New report reveals ‘grind’ of digital transformation, slow road to success
An annual and far-ranging survey by Gartner of 3,100 chief information officers and technology leaders and more than 1,100 executives outside IT worldwide shows that only 48% of digital transformation initiatives meet or exceed business outcome targets.
However, the survey also identifies a “digital vanguard,” a cohort of CIOs and CxOs, who have a higher digital achievement rate where 71% of their initiatives meet or exceed outcome targets.
The results of Smart Industry’s State of Initiative Report 2024, which will reveal the rate of digital transformation successes vs. failures among SI’s own audience and their buy-in with certain technologies, are due out later this year and will be measured against 2023.
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The Gartner findings were unveiled at its IT Symposium/Xpo last month. That survey gathered data from 3,186 CIOs and technology executives (including 1,376 CIOs in the EMEA, Europe, the Middle East and Africa) in 88 countries and all major industries. Insights from 1,126 executive leaders outside of IT supplemented the survey, Gartner said in a release.
The Gartner findings could be viewed another way. Held up against a 3-year-old McKinsey report that pegged the digitalization success rate at 31%, the Gartner findings that see about a 50% increase in success can be interpreted as sizable progress in manufacturing technology transformations.
“CIOs and CxOs are equally responsible, accountable and involved in delivering the digital solutions their enterprises need. This is a radical departure from the traditional paradigm of IT delivery and business ‘project sponsorship’ that predominates in most enterprises,” said Raf Gelders, Gartner’s VP of research.
Cybersecurity, AI, intel, data analytics investments ahead
More than 80% of EMEA CIOs polled said they expect to increase their investments in cybersecurity, AI/GenAI, and business intelligence and data analytics in 2025.
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Conversely, 43% of EMEA CIOs said they expect to decrease their investment in legacy infrastructure and data center technologies. This is a trend that has become more common in recent years, mainly due to migrating to cloud-based solutions, Gartner said.
That compares with 33% who said they expect to boost legacy investment, which can be linked, in part, to organizations that acquired on-premise infrastructure to experiment and produce GenAI solutions.
Only 14% of EMEA CIOs surveyed prioritize building a technology workforce (beyond their own IT departments) in 2025, limiting the enterprise’s ability to get the most from their digital investments, according to Gartner, and condemning them to perpetuate the low number (48%) of digital initiatives that meet or exceed their business outcome targets.
Just 19% of EMEA CIOs said they will prioritize sharing technology leadership with other business areas, a paramount must-have to grow the digital vanguard.
