Only 5% of Large Companies Ready to Embrace Digital Business, Report Reveals
A majority of senior IT leaders and decision-making managers of large companies around the world indicate their organizations have yet to fully embrace the aspects of digital transformation needed to remain competitive, according to the results of a new study conducted by Enterprise Strategy Group.
The ESG 2017 IT Transformation Maturity Curve study commissioned by Dell EMC shows 95% of survey respondents indicate their organizations are at risk of falling behind a smaller group of industry peers that are transforming their IT infrastructures, processes, and delivery methods to accelerate their goals of becoming digital businesses.
Many organizations still measure application cycle times in months, if not years; have siloed infrastructures; and continue to grapple with rigid legacy architectures—all barriers to undertaking a successful digital transformation.
“These findings mirror how the vast majority of customers are telling us they need to optimize their existing infrastructures to take advantage of digital-age opportunities,” said David Goulden, President of Dell EMC. “However, the research shows that most respondents are falling behind a small and elite set of competitors who have cracked the IT Transformation code, and they’re competing more vigorously because of it.”
ESG employed a research-based, data-driven maturity model to identify different stages of IT Transformation progress and determine the degree to which global organizations have achieved those different stages, based on their responses to questions about their organizations’ on-premise IT infrastructure, processes and organizational alignment.
Oganizations were segmented into four IT Transformation maturity stages:
- Stage 1 – Legacy (12%): falls short on many – if not all – of the dimensions of IT Transformation in the ESG study
- Stage 2 – Emerging (42%): showing progress in IT Transformation but having minimal deployment of modern data center technologies
- Stage 3 – Evolving (41%): showing commitment to IT Transformation and having a moderate deployment of modern data center technologies and IT delivery methods
- Stage 4 – Transformed (5%): furthest along in IT Transformation initiatives
“Companies today increasingly rely on technology to grow and improve all aspects of their business,” says John McKnight, Vice President of Research and Analyst Services, Enterprise Strategy Group. “However, ESG’s research found that fully ‘Transformed’ IT organizations are admittedly rare at this time. The good news is that there are incremental benefits to be had by making any progress along the maturity curve, which can be achieved by emulating the behaviors of these ‘Transformed’ organizations.”
The majority of respondents (71%) agree that IT Transformation is essential to ongoing business competitiveness. The “Transformed” organizations report the most progress in leveraging IT resources to speed product innovation and time to market; automating manual processes and tasks; and running IT as a profit center rather than a cost center.
“Organizations must resolve this conflict between Digital Transformation goals and today’s IT reality if the business is to meet its ultimate objectives,” says Adam DeMattia, Director of Research, Enterprise Strategy Group.
