Gap between CEO expectations for digital transformation and organization readiness
Staff Writer |
At a time when CEOs and executive boards are calling for a rapid transformation to digital business models, a worldwide study released by Commvault and Quadrant Strategies has uncovered an alarming gap between the expectations of management and the readiness of IT organizations.
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The study, “Measuring IT’s Readiness for Digital Business,†a survey of 1,200 IT executives and IT personnel in six global business markets released at Commvault GO 2017, reveals that while many executives recognize the need to be able to lead their companies through digital transformation, IT personnel actually feel they lack the skillset, technology and bandwidth to create the data-centric foundation required for that digital change and future innovation.
As both public and private organizations shift to become modern digital businesses, a fundamental change is occurring in the IT market, a move from an infrastructure-centric to a strategic data-centric approach.
Further accelerating this is the move to multi-cloud environments, to better prevent and recover from cyber attacks, comply with new data privacy regulations, and to use analytics to generate improved business insights.
Digital transformation is no longer a choice. Organizations must transform or die.
For example, studies have shown that companies utilizing data-driven insights to make strategic decisions have improved their productivity by up to 33 percent.
Meanwhile, progressive companies that have transformed their business models are future-proofing their organizations and reshaping their industries.
The common theme among these companies is progressive CEOs and CIOs who recognized that a digital transformation vision was not enough.
Instead, they enabled their IT organizations – through new skillsets and tools – to create a data-centric foundation that supported more cost-effective current operations while providing deeper business insights and the agility to support radical new ideas and new applications for doing business with customers.
The findings of the “Measuring IT’s Readiness for Digital Business†study further demonstrate that with this shift a more holistic approach to data management and a data-driven strategy to drive innovation and competitive differentiation is also taking place.
More than 50 percent of respondents say “better data collection and management†and “new tools to analyze increasingly sophisticated data†as essential to the future success of their business.
More than 60 percent of respondents, including IT executives and IT personnel, think they have access to less than half of their organizations’ data.
While 41 percent of executives believe their organizations understand and are prepared for innovation (already a surprisingly low number) only 29 percent of IT personnel believe the same.
Further, over a third of IT personnel think executives would feel concerned, anxious or panicked if they knew more about their IT department, while another 16 percent said they’d be unhappy, angry or disgusted.
Most IT executives prioritize day-to-day operations over innovation – and IT personnel follow their lead.
More than 50 percent of IT personnel believe their roles will change radically and they will need to acquire new skills to stay relevant.
More than two-thirds of respondents believe their organizations are not prepared for migrating data to the cloud, protecting that data, or bringing together all data in the company.
More than 40 percent of companies don’t yet have a formal, proactive plan for digital transformation. ■