The IT Nerd

The Niagara 2022 Host Society is proud to announce that Accenture will become the Official Diversity and Inclusion Partner for the Niagara 2022 Canada Summer Games, playing a lead role in creating activations that will engage Games’ participants and spectators alike and celebrate Canada’s diversity during next summer’s event.

In partnership with Niagara 2022, Accenture will organize activations at the Athletes Village and at Niagara Place, an outdoor festival site that will be situated at Canada Games Park. Additionally, Accenture will be the presenting sponsor of Pride Day at Niagara Place. This event, currently scheduled for August 17, will bring participants, spectators and volunteers together to celebrate LGBTQI2S social and self-acceptance, achievements, and pride.

These celebration sites and activations will aim to foster a more welcoming and safe environment for everyone at both sport and non-sport venue sites at the 2022 Canada Summer Games regardless of ethnicity, religion, gender identity, sexual orientation, gender expression, age or disability.

Accenture has been an employer in the Niagara Region since 2001, and in 2020 it expanded its footprint by opening a new intelligent operations centre in downtown St. Catharines. As a leading global professional services company, Accenture has long been recognized for its commitment to providing an inclusive, open and equitable work environment. As a result, Accenture has been named one of Canada’s Best Diversity Employers for nine consecutive years, ranked in DiversityInc‘s Top 50 List of Companies for Diversity for 15 consecutive years, and in the top three of the Refinitiv Diversity & Inclusion Top 100 index over the last four years.

As a result of this expertise, the Niagara 2022 Host Society has welcomed Accenture’s collaboration on the development of future diversity and inclusion initiatives. Next summer’s event will also be the second Canada Games where athletes will be allowed to compete in events for the gender with which they identify under an inclusion policy that was enacted by the Canada Games Council prior to the 2019 Canada Winter Games in Red Deer, Alta.

About the Niagara 2022 Canada Summer Games

At the peak of Niagara’s boldest summer yet, more than 5,000 up-and-coming athletes, their coaches and support staff will gather to compete for the podium in Canada’s largest multi-sport event. From August 6 to 21, 2022, Niagara will surge stronger than ever on the national stage. The 2022 Games, made possible thanks to funding and support from the Government of Canada, the Government of Ontario, the Niagara Region, and the Canada Games Council, will give rise to new legacies of ambition, confidence, and compassion that will inspire generations to come.

For further information, visit us at niagara2022games.ca or follow them on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram (@2022canadagames).

A new global report from Accenture has identified a select group of organizations spanning several industries that treat cloud as a new operating model to continuously reinvent their businesses using innovative, multi-cloud capabilities — across public, private and edge — realize greater business value, well beyond cost savings.

Based on a survey of nearly 4,000 C-suite executives at both private- and public-sector organizations globally, including 200 Canadian executives, the report, titled “Ever-ready for Every Opportunity: How to Unleash Competitiveness on the Cloud Continuum,” explains why looking at cloud as a one-time migration to a static destination — essentially as a cheaper, more-efficient data centre — is limiting for most organizations, including those in Canada. In fact, a narrow focus on cost savings can actually put organizations at a competitive disadvantage compared to those using cloud more strategically across its many dynamic forms, including public, private and edge.

The report reveals that while Canadian organizations plan to migrate more than two-thirds of their workloads to cloud, on average, over the next three to five years, only half are using the full potential of cloud in its various forms to transform their day-to-day business operations, carry out knowledge work and modernize applications to meet business needs.

Accenture defines the organizations leading the way in cloud as “Continuum Competitors.” These organizations — about 12-15% of respondents globally — stand out by extending the experience they gained from public cloud to their private data centers and edge locations to transform daily business operations. As a result, they achieve substantial gains from their continued cloud engagement and outperform competitors. Continuum Competitors are also much better positioned to withstand future shocks, according to the research.

Continuum Competitors include organizations such as Carlsberg, for example.

Unlike organizations whose cloud efforts focus primarily on one-time migration to cloud for cost savings and efficiency, Continuum Competitors in Canada are:

• 1.6x more likely to see outcomes such as AI-augmented knowledge work; 
• achieving 1.3x greater cost reduction than organizations focused mainly on data migration;
• targeting at least 1.3x better in financial and operational goals, such as increased customer value, lower operating costs, financial growth and flexibility, and scaling new innovations;
• 3.6x more likely to use the cloud for at least two sustainability goals, such as using green energy sources, designing for lower power consumption, and using servers more efficiently to reduce energy consumption.

