New research suggests that the majority of businesses have got a long way to go before they take full advantage of digital opportunities that could transform their fortunes.
A new report from Capgemini Consulting,Organising for Digital: Why Digital Dexterity Matters, produced with MIT Center for Digital Business, concludes that few companies have successfully used technology to evolve into truly digital businesses.
The report is based a survey of business leaders across 28 countries. It has found that businesses are at a range of different stages on the journey towards what it calls "digital dexterity":
- 7% exhibit a digital-first mindset, they have fully digitised operations, can spot emerging trends and have significant digital skills;
- 21% are in the "engaging" phase, with digital capabilities in personalising customer experience, simplifying routine tasks and enabling collaboration;
- 56% are in the "initiating" phase, slowly building their digital competencies;
- 16% of organisations are "stalling", without any significant digital capability.
Didier Bonnet, senior vice president for digital transformation at Capgemini Consulting, said: "During electrification, productivity surged only after firms had radically redesigned how they organised - from the physical factory layout to the introduction of the assembly line and greater job specialisation. This was a radical shift that did not happen overnight. It took some 20-30 years to evolve. Our conviction is that something very similar will happen with digital transformation. It will require major surgery to evolve our traditional industrial organisational models into digital ones. But we have no choice if we want to fully benefit from this digital revolution."
Capgemini has identified a number of attributes that set the "digitally dextrous" apart from the rest. These include: a digital-first mindset; systematic experimentation to drive innovation; the ability to self-organise quickly around new digital opportunities; and empowering your workforce.