At its recent annual Australian customer roadshow, Realize, Micro Focus polled attendees to gauge their opinion on key digital transformation challenges including barriers to IT delivery, changing key performance indicators (KPIs), and emerging technology. According to 61 per cent of respondents, the top barrier to IT delivery is legacy systems and processes.

This is followed by lack of budget (50 per cent) and cultural barriers (36 per cent).

If organisations can’t realise value from digital transformation then there is little point to undertaking transformation initiatives, according to Micro Focus.

Matthew Bertram, business consultant, Micro Focus, said, “Organisations need to realise how to effectively manage change and realise value from digital transformation.”

“It’s apparent that customers need a way to bridge existing barriers to fully leverage emerging technology.”

According to Sue Lindaard from the Bank of New Zealand, who shared her experiences in using robotic process automation (RPA) to improve IT delivery, clear communication and alignment across all stakeholders is key when managing cultural change.

According to IDC, “By 2023, 95 per cent of entities will have incorporated new digital KPI sets—focusing on product/service innovation rates, data capitalisation, and employee experience—to navigate the digital economy.” (1)

Matthew Bertram said, “With automation improving results for IT, organisations may need to re-evaluate their existing KPIs and, with new transformation projects, they may also need new KPIs that address the digital landscape and align with digital transformation projects.”

The survey found that 45 per cent of respondents have already added new KPIs and, while 41 per cent have the same KPIs, these have been modified.
Matthew Bertram said, “It was interesting to see that fewer KPIs are being dropped (17 per cent of respondents have dropped KPIs) as new ones get added. This could mean organisations need to go through a stricter rationalisation process in the future to determine their core set of KPIs.”

Customer experience (CX) is more topical than machine learning (ML)

According to respondents, CX is more talked about in organisations, receiving a rating of 3.3 compared with data privacy/GDPR (2.7), machine learning (1.8) and data monetisation (1.2) where 4 is high and 0 is low.

Matthew Bertram said, “While organisations may be focused on one of these trends over the other, there is crossover between them and they shouldn’t necessarily be treated in isolation. Initiatives such as machine learning and data privacy both have a role to play in CX, for example.”

The survey found that 50 per cent of respondents are exploring RPA followed by machine learning (44%) and virtual agents/chat bots (42%).
Matthew Bertram said, “Despite the hype, there are very real opportunities being created by emerging technologies in creating business value, improving efficiency, and cost savings.”

Reference:
(1) https://www.idc.com/getdoc.jsp?containerId=prUS44430918