Digital transformation has become a core part of the business strategies in organizations of all sizes. The adoption of digital technologies helps the organizations to deliver the customers and employees a good digital business experience.
To stay ahead in today’s world of competition, the organizations need to deliver custom apps at the speed of ideas. To better understand what being a ‘digital business’ means to organizations, IDG conducted a survey of more than 700 IT business management and decision makers.
According to IDG’s State of Digital Business Transformation 2018 report, 89% of the organizations have either adopted or have plans to adopt a digital-first strategy.
- What is the meaning of digital business for organizations?
52% of the respondents said that digital business meant enabling worker productivity in the organization using digital assets like mobile, data access and AI-assisted processes.
For 49% respondents, digital business meant the ability to manage business performance using data availability and visibility.
Whereas, 46% cited meeting experience expectations of customers as the meaning of digital business in the organization.
Only 7% had already implemented digital-first approach
44% of the organizations had already started implementation of digital-first approach, 19% were in integration process of making technology changes, while 18% were executing digital plans on a business-unit level.
However, only 7% organizations had already implemented the digital-first approach and were in maintenance phase.
- Top technologies already implemented for digital business transformation
Big Data/Analytics (59%), and mobile technologies (59%) were cited as the top technologies already implemented for digital business transformation.
Organizations went for big data/analytics to harness the data and identify new opportunities. This led them to more efficient operations, smart business moves, and increased revenue. Mobile technologies also were integrated part of the business strategies.
Other top technologies implemented by the organizations for digital business transformation included private cloud (53%), public cloud (45%), and APIs and embeddable technologies (40%).
- Top technologies in production for digital business transformation
Artificial Intelligence (56%), Machine Learning (55%), and Internet of Things (50%) were the top technologies that were either piloting, researching or on the radar of the organizations in next 12 months.
Almost half of the IT decision makers said that IoT played a key role in their business strategy. The large enterprises (61%) used IoT more in their business, compared to small and medium sized businesses (39%).
45% and 44% of organizations had software defined networking and software defined storage in the works, respectively.
- Top technologies that didn’t interest organizations
44% of the organizations were not interested in implementing augmented reality, virtual reality and bots to their technology portfolio, at least for a year.
The virtual reality (VR) has been gaining the ground for a long time now. It was initially limited to gamers and entertainment industry but has moved to more audience now. VR is now used by engineers and manufactures to experience their creations even before building.
29% of the organizations were researching AR and VR, whereas 14% were already piloting it.
- Steps taken to become a digital business
There were a number of steps that organizations were taking to become a digital business. These steps included data security strategy (27%), IT skills assessment (24%), developing a roadmap for digital strategy (23%), assessment of technology needs (22%), and workforce strategy (19%).
Also read: 51% IT pros cite Cloud/hybrid IT top priority for digital transformation: SolarWinds report
The IDG research revealed that several organizations had fundamental pieces of technology in place, and were making efforts to implement innovative technologies such as IoT and AI. The research suggested that senior most executives will play a significant role in becoming a successful digital-first business.
Images Source: IDG
