• by Ray Schultz , Columnist, September 4, 2019

Is your email technology starting to feel like it’s left over from 2004?

It could be that your company has not digitally transformed itself, judging by Digital Transformation Survey: 2019, a study by Wipro with Coleman Parkes Research.

What is digital transformation? Apparently, it means overhauling your company so that it can pursue a digital strategy. Most of the firms surveyed use that term, although some prefer digitization, business transformation, enterprise transformation, digital strategy or digital disruption.   

Whatever you call it, 94% of those surveyed feel their firms are aligned on the meaning, compared to 2017, when a quarter felt that lack of shared understanding was getting in the way. And 90% say they are succeeding at it.

But you have to adorn your tech stack with more than one program. In the U.S., the mean is 9.21 programs, versus the global average of 7.89.

And it’s not easy or cheap to do. In the U.S., the biggest challenges are budget (22%), people (24%), technology (26%) and process (28%). These percentages align with global averages. 

Budgets are less of a problem in the first 12 to 18 months — that’s when firms are geared up to spend, and only 5% cite them as an issue. In contrast, people are an issue for 50%, and process is cited as a challenge for 34% at that stage.

Over a period of two years, technology jumps to 26%, with budget at 23%, process at 30% and people at 20%.

Asked to list their top five concerns, 59% say they worry about inconsistent sponsorship from senior leadership, while 56% are concerned about not being able to train their teams and 54% have concerns about alignment with business stakeholders.

It’s not clear whether email marketing is viewed as a program unto itself, or whether it is rolled in CRM or some other function. But it figures into many imperatives.

Only 16% of U.S. companies are motivated to pursue digital transformation by a desire to drive revenue, compared to 21% in the EU, 22% 28% in Brazil and 24% in Mexico. 

But 14% in the U.S. seek to improve their speed to market, 11% to modernize their legacy IT, 13% to achieve cost reduction (the global high) and 12% to access new market segments.

Operational issues include operating model change (9%), engineering transformation (10%), reacting to changing customer behavior (8%) and business transformation or model change (7%).

How do you decide whether you are succeeding? Globally, the success metrics are:

• Increased revenue — 76%
• Decreased time to market of new products or services — 69%
• Increase in efficiency/productivity — 60%
• Improved customer experience — 57%
• Increased customer centricity  — 54%
• Increasing volume of code releases in shorter time frame — 51%
• Brand value — 50%
• Recruitment or retention — 40%
• Reducing costs — 39%
• Share price — 38% 

The U.S. numbers are all within a percentage point or two of all these factors. 

Wipro and Coleman Parks Research surveyed 1400 C-suite leaders at enterprise companies worldwide. Each of firms has more than 5,000 employees and more than $500 million in revenue. 

Of the total, 400 executives work at U.S. businesses.