Do you place your phone next to you on the dinner table at a restaurant and sometimes sneak a peek between servings?
Does your child watch television while simultaneously playing video games on a tablet or smartphone?
Have you foregone an alarm clock, flashlight and calculator as machines of a bygone era because their functions are all in your smartphone?
Leaving aside the social etiquette issues and queries about our ability as a society to fully concentrate on any one thing anymore due to our multi-tasking obsessions, there is an undeniable truth: we live in a digital era and businesses need to be leveraging the new possibilities this enables for successful growth.
It is unlikely that any business will be able to take full advantage of the potential of digital technologies alone. Instead, they should look to partner with others to form a digital ecosystem and create what we call the "we economy".
Accenture Technology Vision 2015, our annual outlook of the technology trends that we believe will have the greatest impact on enterprises during the next three to five years, notes that pioneering companies are tapping into each other's digital businesses, customers and even devices to expand their joint business potential.
Working together
In plain English, they are working together.
For example, in the United States, Home Depot is working with manufacturers to ensure that all the connected home products it sells are compatible with the Wink connected home system, thereby creating its own connected home ecosystem and developing potential new services and unique experiences for Wink customers.
The possibilities don't need to be complex. They range from what we are already embracing: swapping vacation homes and sharing taxis to downloading apps that make our lives easier.
What is essential is that businesses continue to innovate to offer products and services that their customers want, whether they are consumers or other businesses.
Take mobile payments. Accenture recently conducted a payments study in North America, which found that merely making new technology available to consumers is not enough to woo them to the service.
However, an example of an additional offering that three in five respondents said they would like to see is a receipt-tracking capability on their phone, along with improved financial management tools to help them keep track of payments.
This is useful to the customer, the retailer and the bank, and creates incentives for multiple industries to work together. But it requires innovation.
Polish online bank mbank understands the value of constant innovation.
It initially rolled out a mobile app that provides customers with personalised offers and advice based on their location and spending history.
As customers embraced this, the bank saw the opportunity to offer more services via apps; it recently launched a quick loan app that enables customers to obtain a loan and have the money transferred directly into their accounts within minutes.
The possibilities of new, faster more convenient services for customers should be inspiring.
Trusted banks, telcos and retailers could become part of one ecosystem that - if a customer agreed - collected data around location, monthly spending, shopping habits and more to make targeted offers for consumers.
For example, a bank will know that its customer just received his or her pay cheque as they walk into the vicinity of a retailer in their ecosystem.
By receiving location data from smartphone apps they are associated with, retailers can push a relevant coupon to an individual's smartphone offering a discount off an item if it is bought in the next hour.
This would encourage users to enter a store and make a purchase while there is still some disposable income available.
By taking into account key statistical data that telcos can provide for a retail environment - such as the average day and time of the week that most women between the ages of 22 and 30 with an average income of $30,000 are shopping - the ecosystem is at its strongest and can be used for real-time, analytical and planning activities.
Businesses should be thinking about the art of the possible, extending beyond their current business models.
Another example: If a smart car is connected to a repair shop, a connected application on a smartphone or similar device can automatically provide a reminder alert to the driver when the time comes for a tune-up.
The car could conceivably then use access to integrated calendars on smartphones to contact the auto centre for an appointment, link to bank accounts for payment, and perhaps even find the best price for the repair automatically.
It could even be connected to an insurer, so in the event of an accident, a claim could be filed automatically with photos and data from the car itself - ranging from how fast the car was being driven to how much air was in the tyres - all submitted in one go.
If that sounds like sci-fi fantasy, consider that Accenture is already working with Visa to develop a connected car proof-of-concept that enables customers to order and pay for a Pizza Hut meal directly from their car, using location services to let the restaurant know when the vehicle had arrived to pick up the order.
Also on show at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona recently was the Fiat UConnect™ LIVE on-board infotainment system, which brings connectivity into a vehicle offering drivers the latest in music and news services, social network interactions and the ability to monitor driving styles to help reduce carbon dioxide emissions, as well as access a range of diagnostic services.
Similarly, we are seeing the wearable industry embrace other businesses to offer new services.
Can a smartwatch that monitors activity levels be connected with a health-care provider and insurance company to enable better rates?
Can it "talk" to trainers to let someone know when they have chalked up enough mileage and should replace their exercise gear, as well as where the best deal might be found for such replacements?
At the core of these examples, there is often a payment or an insurance element.
Financial services executives should be at the forefront of this movement, focusing on the new digital world order as a way to kick-start this new economy and ensure that their services are not merely a utility but rather integral to everyday life.
The future's here
The "we economy" will tap into our frenetic pace and expectation of more services from our devices at all times.
While we all may sometimes relish going out to eat at a restaurant which bars mobile phones, while we may impose "no devices allowed" time-outs or curfews on our children, and while we may go out and buy an old-fashioned alarm clock or an abacus just for the novelty value, the reality is this: the vast majority of us increasingly expect - "demand" may not be too strong a word - more services from the companies we choose to do business with these days, even as we bemoan the end of an era.
That requirement is a call to action to businesses: work together to build the "we economy".
If you dodge it, you may find yourself more like an abacus - a quaint product of the past.
Jon Allaway is Accenture's global group technology officer for financial services; Nick Taylor is Accenture's Technology lead for ASEAN. They are based in Singapore.
This article was first published on March 31, 2015.
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