Advances in design, cloud, connected devices, real-time data and analytics will enable new digital services that can learn and evolve to meet consumer expectations.
An Accenture report, titled 'The Era of Living Services' predicts a new era of highly sophisticated 'living services' that can learn and tailor themselves in real-time to meet the changing needs of consumers, workers, patients and citizens.
Their emergence will create change in every industry while presenting brands with tremendous opportunities for growth and differentiation. The move will mark a radical departure from today’s dominant approach of companies creating generic and static services designed for mass consumption, according to the report from Fjord - a design and innovation group within Accenture Interactive.
The concept of intelligent services isn’t new, but the technology that enables living services has recently matured enough for brands to create and deliver them at scale, the report finds. The services will start to grow on a new layer of connected intelligence formed by sensors, the cloud, connected smart devices and real-time analytics, also known as the Internet of Things.
“We call them ‘Living Services’ for three reasons,” said Brian Whipple, senior managing director, Accenture Interactive in a statement. “They will change consumer experiences such as travel booking and shopping in real time around us. They will be driven by things that are very proximate to us such as wearables and nearables."
"At the human level, living services will affect our lives in a much deeper and more positive way than mobile and web services have. In effect, living services breathe life into what is rapidly becoming a vast network of connected machines and objects, enabling branded services to flow through and utilize this connected environment,” added Whipple.