By studying Continuum Competitors’ use of cloud, Accenture has identified four winning cloud approaches applicable to any organization: 

1. Know where you want the continuum to take you. An organization must first develop a strategy with a vision that clearly states the core values and future aspirations, identifies competitive vulnerabilities and classifies capabilities relative to where the company is today and its future aspirations. They must develop these strategies by taking into account the constant evolution of cloud capabilities across the continuum.

2. Establish cloud practices to support and augment your technologies. Organizations need to couple technology adoption with practices that bring discipline and help change non-technology areas at the pace of computational improvements. Agility is the most critical mindset to being a Continuum Competitor; it infuses cloud-first apps, talent transformation, information technology experimentation and compute awareness, among other areas.  

3. Accelerate innovation to deliver exceptional experiences. Continuum Competitors prioritize their investments in one area: experience. They use a combination of human-centered design and cloud-based technologies such as edge computing to rethink experience to push it closer to where their customers, partners and employees engage. This is done by driving the experience mindset throughout the organization, including products and services, employee experience and delivery models.

4. Provide continuous strategic commitment. Leadership needs to establish business objectives, set appropriate risk levels and promote a culture of agility and growth. Organizations must also recognize the “all-hands” nature of the challenge: everyone across the organization needs to be informed of the cloud’s ever-improving potential and best practices.

Accenture’s “Ever-ready for Every Opportunity: How to Unleash Competitiveness on the Cloud Continuum” research arrives at a time when Canadian organizations have been forced by the pandemic to provide their customers with unique experiences and serve them in new and virtual ways. Prior global research from Accenture found that companies, including those Canada, that scaled technology innovation during COVID-19 are growing revenue approximately five times faster than lagging adopters of technology innovation.

About the Research 

In late 2020 and early 2021, Accenture surveyed nearly 4,000 C-suite executives, in both information technology (IT) and non-IT roles, across 25 countries and 16 industries. The research — which included interviews, case study research and economic modelling — focused on collecting data on adoption and scaling of technologies associated with cloud, each organization’s cloud journey, strategy, and goals, management practices around cloud, multiple measures of financial and operational performance, and the impact of cloud on innovation and sustainability outcomes.

As organizations around the world make plans for their people to return to the workplace, the latest research report from Accenture finds that 61% of Canadians prefer a hybrid or remote work model.

The research report encompassing 9,326 workers in 11 countries titled, “The Future of Work: Productive Anywhere,” found that while 37% of workers in Canada feel they can be productive and healthy primarily while working remotely, another 41% feel they can be productive and healthy anywhere, either fully remote or onsite or a combination of the two ─ as the hybrid workplace emerges.

Globally, 85% of people who say they can be productive and healthy anywhere also say they plan to stay with their company for a long time. However, finding a hybrid model that works for all generations may be a challenge: three in four Gen Zers (74%) want more opportunities to collaborate with colleagues face-to-face, a higher percentage than Gen Xers (66%) and Baby Boomers (68%).

Surprisingly, while the global research found 42% of people thriving, only 26% Canadians identified as thriving, showcasing less optimism and more fatigue in their workforces compared with their peers globally.  About a quarter (28%) of Canadians feel their companies are meeting their emotional health needs (compared to 36% globally), and only 26% say their companies are meeting their physical health needs (compared to 34% globally).

The report uncovered that what separates those Canadian workers who are productive anywhere (41%) from those who are disconnected and frustrated (11%), is not stress, but whether they have the right resources on an individual and organizational level to help them be productive anywhere. These resources range from job autonomy and positive mental health to supportive leadership and a digitally mature organization.

Further, organizations that enable a resilient workforce to be more productive and healthier anywhere are also reaping financial benefits: 56% of high revenue growth companies in Canada have already enabled productivity anywhere workforce models.

