As reported in a previous post, Bridgeall recently hosted a Round Table Expert Forum ‘The State of Digital Transformation 2019’ involving senior IT Directors from the private and public sectors. This was a follow-up to our ‘State of Digital Transformation 2018‘ conference held in November of last year at Microsoft’s Scottish HQ in Edinburgh.

The Round Table was facilitated by Dr Jim Hamill (University of Strathclyde Business School) who presented a short summary of recent research findings summarising the current state-of-play in digital supported transformation, based on his own and other research studies.

Ten key findings were presented as follows:

1. Compared to a few years ago, there is growing executive awareness of the threat of digital disruption with 86 percent of respondents agreeing that their industry is being disrupted now (25% small fuse, big bang) or will be in the near future (61% long fuse, big bang). 

To what extent is your organisation under threat of being disrupted?

2. The threat of being disrupted has not yet been translated into urgent action. Digital supported transformation is considered ‘mission critical’ by only one third of the organisations surveyed.

To what extent is digital transformation a priority for your organisation?

3. Supporting the above, only limited progress is being made with most organisations remaining at an early experimental stage on their transformation journey. Few have yet fully embedded digital technology at the core of everything they do. For the public sector, progress in transforming service delivery has been slow with 81 percent of respondents stating that ‘little or only limited’ progress has been made.

What progress has your organisation made in transforming?

4. External Digital – Few organisations are leveraging the full potential of digital for delivering exceptional customer experiences at Key Moments of Truth in the customer journey. For the public sector, only 15 percent of respondents stated that they were making good progress in this area.

To what extent do you disagree/agree with the following statements?

5. Internally, many organisations continue to exhibit the classic symptoms of pre-digital workplaces.

Pre-Digital and Digital Workplaces

6. Strategy is lacking with few organisations having an agreed digital supported transformation strategy in place.

Does your organisation have an agreed digital supported transformation strategy in place?

7. Many barriers and obstacles to successful transformation exist. These are mainly people, culture, organisation, resource and leadership related, as well as technology barriers.

List the main barriers/obstacles to transformational change in your organisation.

9. Most Board of Directors remain unprepared for the digital era.

  • Board evolution for the digital era has been slow.
  • 80 percent of company directors state that they are not satisfied their boards have sufficient digital proficiency.
  • Less than 20 percent of Fortune 500 companies feel fully equipped to deal with the technological challenge.
  • Board’s require ‘transformational’ talent.
  • Everyone knows there is a problem but no one is doing anything about it.

Source: Two years on, who’s leading digital? Probably not your board.

10. There is an emerging crisis of digital leadership.

Is your organisation facing a digital leadership crisis?

In summary, foundations are being established but we are NOT transforming. We need to move from the WHY of digital transformation to the HOW.

As usual, all comments and feedback are very welcome.

Please do not hesitate to contact Bridgeall if we can help to accelerate digital in your organisation.