Will Companies Embrace Digital Transformation?
Global spending on digital transformation — or the digitalization of business practices, data, and products within organizations — is projected to reach $2.3 billion by 2023. With the future seeming ambiguous, will companies embrace digital transformation?
In a survey of more than 1,000 executives spanning the globe, Wipro found that digital transformation looks markedly different for each company wanting to embrace an increasingly ambiguous future.
While companies globally have spurred an average of eight digital transformation projects over the past five years, U.S. companies lead the pack, with a mean of just over nine projects.
Those in Canada and the European Union fall closely behind, with Mexican and Brazilian companies claiming the lowest average of digital transformation projects overall.
No matter the country, roughly equal numbers of respondents note budget, people, technology, and processes as the biggest stumbling blocks for their firms’ initiatives.
A significant swath of respondents — 65% — believe companies late to the digital transformation game could still overcome competitors. The majority of companies say their organizations’ transformation efforts are either “somewhat” or “very” successful.
Likewise, the vast majority of these executives believe their firms are aligned on what digital transformation means.
As the new decade begins, executives across industries also see two significant yet contradictory trends on the horizon. First, there’s nervous uncertainty: A recent survey of Fortune 500 companies showed that the share of CEOs who felt the global economy would grow in 2020 fell from 40% to 17%.
Another CEO survey by EY found that 82% of these leaders expect their businesses to be disrupted by artificial intelligence in the next few years and that 85% consider themselves “AI optimists.”
What’s the common thread between these two visions in the near future? Assurance that what lies ahead will bear little resemblance to the past.
Our global economy is on the brink of sweeping change, and the fundamental role of businesses — no matter the industry — will certainly shift. In our post-digital world, transformation initiatives should certainly keep this in mind.
Although the public feeling ambivalent at best about the role of AI-driven automation (and similar technologies) will play in the future, its involvement in the emerging global economy is inevitable.
The AI process is important chiefly when a particular process, dataset, or task requires a level of efficiency and insight that’s essentially impossible for a human to deliver.
Even today, companies must constantly ask themselves when a task is best suited for a human, a machine, or an employee assisted by a machine’s capabilities.
The ever-accelerating pace of change should be the first risk factor on the minds of CEOs (if you’re unconvinced, simply read Constellation Research founder Ray Wang’s thoughts on digital duopolies).
This means another important shift is now underway: Advanced technologies will spark exponentially more transformative, wide-reaching change as the rate of adoption increases.
