The Year of Digital Disruption: 7 Industry Advancements that Dominated the Enterprise Landscape in 2023

The past year saw a concerted effort across most industries to encourage resilience and support sustainable growth, as organizations recognized the need to rewire for the digital era and refine their approach to retaining talent and promoting inclusivity.

Apart from the game-changing emergence of Generative AI, other digital solutions continued to shape the industrial landscape, with hyper-personalization in retail, robo-advisors in finance, and the broadening of edge and cloud computing in telecom. There was also a significant cross-industry emphasis on social responsibility and strategic governance, together with ecosystem collaborations that promised to deliver value to a much broader stakeholder community.

Our 2023 Industrial Year in Review describes seven industries that consistently made headlines last year for very different reasons, from narrowing the digital divide to reimagining the future of work.

1. Healthcare takes a quantum leap

Last year realized huge momentum in precision medicine, otherwise known as multi-omics, which offered a more nuanced understanding of human health by providing insights into the molecular changes or characteristics that can impact health, cause disease, or guide clinical decisions. Also, solutions that facilitate virtual healthcare delivery continued to play an increasingly important role by maximizing the potential usage of advanced technologies, from AI-enabled solutions to digital ecosystems. Access to health data was also one of the top trends for 2023, enabling providers to offer care that is tailored to individual preferences and needs, resulting in optimized health outcomes, strengthened provider-patient relationships, and reduced healthcare costs. Quantum computing began to show its potential for redefining medical data security, predicting chronic diseases, and driving new drug discoveries.

2. Finance heads for the cloud

Banks and financial institutions continued to embrace cloud computing as they sought to improve operational efficiency and reduce costs, as well as improve the security of their systems and provide customers with faster, more reliable services. Key trends also included a shift towards digital solutions like robo-advisors, a growing emphasis on ESG investments, personalized financial strategies, a focus on financial literacy, and adaptation to global economic changes. Broader trends in corporate finance such as globalization, sustainability, and digitalization, as well as the shifting regulatory environment, together with the exponential growth of data, and how it can be used to power AI, continued to reside at the heart of the fintech revolution.

3. Pharmaceutical battles headwinds

In 2023, pharmaceutical companies operated in an environment of high inflation, talent shortages, rising capital costs, challenging foreign exchange impacts, pressures on consumer spending, and ongoing Federal Trade Commission (FTC) scrutiny of transactions. These headwinds arose on top of blockbuster patent expiries, rising competition across most therapeutic areas, and the impact of the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) of 2022. The greatest executive concerns centered around the macroeconomic environment, with many already taking action to adjust strategic plans, including operating with lower costs and shorter timelines while still encouraging innovation. This involved reimagining work, tech-enabling the organization, and advancing the portfolio to achieve multiple objectives simultaneously.

4. Retail gets ‘phygital’

Phygital – defined as an immediate, interactive, immersive, and hyper-personalized shopping experience combining the best of in-store and online shopping – continued its rise to prominence in 2023. Businesses increasingly enabled customers to create their own journeys during the shopping experience, for example by provisioning intelligent dressing rooms that allowed customers to find their sizes virtually, and by utilizing influencers and live streaming. Hyper-personalization also flourished in-store, and through real-time messaging, phone, and email. AI continued to significantly impact the retail industry, from personalization and predictive analytics to inventory management, automation of repetitive tasks, chatbots, and image recognition. These innovative technologies sought to change consumer behavior across the entire customer journey, while social commerce and sophisticated gaming offered extra growth opportunities.

5. Telecommunications monetizes the fifth generation

Communications service providers delivered more bundled mobile and home internet access and connectivity options like 5G fixed wireless access (FWA) and fiber, as well as meeting the growing demands to support edge and cloud computing. Joint ventures accelerated the deployment of fiber networks and increased the focus on narrowing the digital divide. CSPs sought to differentiate themselves by putting tools that monetize 5G networks into the hands of their customers through new types of applications and digital services. Data processing operations shifted largely towards cloud providers, while AI and machine learning applications gained traction in both streamlining customer service and managing the flow of communications traffic across networks.

6. Energy goes green

As 2023 ended, almost a third of the world’s electricity was being generated by renewable energy sources, with solar photovoltaic (PV) - the rooftop solar seen on homes and businesses - accounting for almost 60 percent of expected growth*. Onshore wind, hydropower, offshore wind, and bioenergy are also seeing significant growth, due to drastically lower production costs, growing concern around climate change, evolving global energy policies, and increased pressure from investors on companies to adopt environmental social governance (ESG) policies.

*According to a report from the International Energy Agency

7. Manufacturing gets smarter

Confronted by supply chain issues and worker shortages, the manufacturing industry sought to leverage digital technologies to help mitigate risk, along with increasing resiliency, reducing voluntary exits through workforce empowerment at scale, and taking a holistic approach to smart factory initiatives. A greater focus on corporate social responsibility was intertwined with ecosystem collaborations that unlocked new approaches for delivering value to a much broader stakeholder community. Manufacturers increasingly employed artificial intelligence, blockchain, and robotics, along with upskilling strategies to augment these frontier technologies.