How enterprises create new business value through digitalization

The strive towards increased business value creation is nothing new, however the ways to achieve it is continuously evolving!

Today, digitalization is revolutionizing the business value creation process. It has become a quintessential driving force for organizational relevance. Integrated across operations, it creates agility, advances operations and boosts resilience. 

In this, the fourth edition in the Ericsson IndustryLab report series – Future of Enterprises, the focus is to cover the present, near-future, and more long-term evolution of enterprise digitalization.

This research aims to support enterprise decision-makers and communication service providers by outlining the opportunities, challenges involved, and the role of enabling technologies on the road to enhanced business value creation today as well as in the future.

To achieve this, the research investigates current enterprise digitalization, both generally and more specifically in the form of use cases that are relevant across a wide range of industry segments, by surveying 9000 decision-makers and employees across 15 markets around the world to answer questions such as:

• What business values do the enterprise decision makers and employees attach to digitalization in general, as well as to each of the use cases?
• What is the current and projected levels of use case utilizations, and how do these differ across various industry segments?
• What role do cellular (5G and beyond), cloud, AI, digital twins, and immersive technologies play as enterprises continue their digitalization journey, and how is this expected to evolve going forward?
• Which are the key challenges hindering enterprise digitalization initiatives that need to be addressed?
• What sustainability implications from a triple bottom line (i.e., environmental, social & economical) are associated with the use cases?

To truly cover this rather extensive research topic, this research has been divided into three different deliverables.

This is the first deliverable, which contains a global, cross-industry analysis of the business value creation opportunities, currently as well as in the future, particularly those linked to cellular and cloud enabled use cases such as Remote control, Asset monitoring, and Connected offerings. The study’s global, quantitative insights are enriched through qualitative interviews with industry and academic experts, as well as through an industry case study featuring Motor City Wash Works, a customer of Cradlepoint, part of Ericsson, utilizing cellular and cloud technology to drive value creation, particularly agility and resilience, in their customer offering!

In the second deliverable, the business value creation opportunities linked to human-centric use cases will be studied in a similar fashion.

The third and final deliverable will, in part, serve as a summary, drawing on reflections from deliverables 1 and 2. It will also provide a longer-term foresight, by outlining the future vision of enterprise digitalization and business value creation.

This report has shed light on digitalization opportunities for enterprises striving to enhance their capacity to generate value, whether to create agility, advance operations, or boost resilience.

The focus has been to cover the present, near-future and more long-term evolution of enterprise digitalization, with the purpose to support enterprise decision-makers and communication service providers by outlining the opportunities, challenges, and the role of enabling technologies involved on the road to the future.

This was facilitated through a global quantitative and qualitative study covering three IoT use cases -asset monitoring , remote control , and connected offerings - along with an industry case study demonstrating their value for enterprises.

The key findings in this report were:

Untapped digitalization potential

There is significant untapped digitalization potential in asset monitoring, remote control and connected offerings, with 8 in 10 decision-makers stating that the main value drivers are boosting agility and resilience.

• Around half of the decision-makers¹ say they currently only have a limited-to-moderate utilization level of asset monitoring and remote control.

IoT growth enablers

Cellular technology is considered to be a key enabler for growth of IoT use cases by 7 in 10 decision-makers.

• However, cellular connectivity’s ability to drive fast scaling is underestimated or not fully understood.

Infrastructure is leading the way

The infrastructure segment is leading asset monitoring with the deployment of Extended Reality (XR), low-power sensors, AI and digital twins, averaging a 28 percent higher expected mid-term utilization than the laggard segments.

• The segment is also expected to keep its leading position in the long term.

Challenges to growth

Challenges including regulation, solution capabilities and cellular coverage are putting market growth at risk, according to more than 6 in 10 decision-makers.

• Additionally, scalers seem to underestimate this challenge.

Augmenting human capabilities

The importance of social sustainability is ever increasing.

• In the automation era, AI, XR and haptic devices are set to augment human, with roughly 7 in 10 decision-makers expecting their companies to enhance their IoT use cases with human-focused tools such as XR, haptic devices and AI-enhanced functions in the next 3–5 years.

This study clearly shows that decision makers and employees place significant value on all three studied IoT use cases, both in the present, and in the mid- (3-5 year) and long-term (7-10 years) perspectives.

This presents significant opportunities for CSPs and enterprises across all industry segments, provided that the identified challenges are not underestimated by enterprises currently scaling up their digitalization efforts and are treated and handled with due respect. Cellular connectivity, be it 5G or beyond, along with cloud solutions, are key enablers for the evolution and utilization of these use cases to progress as expected.

Ericsson Consumer & IndustryLab explores the future of technology for consumers, enterprises and a sustainable society. We deliver world-class market research, actionable insights and design concepts to drive innovation and sustainable business development. We provide a scientific fact-based analysis regarding environmental, social and economic impacts and the opportunities of ICT.

Our knowledge is gained from global consumer, enterprise and sustainability research programs, including collaborations with leading customers, industry partners, universities and research institutions. Our research programs cover in-depth studies and over 100,000 interviews with consumers, working people and decision-makers each year, in 30 countries – statistically representing the views of 1.1 billion people.

Our reports can be found at IndustryLab

Quantitative data was collected through an online survey with 9,000 respondents aged 18 and older in Australia, Brazil, China, Germany, India, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, Singapore, South Africa, South Korea, Sweden, Thailand, the UK and the US. The seven industry segments covered in this study comprise asset-, site-, infrastructure-, finance-, consumer-, society- and service-centric companies. These segments may be referred to throughout the report as, for example, “finance companies”. Of the respondents, 4,500 were decision-makers in companies with 50 or more employees. The remaining 4,500 respondents were employees. The early-adopter profile of many of these respondents makes them important when it comes to exploring the future evolution of enterprises. The online survey was conducted between July 27 and September 8, 2023.

Qualitative insights were gathered through 32 telepresence interviews with decision-makers, subject matter experts and academic researchers in the US and Europe. These interviews were conducted between January 12 and December 6, 2023.

In this study, a decision-maker is a person with the final say-so or significant influence on strategic ICT and/or business development decisions and are considered to represent the company they work for. Questions related to specific use cases have been answered by a random selection of decision-makers and employees, that have classified that particular use case as a top-two priority for their companies (decision-makers) or for their own work roles (employees).

Markets included in the study

• Case study - A description of a real-life company having implemented one or several use cases, often outlining both what they wanted to solve, and what the outcome of the implementation was.
• Digital tools and components - Applications, features or capabilities used to enhance a use case beyond its most basic functionality.
• Digital twin - Real-time digital replicas of physical objects or processes, often used for simulations.
• Low utilizers - A company on a comparably low current level of utilizing the studied use case across its operation, and with no expectation to change significantly in the future.
• High utilizers - A company on a comparably high current level of utilizing the studied use case across its operation, and with no expectation to change significantly in the future.
• Scalers - A company currently on a comparably low level of utilizing the studied use case across its operation, but with an expectation to significantly increase its utilization in the future.
• Technology enabler - A high-level set of technologies that act as the prerequisite, foundation or facilitator of digital use cases. For example, cloud computing or cellular technology.
• Use case - A set of actions performed by an actor (user or machine) when interacting with a product or system to achieve a specific task. A use case can be expanded by adding different digital tools and components. This report focuses on three use cases: asset monitoring, remote control and connected offerings.