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t the recent World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, global business and political leaders discussed the '€œfourth industrial revolution'€.

During the first industrial revolution industry mechanized production, during the second industrial revolution electric power was put to good use. During the third one businesses learned to rely more upon electronics and information technology to automate production. Now, the fourth revolution hinges on the power of digital.

Most executives recognize that leveraging digital solutions is an effective, efficient way to streamline business. Digital technologies have several components '€” software platforms, mobile apps, data analytics, and industrial internet of things '€” which can be integrated to create a powerful competitive advantage and new enterprises and are all relevant in Indonesia.

After all, Indonesians are keen to embrace digital options. According to Accenture research on Digital Consumers, Indonesians are hyper-connected with an insatiable desire to stay connected '€“ of the 93 percent of 1,000 respondents who own mobile phones, 77 percent own smartphones.

This should be good news for Indonesian executives. They should be thinking of ways to leverage digital solutions in innovative ways.

In Japan, for example, inbound tourism-based businesses could use a Wi-Fi service, which combines anonymous real-time location data with data analytics, to uncover insights that would enable them to offer personalized services such as coupons or discounts to nearby tourists as they move about the nation. It'€™s a potential win-win for both tourists and businesses.

Indonesian businesses are already beginning to think more about finance and technology '€” start-ups are on certainly on the rise. Consider the ride-hailing app Go-Jek, which has transformed the two-wheel taxi ojek business.

Gone are the days of scouting them out on foot and haggling; now you just use the app and wait for them to show up, not just to take you to a place, but can also be a courier, bring food from eateries with no delivery service, and can recommend the best masseurs to your home.

Then there is Kudo, an e-commerce site. To differentiate from other shops that are more established with mobile apps, Kudo built physical e-commerce kiosks to interact with non-smartphone owning Indonesian shoppers.

The kiosks can be found in public places in Jakarta where local consumers can try out an e-store. It'€™s a bridge, if you will, between traditional shopping and digital solutions.

Indeed both businesses are bridging traditional services with new digital twists. That may be a first step. The key is utilizing digital in an optimal manner.

Companies and countries can drive greater revenue, productivity and growth domestic product through smarter use of digital. Our research forecasts that optimizing the use of digital skills and technologies could generate US$2 trillion of additional global economic output by 2020.

The study also reveals the vast role digital plays in economic activity, with more than one-fifth of the world'€™s gross domestic product (GDP) attributed to some form of digital skills, capital and goods and services.  

For Indonesian leaders this means increasing digital across the board: Raising digital skill levels and offering more technological solutions. This ranges from how managers run their company to how they sell products to customers.  

The good news is that more and more executives are taking this on board. They anticipate that the pace of technology change will increase rapidly or at an unprecedented rate in their industry.  

In short, executives are getting it, but the buy-in needs to be across all levels of the organization: from the board level to the account manager implementing a solution.

As managers of companies, the opportunity to grow your business is in our hands. The tools '€“ digital '€“ are at your disposal.
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The writer is group chief executive'€”growth markets, responsible for overseeing Accenture'€™s business in Asia Pacific, Middle East, Turkey, Russia, Sub Saharan Africa and Latin America. This is a personal view.