As responsible leaders consider the various options available to their workforces, they must move beyond a focus on physical location to shape a future of work that provides their people with the resources they need to be productive anywhere. Accenture recommends that organizations consider these specific actions:

• Accelerate Modern HR – The world around us has changed, and HR policies and practices must evolve. Develop a strategy that ensures workers are Net Better Off ─ across six workplace dimensions including relational, physical, emotional and mental —as they transition to new workspaces, teams and roles.
• Design work around people – Organizations must acknowledge and respond to the needs of all types of workers. Organizations that support psychological and physical safety will foster trust.
• Build digital fluency – Digitally fluent organizations have higher revenue growth and are more likely to be considered great places to work. Focus on designing tailored skilling and learning paths that serve the needs of all workforce segments.
• Lead with humanity – Responsible leaders create environments in which the Modern Board, CEO and entire C-suite work together — no matter where they are.

To find out more about the report, visit https://www.accenture.com/us-en/insights/consulting/future-work.

About the Research
Accenture Research fielded a survey during the month of March 2021 to 9,326 global workers across the following countries: Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, Japan, Singapore, Sweden, UK & US and the following industries: Banking/Insurance/Capital Markets, High Tech, Retail, Customer Goods & Services, Public Sector, Healthcare, Communications and Media, Utilities, Energy and Life Sciences.

The research analysis was conducted as follows:

1. Workforce clusters: Workers were classified into four distinct clusters based on their responses to items on productivity and health scales. “On-site productivity only” workers were those who achieved a mean score of 3.5 or higher on the on-site productivity scale and lower than a 3.49 mean score on the remote productivity scale. “Remote productivity only workers” were classified as those who achieved a 3.5 mean score or higher on the remote productivity scale and lower than 3.49 on the on-site productivity scale. The “productive anywhere (hybrid) workers” were classified based on mean scores of 3.5 or higher on both remote and on-site productivity scales. Lastly, the “non-productive group” were those who scored below a 3.49 mean on both productivity scales.
2. Workforce mindsets were derived after assessing workforce sentiments on over 140 questions and grouped into 4 primary mindsets using factor analysis and reliability testing.
3. To better understand what was driving the productivity and health of workers in on-site and remote locations we ran a hierarchical regression analysis of 18 organizational variables, controlling for individual differences such as age, tenure, industry, geography, gender. The results reported are those that were statically significant where productivity regressed on the organizational resources.
4. An ANOVA test was conducted to determine the differences in organizational level resources experienced between our workforce clusters, focusing closely on the differences in our productive anywhere group and those who felt they could not be productive on-site or remotely. Statistically significant differences across the 18 variables tested are reported.
5. Finally, we assessed perceptions of company performance and correlated Net Better Off scores (see Care to Do Better report) and workforce clusters with 3-year revenue growth.

Today, Accenture has launched its Canadian fintech report titled, “Collaborating to win in Canada’s Fintech ecosystem.”

In a nutshell, the benchmarking analysis found that the four Canadian hubs – Calgary, Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver – are already benefitting from the basic factors necessary to achieve international leadership, major hubs may still have room to build stronger reputations as world-class fintech communities. Canadian tech hubs might achieve this by fostering further innovation, collaboration and international expansion.

Of the five key benchmarks evaluated, Canadian hubs scored lowest in fintech activity and financing. Canadian cities and governments should consider continued promotion of regional fintech investment and the attraction of VC’s to increase competitiveness in this area. Globally recognized fintech hubs such as London and Singapore – leaders according to the benchmarking study – have achieved stronger results in part by outlining national fintech strategies.

This report is worth a read as it is very interesting.

Accenture has been named a Leader in the IDC MarketScape: Canadian Cloud Professional Services 2021 Vendor Assessment (doc# CA46215320, January 2021).

In this inaugural report, Accenture was named a Leader in part due to its industry expertise, deep technology skills, and strong partnerships with prominent technology players. In addition, the IDC MarketScape sees Accenture differentiating itself in cloud professional services with its investments in a variety of proprietary solutions to accelerate clients’ cloud journeys as well as its aggressive global strategy to help organizations digitally transform and become cloud-first businesses. 

The IDC MarketScape report also noted that Accenture’s cloud clients have a high level of satisfaction, including in its ability to integrate with client teams and its overall delivery strength. Accenture’s offerings provide numerous benefits because of the breadth of functionality and its investment in innovation centres, intellectual property, and employee development that results in a high level of service quality, the report said.

In September 2020, Accenture launched Accenture Cloud First, a new multi-service group of 70,000 cloud professionals, with a $3 billion investment to help clients across all industries rapidly become cloud-first businesses and accelerate their digital transformation to realize greater value at speed and scale.

