As we move through the first month of 2019's second quarter, it's becoming clearer every day how important digital transformation can be to businesses across countless industries. Organizations that fail to recognize this risk being left in the dust by their competitors. This isn't merely conjecture; plenty of data backs it up.
A new study by managed interconnectivity services provider Masergy, released April 17, 2019, is the latest example of research illustrating the critical value of bringing digitization fully into the workplace. It behooves C-level staff to review these findings (and related research) before brainstorming ways to make digital transformation a reality in their organizations.
Vast majority of IT pros exalt transformation's virtues
Masergy's study, created in a collaboration with Webtorials, revealed significant unity among IT professionals in large, small and moderately sized companies in 35 different countries as far as digital transformation was concerned. About 80% of its respondents stated that they believed the large-scale updating of their businesses' IT infrastructure – software as well as hardware – is crucial for the survival of the organization.
Reasons for its importance were varied, ranging from evolutions in their companies' primary industries (that had either started happening or were widely expected to be soon on the horizon) to enhancement of customer experiences, business processes and productivity. Interestingly, "improved cost savings" lagged behind other reasons, albeit ahead of boosts to revenue generation and product development.
Importance of organizational buy-in (and spend)
Masergy CEO James Parker explained that in many cases, the potential advantages that digital transformation initiatives could bring about weren't just being touted by IT department heads and personnel, but had earned the support of individuals on the executive level, who understood what efforts would be necessary to turn plans into realities.
"Executives recognize that digital transformation is largely dependent upon innovative technology services and outside partners that deliver on competitive IT agility," Parker said, in a statement accompanying the release of his firm's report.
On the other hand, though, the research also cited difficulties with securing support for such initiatives from up and down the entirety of the organization. Skepticism might arise from one corner of the workforce, be it the C suite or the rank-and-file personnel, and impede full-scale adoption. The other challenge that IT professionals found most detrimental was budgeting: In some cases, the aforementioned dubiousness of key segments of an organization made it difficult to secure funding for digital transformation initiatives, while in others, there was sufficient interest but not enough money to sustain such a project's cost. The bottom line is that the phrase "buy-in" has both literal and figurative significance to the success of any push toward realizing broader digitization, and business leaders must account for this necessity in their planning.
The power of the right people
It's also important to realize that IT modernization won't be as effective as it ought to be without the right talent to oversee – and carry out – the necessary tasks for implementing such an initiative. Executive recruitment is important, but you'll also need to track down the right engineers and IT personnel if you don't already have them on your team. YES Partners can help you find the executives, tech experts and any other professionals needed to turn any digital transformation dream into a reality. To see some of the roles we have already successfully placed, click here.
Finding people is easy, but finding the RIGHT people is not. YES Partners helps companies FIND the right people for all company functions, across many industries.
