Accenture, a global digital and consulting service firm, has officially unveiled the complete survey report of its Innovation Index 2018, revealing a number of differentiating factors in financial industry across strategy, innovative culture, talent, collaboration, business intelligence and digital.
Banks and Fintechs participated in the maiden Accenture Nigeria Innovation Index, providing insight on how they leverage innovation to stabilise and drive growth for maximum benefit.
According to the survey report, “On average, organisations invest 35 per cent of annual revenues in innovation and realise a 40.5 per cent return.”
The report however said a few outliers invested “22 per cent of revenues and achieve returns of 61 per cent, which is 1.5x the market average.”
Analysing the report in Lagos, the Country Managing Director, Accenture Nigeria, Mr. Niyi Yusuf, said: “As we dug deeper to understand what innovation leaders do differently to achieve such returns on their innovations, a number of key themes stood out as differentiating factors. Strategy, Innovative Culture, Talent, Collaboration, Business Intelligence and Digital. Innovation Leaders scored significantly higher across these areas than other organisations.”
He added that leadership make significant investments in innovation strategy and lay a solid foundation for a high performing innovation culture, ensuring a steady flow of ideas from an engaged workforce.
Managing Director, Financial Services at Accenture Nigeria, Toluwaleke Adenmosun, said: “Innovation Leaders prioritise projects, foster a strong collaboration culture central to their innovation strategy, use digital as a business enabler and revenue generator, leverage the power of ecosystems to gather intelligence and apply insights that help them differentiate offerings in the market.”
The Index indicates that innovation leaders are cultivating their people to be innovative, encouraging employees to share ideas openly and promoting the use of interactive tools and digital platforms for collaboration.
It further noted that 95 per cent of such leaders are giving more control to their employees to ideate and offer strong incentives as a reward for innovative ideas.
According to the report, “Rewards include opportunities to collaborate with different business units, professional development, varied work assignments, personal recognition and financial grants.
“Only 56 per cent of all organisations recruit new people with specific skill sets to support innovation-related activities, versus 100 per cent of innovation leaders.”
Another differentiating theme as highlighted by the report, was that collaboration, which is the ability to break down silos and collaborate within and outside the organisation that gives innovation leaders a distinct edge in ensuring long-term success.
There is a stark contrast in how innovations leaders and the rest of organisations generate ideas, it stated.
“100 percent of innovation leaders make use of dedicated multi-functional innovation teams as well as external platforms and channels to generate new ideas compared to 28 per cent of other organisations.
Innovation leaders clearly see opportunities in leveraging the broader ecosystem, as 85 per cent look to academia, clients, customers and suppliers to crowdsource information to innovate,” Adenmosun said.
According to the report, such leaders leverage business intelligence and analytics to drive their innovation agenda. The explosion of data and, importantly, analytical solutions to help make sense of the data, has significantly improved how organisations make decisions; enabling them to approach opportunities, risks, partnerships, and customers differently – with foresight not previously available.
