How enterprises create new business value through digitalization – part 2

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

Today, enterprise digitalization is revolutionizing the way businesses create value. It has become an exemplary driving force for maintaining organizational relevance. When properly integrated across business processes and operations, it can create agility, advance operations and boost 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 and challenges involved, as well as the role of enabling technologies in enhancing business value creation, now and looking forward.

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 type of business value creation do the enterprise decision makers and employees attach to digitalization in general, as well as to each of the use cases?
• What role do cellular (5G and beyond), cloud, AI, digital twins, and immersive technologies play as enterprises implement their digital transformation strategy, and how is this expected to evolve going forward?
• What is the effect of incorporating telecom APIs on the value added by enterprise digital services, both currently and in the future?
• How can technical, organizational or cultural factors impact the full realization of business values?
• Are there differences between the viewpoints of decision-makers and employees regarding the opportunities and challenges involved?
• 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 topic, this research has been divided into three different deliverables.

This is the second 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 API-embedded use cases of remote meeting, remote education and digital product development. 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 Túlka, a customer of Vonage, part of Ericsson, showcasing how Túlka is disrupting the interpreter services market by integrating telecom APIs into its offering!

In the first deliverable, the business value creation opportunities linked to IoT-centric use cases were 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 analyzed the opportunities and challenges for enterprises utilizing human-centric use cases such as remote meeting, remote education and digital product development to advance operations and increase agility.

The focus has been on value creation and the role of technology enablers and emerging digital tools. Furthermore, key success factors for a transition to cyber-physical work environments such as work and leadership culture, and organizational alignment, have been investigated.

Finally, a customer case demonstrating how the discussed business value creation potential can be leveraged to disrupt an established market segment has been presented.

The key findings in this report were:

The main value creation potential in implementing human-centric use cases lies in the advancement of operations.

• For almost 9 out of 10 employees the main reason to utilize remote meetings is to increase work efficiency.
• Agile companies embrace AI-enabled tools in enhancing human-centric use cases by nearly 70% more than others.

Externally provided telecom APIs will accelerate the applicability of 5G networks

• 80% of all enterprises will use communication service APIs for remote meetings within the next 2 years

A major uptake of emerging digital tools is expected to drive the transition to the cyber-physical workplace

• 70% of all enterprises will deploy emerging digital tools within the next 2 years to enhance the remote meeting usage experience

The paradox of digital collaboration: Employees see opportunities, while decision-makers are skeptical

• 7 out of 10 decision-makers state that people in their organization prefer in-person meetings, but only half of the employees say that they do so
• Almost 6 out of 10 employees are willing to give-up business travel, but only 4 out of 10 decision makers believe that people in their organizations are willing to do so

The study shows that the transition to cyber-physical workplaces has significant business value creation potential for enterprises but is still in its early days. Enterprises need to embrace changes in ways-of-working and leadership culture. The user experience of current solutions for digital collaboration needs improvement, and leveraging the expected uptake of emerging digital tools such as AI and XR is important in the coming years.

Technology enablers such as cellular connectivity and cloud are instrumental but need to be applicable for enterprise automation. The deployment of telecom APIs for human-centric use cases is crucial in this context and clearly represents an opportunity for communication service providers (CSPs) to drive the success of 5G.

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. 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 37 telepresence interviews with decision-makers, subject matter experts and academic researchers in the US and Europe. These interviews were conducted between January 12, 2023, and March 11, 2024.

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).

Included markets in this 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.
• CPaaS - Communication Platform as a Service, a cloud-based platform allowing developers to build real-time communication features into applications
• Device handover - seamless transfer of ongoing meetings between devices.
• 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
• Meeting continuity - Ability for meetings to continue uninterrupted when moving e.g., between WiFi and mobile/cellular (3G/4G/5G) coverage
• 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
• Telecom APIs - Application Programming Interfaces that enable developers to integrate communication services, such as voice, text and video, into applications and digital offerings
• Use case - A set of actions performed by an actor (human 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: remote meetings, remote education, and digital product development.