According to Accenture’s latest report, “Sky High Hopes: Navigating the Barriers to Maximizing Cloud Value,” just 34% of Canadian companies say they are achieving the full value expected on their cloud investments, compared to 37% of companies globally. The report also found that only 18% of Canadian businesses are completely confident that their organization’s cloud migration initiatives will deliver the expected value at the expected time

In this study, the IDC MarketScape evaluated Accenture and nine other cloud professional service providers. Participation in this study was determined based on annual revenue from cloud professional services in Canada, official consulting or integration partner status for Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud Platform or IBM Cloud, and an active Canadian presence with at least 50 professionals.

Accenture was recently named a Leader in the IDC MarketScape: Canada Salesforce Implementation Services 2020 Vendor Assessment (doc#CA46257720, December 2020).

Accenture was also positioned as a Leader in the IDC MarketScape: Worldwide Cloud Professional Services 2020 Vendor Assessment (doc#US45439120, April 2020).

Accenture has been recognized as a leader in the latest IDC MarketScape: Canada Salesforce Implementation Services 2020 Vendor Assessment (IDC#CA46257720, December 2020).

The report highlights Accenture’s industry expertise, its ability to bring solutions to market, and investments in its Salesforce Business Group.

“In the assessment of Salesforce implementation services providers, Accenture’s investment and commitment to Salesforce in its Canadian practice was a strong differentiator. Accenture’s domain and industry expertise in Salesforce products makes it a Canadian market leader,” said Jim Westcott, Research Manager, Application Solutions, IDC. 

The report highlights that Accenture was an early partner of Salesforce, and its strong collaboration in Canada is evident in Accenture’s track record in implementing Salesforce Sales Cloud, Service Cloud, Marketing Cloud, and Commerce Cloud projects. The report also points to Accenture’s global integration as well as its Canadian growth strategy focused on cloud technologies and services, with Salesforce as a key component of this strategy. 

The IDC MarketScape report also noted Accenture’s long-standing relationships with Vlocity (now Salesforce Industries) and nCino, making it a prominent provider of Financial Services and Health Cloud implementation in Canada. Accenture Canada has also rolled out its Salesforce Innovation Experience (SiX) to its global innovation hubs, centers, and studios, allowing it to work collaboratively with clients to ideate and prototype Salesforce solutions, the report says.

The IDC Marketscape evaluated Accenture and seven other Salesforce service providers with operations and customers in Canada. Participation in this study was determined based on annual revenue from Salesforce professional services in Canada, recognition as an official Salesforce partner in Canada, and having an active Canadian Salesforce professional services practice.

Worldwide, Accenture has been recognized by the IDC MarketScape as a leader for four consecutive years for Salesforce implementation services (doc #US45007219, September 2019). 

Globally, Accenture has the world’s largest Salesforce practice and is a trusted leader in designing, implementing and driving transformational experiences using Salesforce solutions.

More information about the IDC MarketScape: Canada Salesforce Implementation Services 2020 Vendor Assessment can be found here.

According to the Accenture Technology Vision 2021,technology was a lifeline during the global pandemic – enabling new ways of working and doing business, creating new interactions and experiences, and improving health and safety. Technology forever changed expectations and behaviours and created entirely new realities across every industry. As companies shift from reacting to the crisis, to reinventing what comes next, the boldest, most visionary leaders – those who use technology to master change – will define the future, says the 21^st annual report from Accenture predicting the key technology trends that will shape businesses and industries over the next three years.

The report, “Leaders Wanted: Masters of Change at a Moment of Truth,” outlines how leading enterprises are compressing a decade of digital transformation into one or two years. Relying on a strong digital core to adapt and innovate at lightning speed, leaders are growing revenues 5x faster than laggards today, versus only 2x faster between 2015 to 2018, according to Accenture research. The result is a wave of companies racing to reinvent themselves and use technology innovations to shape the new realities they face. 

Accenture surveyed more than 6,200 business and technology leaders from 31 countries for the Technology Vision report, and 92% of those leaders report that their organization is innovating with an urgency and call to action this year. And 94% of Canadian executives agree capturing tomorrow’s market will require their organization to define it, compared to 91% globally.

