and are mindful of its industrial context. They endeavour to build end-to-end communications and information sharing between frameworks and machines in real-time. What's more, they make applicable and necessary customer experiences over time by building digital models that empower adaptive interactions between machines, customers and the workforce.

Furthermore, we need to understand that the quintessence of Industry 4.0 depends principally on harnessing operational efficiencies in manufacturing operations by utilising technology to build the Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE), which is typically characterised as the result of availability, productivity, and quality measurements. Notwithstanding, digital transformation is genuinely substantially more than simply the functional proficiency gains. 

Business value is progressively advancing around the generation of new income streams that aren't just determined by innovative As-a-Service platforms but also through hyper-personalisation of industrialism that is driving micro-segmentation and thus a dramatic development of the addressable customer base. Industry X.0 addresses the cost parameters driven by the conventional operational efficiencies of Industry 4.0 and the era of new consumer-driven business models and thus new income streams. X.0 accentuates the dramatic speed of progression in digitisation.

How can Organisations Embrace X.O?

For organisations and businesses to embrace X.O, Accenture has laid down a six-step strategy that can help them to leverage the benefits of Industry X.O.

Transform the Core

Industry X.0 organisations should build their core engineering and production systems around the digital agenda to drive new levels of effectiveness. They guarantee that actual machines and software frameworks are synchronised to unlatch previously hidden cost efficiencies, accordingly increasing investment capacity.

Focus on Experiences and Outcomes

Industry X.0 organisations should utilise their investment capacity to drive new, hyper-personalised customer insight through different innovative touchpoints. It develops core businesses by upgrading customer engagement.

Innovate New Business Models

Industry X.0 organisations should ideate and make business models to drive differentiated value for their customers and new income streams for themselves.

Create a Digital-ready Workforce

Industry X.0 organisations should source, train, and conserve digital-ready skills and foster collaboration between people and machines. 

Re-architect New Ecosystems

Industry X.0 organisations should make a robust ecosystem of suppliers, wholesalers, new companies, and customers that permits them to scale new business plans across the digital value chain quickly.

Pivot Wisely

Industry X.0 organisations should constantly balance speculation and asset designation between the fundamental business and the new business to synchronise development and development.

Wrapping Up

Looking closely at how Industry 4.0 operates, it treats different technologies such as big data, IoT, and AI in silos. Industry X.O helps us in connecting all of these technologies to transform how businesses work and operate. The primary differentiator between Industry 4.0 and Industry X.O is that the latter helps organisations create a strategic business case and roadmap for digital transformation and assist them with kickstarting, prototyping, realising value, industrialising, and eventually sustaining their digital journey. Though Industry X.O might be relatively a new concept, organisations that take this road will be the leaders of a digital world tomorrow.