Digital darkness across Europe

Digitopia has found that 90% of businesses do not measure digital transformation strategy and are unaware of the progress that they have made throughout their journey. The same survey, which assessed businesses across the UK and Europe, also found that 65% of respondents blame this lack of awareness on being too busy with digital transformation itself to monitor its progress.

The COVID-19 pandemic made one thing very clear - businesses need to continually adapt or risk being left behind. As a result, organisations all over the world embarked on a digital transformation journey that would not only benefit businesses in short term lockdowns, but also create long term sustainability. At first, it was simple: better facilitate remote and hybrid working, leveraging the cloud to create a completely flexible working environment. However, with recovery from the pandemic well underway, the next steps in a company’s digital transformation strategy can quickly become unclear.

According to Digitopia’s latest research, this is already the case for the vast majority. The study, which analysed the responses from 700 executives - ranging across C-Suite, VP and Director roles - in 400 different companies, found that only 4% of organisations are aware of their digital transformation progression and accurately measure it.

Lack of visibility over digital transformation progression isn’t exclusive to one industry, either. The research assessed the position of businesses across several sectors, specifically: retail, consumer goods, automotive and manufacturing, insurance, banking and finance.

Of these organisations that do not track their digital transformation progress, ‘busy with digital transformation’ was cited as the most common reason for failing to measure digital maturity, with ‘no shared vision’ being the second most popular response at 47%. The rest are as followed:

Lack of skills and competencies (39%)

No sense of urgency (33%)

Misalignment in leadership (27%)

Disagreement on importance (13%)

“These findings have surprised us following a year where so many organisations have turned to digital transformation to continue operating.” said Halil Aksu, CEO and co-founder of Digitopia. “You manage what you measure, and it’s concerning that so few businesses are paying attention to such an important aspect of modern business. Digital transformation is more than just technology, and only by measuring, benchmarking and assessing every aspect of the journey can an organisation know where it is succeeding, and where it needs improvement. Only then can these businesses see a maximum return on investment and deliver sustainable, long term business success.”