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ost executives in Indonesia know the nation is poised for growth and is well-positioned to leverage digital solutions to make that happen. The challenge is selecting the right strategy.

The ever-growing Internet and smartphone penetration in Indonesia coupled with a large and productive young population are in Indonesia'€™s favor for developing its digital economy.

Consider the statistics: Indonesia'€™s Internet penetration is roughly 30 percent of the total population and growing thanks to the government'€™s five-year broadband plan. Among the more than 280 million mobile phone users, the forecast of smartphone users in the country is to grow to 103.6 million people in 2017 from around 61.2 million people last year, according to eMarketer.

Today almost 30 percent of Indonesia'€™s population is under the age of 15 '€” and with a current median age of 28 years old, that means the potential workforce is growing.

These demographics are the basis for great potential for a myriad of business. Banks should be leveraging mobile banking and internet solutions and pairing up with retailers for more consumer-friendly payments and customer services.

Major industrial employers ranging from mining to consumer goods manufacturers could be leveraging digital solutions to streamline operations and efficiencies, be it in how they pay staff to how they handle data management.

Intuitively, this sounds right. But again, it comes down to strategy. Accenture doesn'€™t advocate digital for the sake of digital. It needs to be right for the nation, the market, the company and the individual user.

As a national policy, for example, governments should support measures to achieve full employment when its workforce is young and growing. And leveraging digital to create an infrastructure and augment the workforce to help build commerce in Indonesia might be a wise policy approach.

How does this work? Consider how businesses in other emerging markets have leveraged digital solutions to enable growth.

Turkish bank, Garanti, has a highly sophisticated mobile app that provides customers with personalized offers and advice based on their location and spending history.

It uses GPS and Foursquare to inform customers who have opted in about special offers if they are close to a store, provides saving suggestions and estimates how much customers will have in their account for the rest of the month based on past spending.

It can be used for money transfers and cardless cash withdrawals '€” this is good for commerce and, of course, good for the bank.

We call this, at Accenture, becoming an Everyday Bank, or a financial services company that isn'€™t just a utility but rather is integral to a person'€™s everyday life.

Another example of this can be found at Polish online bank mbank, which has a very innovative mobile app that provides its customers with similar location-past-spending based personalized offers.

In addition, it recently launched a quick loan app that allows its customers to obtain a loan and to have the money transferred directly into their accounts within minutes.

Customers just need to log into the app, enter the amount they need and select the number of installments, and in a few seconds they know if the loan is approved or not; they can then confirm the agreement with their PIN code, and money is immediately available in their account.

Such services are about businesses interacting with each other on a digital level to create what Accenture calls the '€œWe Economy'€.

According to 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 would have pioneering enterprises tapping into a broad array of other digital businesses, digital customers and even digital devices at the edge of their networks to create new digital '€œecosystems'€.

That means supporting companies that are willing to use digital to transform themselves and the economy '€” by operating as ecosystems, not just as individual corporate entities, and driving the emergence of the '€œWe Economy'€.

For example, in the US Home Depot is working with manufacturers to ensure that all of 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.

Why can'€™t Indonesian companies do this as well?

The possibilities don'€™t need to be complex. How many Indonesian companies are working with banks to streamline compensation digitally? How many retailers are leveraging mobile phone companies and/or banks to offer better targeted and seamless services to customers?

But the possibilities can also be wonderfully creative: If your '€œsmart'€ car was connected to the repair shop when it needed a tune-up, the shop could contact you via the car as a reminder, and the bank for payment, perhaps even negotiating installments automatically.

Can your smartwatch or phone that monitors your activity levels be connected up with your healthcare provider and insurance company to provide better rates?

Businesses need to think outside of the box about how they can interact together '€” how they can leverage their individual strengths and expertise and then connect up to offer better services to customers. Digital should be an enabler in Indonesia, which as the statistics indicate, is poised to take a leadership role if as a nation it so chooses.
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Major industrial employers could be leveraging digital solutions to streamline operations and efficiencies.
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The writer is Accenture'€™s Group Chief Executive for Growth Markets based in Singapore '€” responsible for countries in Asia-Pacific, Africa, Latin America and the Middle East, as well as in Russia and Turkey