Skills Gap And Restrictive Budgets Inhibiting Transformation Investments: Boomi And Vanson Bourne

Sydney, Australia – June 9, 2020 – Boomi™, a Dell Technologies™ business, today announced new global research that reveals although organisations are reaping the rewards of IT modernisation, digital transformation and innovation, their efforts are being inhibited by various challenges, including restrictive budgets and lack of in-house skills.

The report, The State of Modernisation, Transformation, and Innovation in the Digital Age, commissioned with Vanson Bourne, outlines that 59 per cent of survey respondents said effectively using technology has been the key to transformational success. However, one in two decision makers admit their company isn’t innovating at a competitive rate. The top barriers for digital transformation and innovation efforts include insufficient in-house skills (41 per cent) followed by a restrictive budget (33 per cent).

The survey of 1,200 business and IT decision-makers around the world, including Australia and New Zealand (A/NZ), also found that despite their progress in modernising, 95 per cent of organisations are facing challenges. As well as budget and technical knowledge, chief concerns span business processes and risk to the business.

“As business and technology leaders continue to institute technology-driven change, many are seeing initiatives fall behind due to internal skills gaps and challenging budgets, among other roadblocks.” said Nicholas Lambrou, Managing Director A/NZ at Boomi.

“Despite outcomes to-date, new and unexpected complexities introduced by the ‘new normal’ of work have placed further emphasis on the importance of continued modernisation, transformation and innovation. With this new research showing dividends in customer experience (CX) and streamlined operations, it is imperative business and IT decision makers turn their attention to connecting their digital assets to further reduce cost and accelerate time to value for internal and external stakeholders.”

The report of 1,200 business and IT decision-makers around the world, including Australia and New Zealand, also revealed:

• Businesses are turning to ‘low-code’ to drive transformation initiatives: Companies are trying to do more with employees who have less technical expertise. That’s why investing in low code platforms is a big focus for more than half of enterprises that don’t have one already. Almost half anticipate they will introduce a low-code development platform before the end of 2020.
• Companies are honing in on customer experience and employee productivity: Today’s transformation efforts are focused primarily on customer experience (54 per cent) and employee productivity (50 per cent). Both of these areas are crucial for supporting more modern, agile customers and workforces. Business and IT decision makers agree the biggest benefit they have seen from modernisation is improved customer experience (49 per cent).
• The CEO currently drives innovation among C-suite, but within three years innovation will be a company-wide responsibility: Organisations still need to modernise, transform and innovate, and it will take a company-wide shift to make that happen. Currently, innovation is led from top-down by the CEO (65 per cent), CIO (58 per cent), and department heads (54 per cent), while only 12 per cent said the workforce as a whole is leading it. However, 56 per cent of respondents anticipate that innovation will be everyone’s responsibility in three years, and not just that of the leadership.

Additional data revealed:

• 39 per cent agree that their organisation is regularly “out-changed” by its competitors and industry peers.
• IT decision makers see more benefits to modernisation overall than business decision makers, especially when it comes to streamlining processes (48 per cent).
• The top-two modernisation priorities for executives are IT enterprise architecture (61 per cent) and cloud adoption (56 per cent), both geared towards improving customer experience (CX).
• Top technology investments for innovations include: big data analytics (41 per cent), artificial intelligent (AI, 37 per cent), security innovation (36 per cent), Internet of Things (IoT, 33 per cent) and integration platfrom-as-a-service (iPaaS, 32 per cent).
• 59 per cent of organisations agree they have to get technology “right” over the next 12 months to ensure continued success.
• 86 per cent say that technology will dramatically change the way their organisations operate over the next 10 years.

Technology supports and drives every business, from banks to retailers, whether customer-facing or internally focused. Companies that find ways to maximise their budget when investing in digital strategies and technologies have the opportunity to improve their ROI.

“Though modernisation, transformation, and innovation have paid dividends in recent years, organisations can’t afford to rest on their laurels,” said Chris Port, Chief Operating Officer at Boomi. “Not when business priorities, drivers of change, and technology needs are rapidly converging, as reflected in this survey.

“Employees drive every business process and interaction. Investing in your workforce today by improving their training, workflow, and resources with technology will position your company as the one to beat. It takes the right kind of culture and the right people to continuously out-change and get ahead of the competition.”

Methodology

Boomi partnered with Vanson Bourne to survey more than 1,200 IT decision makers and business decision makers from 19 countries across North America, EMEA, and Asia-Pacific (including Australia and New Zealand). Respondents represented eight key sectors and companies ranging from 500 to more than 3,000 employees.

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