While a new survey out last week confirmed what most already knew–nearly every organization is undergoing some level of digital transformation and most organizations will lose revenue if they fail in those efforts–the results showed that the IT delivery gap is increasing as transformations introduce new technologies.
The Connectivity Benchmark Report 2019 found that 97 percent of organizations has at least some form of digital transformation efforts underway, and a full 91 percent of these organizations believe that their organization’s revenue will be negatively impacted if they fail in their digital transformation efforts. At the same time, most of them all face a significant hurdle: integration.
Conducted among 650 IT leaders by Vanson Bourne, the study showed that 43 percent of organizations are using more than 1,000 applications across their business, but only 29 percent are currently integrated. That means some data that should be liberated and shared throughout the organization is currently trapped.
This will increasingly introduce challenges as the pace and quantity of projects are expected to grow, with respondents reporting they expect a 32 percent increase 2019 over 2018. This corroborates results from other studies that show CIOs expect the pace of business within their organization to double by 2025. This latest report indicates that 90 percent of executives believe if they fail to complete these new initiatives at the faster pace of business, the failure hit top-line revenue.
If recent history is any indicator, most organizations may want to brace to fail to meet revenue expectations. Approximately 64 percent of survey respondents said that they couldn’t deliver all of the projects they anticipated last year and 84 percent of respondents claim integration challenges are slowing digital transformation progress.
The report also found:
- Data silos created business challenges for 83 percent of respondents.
- Legacy infrastructure and systems was the most frequently reported challenge to digital transformation, with 59 percent of IT leaders reporting their legacy infrastructure makes it hard to introduce new technologies like artificial intelligence (AI), big data, and the internet of things (IoT).
- Almost seven in 10 of IT work hours remain dedicated to keeping the lights on compared to innovation.
- Nearly one in three respondents reported that budgets had either remained flat or decreased, and 77 percent of respondents saw a budget increase of less than 10 percent this year.
The survey also confirmed that the functions of IT are needed deeper and deeper in the business, with 92 percent of respondents having revealed that business analysts , data scientists , human resources and marketing all needing increased support.
The report did find some good news. Respondents believe that they IT departments and business leaders are more aligned than ever: the identification of and IT misalignment as a major challenge dropped from 43 percent last year to 29 percent this year.
