55 percent Indian enterprises have a digital roadmap: KPMG- Dell study

MUMBAI, INDIA: Indian enterprises are digitally ready, and willing to embrace newer technologies such as cloud, big data, IoT, mobility and social among others.

Dell released the findings of a study titled, Future Ready Enterprises. The survey was conducted in collaboration with KPMG.

Some of the key findings of the study include:
•    32 percent organizations have a formal digital strategy in place in one or more business units
•    30 percent of the organizations do not have a formal digital strategy but are working on one
•    25 percent of the organizations have an enterprise-wide digital strategy
•    Mobility and data protection are immediate investments which companies plan make in the next 1-3 months; cloud adoption foresees a period of one year

According to the survey the following trends determined top IT spending priorities for 2015:
•    Mobile Technologies (88 percent)
•    IT governance, risk & compliance (GRC-82 percent)
•    Business intelligence and analytics (80 percent),
•    Enterprise applications (76 percent)

According to the study, the annual IT budget for most organizations is more than 20 crore (27.5 percent) and about 23 percent of the organizations spend in the range of Rs 1-10 crore on IT. Seventy percent of the organizations increased their annual IT budget by 10-20 percent in the last one year

On digital IT spend, role, and responsibility, 32 percent of the CIOs said they spend 10-20 percent of their IT budget on digital technologies while 19 percent spend 20-30 percent. Nineteen percent CIOs spend more than 30 percent of their IT budget on digital technologies.

On the other hand, only six percent organizations have a full time digital strategy officer. Majority of the organizations do not have anyone tagged to their digital strategy.
•    45 percent respondents think that digital is a good contributor to revenue/profitability/customer service, etc.
•    28 percent think that it is the mainstream contributor.

CIO told the researchers that the biggest barriers for adoption of emerging technologies are:
•    Data sovereignty and privacy (71 percent)
•    Level of technology literacy (58.3 percent)
•    Regulatory compliance (54 percent),
•    Understanding technological shifts (50 percent) and
•    Physical control (29 percent)

Key Takeaways from the survey:
Digital disruption has started to seep into the organization’s key agenda in a big way, aligning itself to the existing roadmap. The fusion of emerging technologies has started to kick off as the CIO sets aside a budget for digital technologies.

Social media has become an important tool for organizations to engage with their customers. Use of social media has facilitated organizations to increase brand awareness and monitor competitor activity. It has greatly reduced the time taken by the customer to access information and choose from a plethora of options to the extent that customers is willing to trade off their privacy for convenience.

The focus of organizations on analytics has gained significant importance as it has become the key driver for all kinds of decision-making from procurement of raw material and manufacturing to marketing/branding the product and providing after sales service.

Internet of Things is catching on fast and organizations are readily accepting the change. Despite having security concerns, organizations are ready to undergo this transformation.

With digitization, there is an increase in the number of cyber-attacks encountered by organizations and this area has become one of the top items in the top priority list.

There is an increase in the uptake of open technologies that are used by companies as they provide competitive advantage. Companies are able to connect with customers on a real-time basis in addition to bringing down data storage costs. However, the flip side is that these technologies increase the risk exposure. Security of data has become a key concern

R Sudharsan, Commercial Marketing Head, Dell India, said, “Technologies such as security, mobility, cloud, analytics and the Internet of Things are no longer disparate approaches. These allied forces are disrupting businesses, choice of technology and role of CIO’s/ITDM’s. The survey helps us understand the concerted focus made by organizations in enabling a Future Ready Enterprise, embracing digital and emerging technologies as means to accelerate business transformation.”

Akhilesh Tuteja, Partner, IT Advisory, KPMG, said, “Digital is the new vehicle being driven by CIOs to ride into the future. Companies are quickly jumping on the bandwagon having acknowledged the fact that digital technologies will enable business models of future and will help transform enterprises.”