The rapid ‘Pace of change’ in business landscape is the top emerging risk for most of the organizations, according to Gartner’s 2Q19 Emerging Risk Monitor survey.
The chief information officers (CIOs) reported that they are concerned about their organizations’ ability to keep up with the rapidly changing business landscape. While these organizations are trying to digitally transform themselves, the CIOs said that they have lagging and misconceived digitalization strategies.
As per Gartner, 71% of respondents agreed that pace of change is the key risk for their organizations. These respondents came from various industries, with specific high ratings from healthcare, insurance, and industrials.
“Among the top five emerging risks in the quarter’s survey, the linkages are clear,” said Matt Shinkman, managing vice president and risk practice leader in the Gartner audit and risk practice.
“Organizations are concerned with the pace of business change and vulnerability to disruption. Part of the reason they may feel this risk so acutely is related concerns around their own operations, including digitalization strategies and an inadequate talent pipeline.”
Following the pace of change, the other main concerns for CIOs are ‘lagging digitalization’ and ‘digitalization misconceptions’. Gartner says that these two concerns are partly driving the main concern around the pace of change.
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About lagging digitalization, the CIOs said they’re concerned about the inadequate digital budgets. This is resulting in failure of a high number of digitalization projects, issues in scaling projects, and delays in project delivery.
Some of the organizations had misconceptions about digitalization which were resulting in projects failing to achieve stated objectives. Gartner experts suggested that CIOs should clarify strategic objectives early and take an incremental approach for diving the digital business transformation.
“Although the pace of business change is the top concern among organizations, we see a lack of tangible action among many organizations to address it,” said Mr. Shinkman. “Twenty-four percent of organizations report no action to address the impact of the pace of change, while only 28% are elevating this risk to the board.”
Also read: Five common myths and misconceptions about artificial intelligence: Gartner
Source: Gartner
