• by Jack Loechner , Staff Writer @mp_research, June 22, 2015

According to a new report from Accenture, a new era of highly sophisticated “living services” can learn and tailor themselves in real-time to meet the changing needs of consumers, workers, patients and citizens. These digital services, driven by the convergence of the Internet of Things (IoT) and shifting consumer expectations, will 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.

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, says the report.

According to the report, living services will affect people in almost all areas of their lives, including their health, home, shopping, travel and money Some examples help to illustrate the concept:

• Health: Living services will help prevent health issues. For example, the app Ginger IO can predict signs of depression up to two days before outward symptoms of diabetes manifest. And, living services will also enable personalized medicine with a stomach-activated sensor that provides information on how the patient is taking and responding to medication.
• Home: The home will become a hub for a range of automated adaptive services that take over time-consuming and reoccurring tasks. Most services to date are related to energy consumption and security. Nest and Ecobee identified that consumers needed a thermostat that can learn and adapt to preferred temperatures. Wallflowr is a fire-prevention system that constantly monitors the status of electricity and gas supplies to a home. The next stage is for these disparate elements to connect and communicate with each other.
• Shopping: Living services will allow retailers to offer less intrusive experiences and move away from the industry’s standard scenario of bombarding shoppers with offers on arrival at a location, says the report. Working with Pinterest, fashion retailer Nordstrom is determining store merchandising on a weekly basis, as well as providing staff with an iPad app to make it easy to show customers trending products and merchandise.
• Travel: The broader sphere of travel and hospitality will be transformed in the next five years by the reinvention of cars, initially connected and then autonomous. Cars can become places in which you can sleep or be entertained during long journeys, a new level of experience competitive with trains, buses and airplanes.
• Finances: A bold vision for living services in the financial arena is a service that links peoples’ financial status directly to other areas of their life, says the report. If the customer’s bank account “knows” a customer’s power consumption, it could predict his or her future financial state. Israeli company 24me is already heading in this direction with an App that automatically syncs with utilities and other services to remind and enable users to pay their bills.

For more examples of living services and their impact on business and society, visit “The Era of Living Services” report here.