Shaping the future will require companies to become masters of change by adhering to three key imperatives. First, leadership demands technology leadership. The era of the fast follower is over—perpetual change is permanent. Tomorrow’s leaders will be those that put technology at the forefront of their business strategy. Second, leaders won’t wait for a new normal; they’ll reinvent, building new realities using radically different mindsets and models. Finally, leaders will embrace a broader responsibility as global citizens, deliberately designing and applying technology to create positive impacts far beyond the enterprise to create a more sustainable and inclusive world.

The Technology Vision identifies five key trends that companies will need to address over the next three years to accelerate and master change in all parts of their business:

• Stack Strategically: Architecting a Better Future – A new era of industry competition is dawning – one where companies compete on their IT systems architecture. But building and wielding the most competitive technology stack means thinking about technology differently, making business and technology strategies indistinguishable. Ninety-one percent of Canadian executives believe that theirorganization’s ability to generate business value will increasingly be based on the limitations and opportunities of their technology architecture, compared to 89% globally.
• Mirrored World: The Power of Massive, Intelligent, Digital Twins – Leaders are building intelligent digital twins to create living models of factories, supply chains, product lifecycles, and more. Bringing together data and intelligence to represent the physical world in a digital space will unlock new opportunities to operate, collaborate, and innovate. Sixty-six percent of Canadian executives surveyed expect their organization’s investment in intelligent digital twins to increase over the next three years, compared to 65% globally.
• I, Technologist: The Democratization of Technology – Powerful capabilities are now available to people across business functions, adding a grassroots layer to enterprises’ innovation strategies. Now, every employee can be an innovator, optimizing their work, fixing pain points, and keeping the business in lockstep with new and changing needs. Ninety-two percent of Canadian executives believe technology democratization is becoming critical in their ability to ignite innovation across their organization, compared to 88% globally.

• Anywhere, Everywhere: Bring Your Own Environment – The single biggest workforce shift in living memory has positioned businesses to expand the boundaries of the enterprise. When people can “bring your own environment,” they have the freedom to seamlessly work from anywhere – whether that’s at home, the office, the airport, partners’ offices, or somewhere else. In this model, leaders can rethink the purpose of working at each location and lean into the opportunity to reimagine their business in this new world. Seventy-four percent of Canadian executives agree that leading organizations in their industry will start shifting from a ‘Bring Your Own Device’ to ‘Bring Your Own Environment’ workforce approach, compared to 81% globally.
• From Me to We: A Multiparty System’s Path Through Chaos – The demand for contact tracing, frictionless payments, and new ways of building trust brought into sharp focus what had been left undone with enterprises’ existing ecosystems. Multiparty systems can help businesses gain greater resilience and adaptability; unlock new ways to approach the market; and set new, ecosystem-forward standards for their industries. Eighty-nine percent of Canadian executives surveyed state that multiparty systems will enable their ecosystems to forge a more resilient and adaptable foundation to create new value with their organization’s partners, compared to 90% globally.

Prioritizing technology innovation in response to a rapidly changing world has never been more important. Consider the restaurant industry: 60% of restaurants listed as ‘temporarily closed’ on Yelp in July were permanently out of business by September. Through the chaos, Starbucks emerged as a leader, using technology to expand customer and retail channels. By August, three million new users downloaded its app, and mobile ordering and drive-thru pick up accounted for 90 percent of sales. As demand surged, it deployed an integrated ticket management system to combine orders from its app, Uber Eats and drive-thru customers into a single workflow for baristas. Starbucks also introduced a new espresso machine with sensors to track how much coffee was being poured and predict necessary maintenance. This is a powerful illustration of technology as the core enabler of a company’s agile, resilient and successful response to change.

For 21 years, Accenture has taken a systematic look across the enterprise landscape to identify emerging technology trends that hold the greatest potential to disrupt businesses and industries. For more information on this year’s report, visit www.accenture.com/technologyvision or follow the conversation on Twitter with #TechVision2021.
 

With a goal to become the fastest bank for small businesses in Canada, National Bank of Canada is modernizing its commercial financing platform with the support of nCino, Inc., a pioneer in cloud banking and digital transformation solutions for the global financial services industry, and Accenture.

Accenture and National Bank have combined their skills to implement the nCino Bank Operating System®, making National Bank the first of the big six banks to implement this solution in Canada. nCino’s cloud-based platform helps financial institutions rapidly advance their offerings with innovative features and solutions.

