A new study from market research company Ovum has found that one third (33%) of enterprises globally are underprepared for 'digital transformation' – the process of replacing legacy networks and dedicated service platforms with a digital environment that is flexible, cost-effective, and capable of delivering changes.
The research revealed that while 60% believe their organisation’s process of digital transformation is "well advanced" or "in progress,” only 7% believe it to be complete.
The findings are published in Ovum’s ICT Enterprise Insights for 2017, a report of enterprise IT decision makers, capturing insights from 7,000 enterprise organisations across 62 countries and 15 industries.
Respondents from the financial services sector demonstrated the most confidence in enabling digital transformation, with 60% of enterprise IT decision makers in this industry believing the process to be "well advanced" or "in progress.” Of these organisations, retail banks claim to be the most advanced (45%), followed by payments, insurance and financial markets (40%). By contrast, respondents from the retail sector considered their industry the least prepared for digital transformation. In the public sector, 38% of respondents thought their sector was experiencing some or significant disruption to services from digital technologies, only 29% thought their own organisation was affected.
Daniel Mayo, Director of IT, Data & Tools at Ovum commented: "The uneven maturity of digital transformation by industry and country has created a complex landscape for sales teams to navigate, but our data plays a significant role in quantifying for our customers their target markets’ investment appetite and timescales. This enables them to quickly and confidently make decisions about where to focus their go-to-market and product investments."
In addition to this, the study indicated that while IT spend is growing globally, the top 3 regions where spend is increasing most rapidly are South Asia, Southeast Asia and Latin America, with North America, Western Europe and Australia showing the slowest increase in spend.
The new study closely examined the process of digital transformation currently taking place within enterprises today, and found many are struggling with omnichannel customer/citizen engagement, predominantly focused on online/mobile channels to date. 30% of enterprises are only at the early or not-started stages, while 25% of enterprises claim to be at least well advanced in this area.
