One third (33 percent) of enterprises globally are underprepared for “digital transformation” – the process of replacing legacy networks and dedicated service platforms with a coherent digital environment that is flexible, cost-effective, and capable of delivering changes rapidly and dynamically – according to Ovum's ICT Enterprise Insights report for 2017.
The research also revealed that while 60 percent believe their organization’s process of digital transformation is “well advanced” or “in progress,” only 7 percent believe it to be complete.
Respondents from the financial services sector demonstrated the most confidence in enabling digital transformation, with 60 percent of enterprise IT decision makers in this industry believing the process to be “well advanced” or “in progress.” Of these organizations, retail banks claim to be the most advanced (45 percent), followed by payments, insurance and financial markets (40 percent). By contrast, respondents from the retail sector considered their industry the least prepared for digital transformation. In the public sector, 38 percent of respondents thought their sector was experiencing some or significant disruption to services from digital technologies, only 29 percent thought their own organization was affected.
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 percent of enterprises are only at the early or not-started stages, while 25 percent of enterprises claim to be at least well advanced in this area.
Ovum’s ICT Enterprise Insights report provides insight for Ovum clients to help determine which industry in each market region is best prepared for digital transformation, how enterprises in their target vertical markets are prioritizing their IT and communication investment, and how much IT budgets are expected to increase or decrease for their target customers in 2017.
Methodology: Ovum’s ICT Enterprise Insights 2017 is based on the world’s largest annual IT decision-maker survey, covering 7,000+ enterprises across 62 countries, 80 technologies and 15 industries.
Daniel Mayo is Director of IT, Data & Tools at Ovum.