Leveraging the nCino platform helps simplify and automate the commercial financing process to provide a distinctive experience to small, medium and large businesses supporting them in their growth. The launch of this new financing platform notably allows small businesses to obtain a financing decision in just a few minutes and receive funds in as little as 24 hours.

This initiative will contribute to National Bank’s priority of being a bank that builds long-term relationships and that stands out through its knowledge of its customers.

Accenture’s role included project management, process optimization, design, development, testing, change management and post-production support from teams in Montreal and across its global delivery network.

To help Canadian organizations accelerate their digital transformations and rapidly become ‘cloud-first’ organizations, Accenture has appointed Jennifer Jackson as Cloud First Lead for Canada as part of the rollout of the recent global launch of Accenture Cloud First.

In this new role, Jackson will bring all of Accenture’s cloud services and capabilities together to drive growth, sales, and deeper ecosystem partnerships, as well as develop specialized skills in the market. 

Jackson has more than 20 years of experience at Accenture leading innovative and complex projects in many industries through all phases of software development and operations. Outside of her technology portfolio, Jackson is a passionate advocate for mental health and is the executive sponsor for Accenture’s Mental Health Employee Resource Group in Canada.

Fast-tracked by the pandemic, cloud has increasingly been recognized as the foundation for business resilience, structural cost reduction, and new experiences and products that address ongoing and ever-changing needs around health, society and the economy. 

Accenture Cloud First, which was announced in September alongside a $3 billion investment in new capabilities, solutions, partnerships and client engagements over three years, demonstrates Accenture’s commitment to deliver greater integrated value to clients when they need it most.

The pandemic-driven acceleration of digital adoption and the resulting new, agile ways of operating could unlock $200 billion in profitable growth in Canada if applied broadly, according to a new report by Accenture.

Based on a global survey of 1,100 top executives and externally validated financial data, the reportassessed the impact of achieving progressive levels of business operations maturity. The higher the maturity, the greater the degree of digital capabilities, such as artificial intelligence (AI), cloud and data analytics.

Accenture’s findings indicate that even amid the current economic uncertainty, a small core of companies globally—about 7%—still achieved nearly twice the efficiency and three times the profitability of peers. These “future-ready” entities are expected to represent 20% of Canadian organizations by 2023 — a five-fold increase from just 4% today.

Future-Readiness in Canada

Future-ready enterprises transform how work gets done by using rich data for decision-making, augmenting people with artificial intelligence (AI) and employing agile workforce models. The survey, which included 50 companies headquartered in Canada, identified organizations’ growing levels of digital and operational maturity. The areas of focus include:

• Cloud: Four in five organizations (82%) in Canada use cloud infrastructure at scale, and 64% are also exploring new areas to scale and maximize value.
• Machine Intelligence: With a focus on augmenting people with technology, 52% of Canadian organizations have fully adopted AI and data science capabilities — a nearly 13-fold increase from just 4% three years ago — and 30% of organizations plan to scale AI practices by 2023.  
• Automate at Scale: Only 6% of organizations have achieved automation maturity. A third (34%) expect to do so by 2023.
• Smarter Data: One in five organizations (18%) in Canada use analytics at scale—paired with better, more diverse data—to generate actionable insights and inform decision-making. That is expected to grow to 40% by 2023.
• Agile Workforce: Only 10% of organizations have adopted an agile workforce strategy at scale, enabling them to tap into an expanded talent pool among ecosystem partners to mobilize special talent as needed. That is expected to grow to 28% by 2023.

By assessing what Accenture calls “transformational value” — a concept that factors in financial performance and the differentiated experience delivered — the research found progressing to future-ready achieved average efficiency gains of 13.1% and lift profitability by 6.4%.

In Canada, organizations that advanced operational maturity level in the past three years reported improvements in customer experience (cited by 78%), speed of product and services innovation (72%), operational efficiency (71%), business value generated from data (70%), employee engagement and retention (56%) and employee talent mix and reskilling efforts (50%).

Methodology

Accenture surveyed 1,100 senior-level executives worldwide, 44% of whom were C-suite executives, across 13 industries and 11 countries (Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Spain, United Kingdom, United States). The research, conducted in 2020, assessed four levels of business operations maturity — stable, efficient, predictive and future-ready — with each level underpinned by progressing digital capabilities, such as AI, cloud, and data. The business impact was assessed by combining survey responses with externally validated financial data from 810 of the 1,100 organizations surveyed.