Only one in five organisations globally have implemented a digital strategy that stretches across the whole company, according to a new report released by The Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) and SAP SE. However, organisations in the Asia-Pacific region lead the way in enterprise-wide digital strategy, with 35 per cent reporting significant progress on this front, compared with 21 per cent globally.
The report, titled ‘Digitising IT’, found that there remains a significant gap in organisations preparing for and implementing a digital strategy that fully integrates strategic, financial and operational elements.
The survey, based on responses from 812 senior executives at multinational corporations, examined the challenges and opportunities facing IT departments with the context of digital. Nearly half of those surveyed (49 per cent) were IT remainders, with the other respondents coming from sales, marketing, HR and finance.
Digital initiatives are most likely to be rated as the “highest strategic priority” in APJ (47 per cent), companies in China were most likely to rate their digital initiatives over the past three years at 55 per cent, ahead of APJ companies at 40 per cent and the global average of 25 per cent.
CIOs in United States (51 per cent) and China (49 per cent) were most likely to have primary ownership of their company’s digital initiatives, compared with a global average of 37 per cent. The survey also showed that the role of the chief digital officer (CDO) is gaining traction in Europe and Germany, with 20 per cent and 13 per cent respectively saying that primary ownership of digital strategy rests with the CDO.
Forty-two per cent of organisations in APJ also said that “improving collaboration between IT and other departments” would most help IT departments make the ideal contribution to their company’s digital initiatives.
“Digital transformation is the new strategic imperative – no longer just a handy source of competitive differentiation but a must-do for every company, in every industry and across every geography,” said Thomas Saueressig, chief information officer, SAP.
“Forward-looking CIOs understand that they need to change their roles from ‘keeping the lights on’ service providers to ‘leaders of innovation’. This is easier said than done, but there is a positive correlation between the early involvement of IT and meaningful success rates of digital transformation initiatives – so the first step is the most important one.”
The complete study is available here.
