One third of enterprises globally are underprepared for the wave of digital transformation impacting the industry, creating new demand for channel partners as C-level strategies screech to a halt.
Findings from Ovum’s ICT Enterprise Insights for 2017 - spanning 7,000 enterprise organisations across 62 countries and 15 industries - report that 33 per cent of businesses remain challenged by the process of replacing legacy networks and dedicated service platforms with a coherent digital environment.
Within this new environment, businesses across the world are becoming blocked in the quest to create flexible and cost-effective systems, systems that are capable of delivering changes rapidly and dynamically.
In addition, research shows that while 60 per cent of organisation’s believe their process of digital transformation is “well advanced” or “in progress,” only seven per cent believe it to be complete.
From a partner perspective, 90 per cent of organisations claim to have a digital strategy in place, but once again, have failed to advance past preliminary stages of development.
“The uneven maturity of digital transformation by industry and country has created a complex landscape for sales teams to navigate,” Ovum director of IT, data and tools, Daniel Mayo, said.
With digital transformation sitting at the top of the agenda across almost every industry sector, the disparity between intention and execution subsequently creates new opportunities for the channel across a range of verticals.
Specifically, and perhaps unsurprisingly, the financial services sector demonstrated the most confidence in enabling digital transformation, with 60 per cent 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 per cent), followed by payments, insurance and financial markets (40 per cent).
By contrast, and in representing market potential for channel partners, businesses considered the retail sector to be the least prepared for digital transformation.
In the public sector, 38 per cent of organisations also experienced “some or significant disruption” to services from digital technologies, but only 29 per cent claimed to be affected.
As many business leaders begin to take deliberate steps towards creating a digital world - as initiatives and pilots become mainstream - the need for trusted advisors, consultants and strategists heightens.
Consequently, the channel can capitalise on the immaturity and complexity of the digital transition, assisting organisations currently at a transformation crossroads.
In examining the process of digital transformation currently taking place within enterprises today,many are struggling with omni-channel customer/citizen engagement, predominantly focused on online/mobile channels to date.
Findings claim that 30 per cent of enterprises are only at the early or not-started stages, while 25 per cent of enterprises claim to be at least well advanced in this area.
In addition to this, the study indicated that while IT spend is growing globally, the top three 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.
