Digital transformation in Dubai, UAE
Digital transformation is one of the main slogans of the IT industry in recent years. It is assumed that timely “transformed” enterprises will not only leave competitors in existing markets behind, but also create new, previously inaccessible products and services.
In order to understand the real business attitude towards a promising concept, last year EZELINK Telecom surveyed nearly 600 top managers around the world (see “Five Steps to the Success of Digital Transformation in Business,” Computerworld Dubai , November 30, 2019 ) And at the end of last year, EZELINK conducted a similar study in Dubai, together with the analytical agency OSP Data. More than a hundred IT managers of large companies from the financial, telecommunications, oil and gas and industrial sectors were interviewed.
The survey helped determine how domestic IT leaders understand the term “digital transformation”, how much, in their opinion, it is relevant for our country, who is responsible for developing a strategy in this area, what changes it will bring, what slows down changes, etc. The researchers were interested not only in the general attitude of the respondents to digital transformation, but also how ready their changes were for their own company, what transformation processes are currently taking place in it and what plans are in place for the next two years.
“The survey showed that 50% of companies have already begun digital transformation, and another 35% are at the stage of determining its goals in a business strategy. - More than 70% of respondents said that the whole business should be transformed, or at least the basic business functions. But companies also have many obstacles to digital transformation: mostly respondents talked about organizational difficulties, although problems related to budget allocation were also mentioned. But almost all IT managers consider their units to be fully ready to introduce new technologies, and this is good news. ”
“Successful examples of representatives of the new, digital economy in the West simply cannot leave indifferent leaders of Dubai companies, especially in a situation where many traditional technologies and business models have already reached the limit of their effectiveness. Therefore, the optimism of the specialists we interviewed regarding the digital economy is understandable, the future lies with it. For the most part, technologies for digital transformation are ready, so the main thing for domestic companies is to decide whether they are ready for new organizational and business models, and, of course, to find funds for digital development. ”
Survey base
Digital transformation is especially relevant for large companies and those that operate in a highly competitive market, which has already “squeezed out” everything that is possible from traditional technologies.
Therefore, the most active in the study were representatives of large structures of more than 500 people (two-thirds of the respondents) and the financial sector (almost half of the respondents). A third of the respondents hold the positions of directors, vice presidents or vice presidents of IT, and another 59% of respondents are mid-level managers (head of department, department, deputy director of IT).
Terminology issue
Respondents were offered the following definition of digital transformation:
“Digital transformation is a business transformation (the formation of fundamentally new business models and business processes, the creation of innovative products and services) based on a set of advanced technologies such as clouds, mobility, advanced analytics, social interaction and the Internet of things.”
90% of respondents agreed with him. Sometimes with corrections: someone didn’t have enough in the definition of mentioning Big Data, someone thinks that the basis of everything is the Industrial Internet, and all of the listed technologies already follow from it.
The point of view as to which technology is “main” depends to a large extent on the field of activity. As for the Big Data, in our opinion, they are present in the definition, albeit in an implicit form: all the solutions listed in the definition serve, to one degree or another, as sources of Big Data, as a means of collecting or processing them.
Digital transformation in theory ...
Respondents were asked to talk about what, in their opinion, the main goals of digital transformation are and who should be responsible for developing its strategy, because any changes should ideally begin with defining the tasks and methods for achieving them. The respondents also noted the technologies that will play the greatest role in the course of modernization, what needs to be changed in the most radical way, how to evaluate the effectiveness of the transformation and what can hinder its implementation.
The main goals of digital transformation were called “increasing customer satisfaction” (58%), “transforming business models” (57%), “cutting costs” (54%), “improving the efficiency of existing processes” (48%), and “output to new markets, expanding the range of products and services ”(33%).
According to the respondents, the development of a strategy should be carried out by a top management or committee composed of representatives of various departments. These two variants of answers collected almost 50% of the votes (several positions could be indicated). The IT department, which, in fact, was represented by the respondents, finished third (24%).
The most important technology of digital transformation (answering this question, it was also possible to note several options) was recognized by Big Data analyst - it was mentioned by 61% of the survey participants. Next come mobile technologies (56%) and clouds (51%), and only then the Internet of things (34%), social media (25%) and robotics (8%).
The survey participants are confident that in the next two years, digital transformation will affect the processes of creating innovative products and services and methods of interacting with customers, as 57 and 56% of respondents responded accordingly. 45% believe that digitalization will bring new business models and sources of income. In addition, both internal business processes (35%) and external ones, which are responsible for working with various counterparties - suppliers, customers, etc. (39%) will undergo changes.
Respondents consider the main indicators of transformation efficiency to be an increase in customer satisfaction (60%) and cost reduction (58%). At the same time, the “emergence of new products / services” item, which is included in the definition of digital transformation itself, lagged significantly (49%).
As for the obstacles to change, nearly 40% of the votes were won by almost all of the proposed options: “lack of a coherent strategy”, “insufficient support from senior management”, “inability to visually demonstrate the return on investment”, “difficulties of implementation across the organization from due to the fragmentation of divisions ”,“ lack of specialists with the necessary qualifications ”. Least of all the respondents mentioned “problems with the budget” (31%) and “the IT department’s unwillingness to support transformations” (18%).
Respondents were also asked to answer practical questions: how are things going with digital modernization in their own companies.
As it turned out, 48% of respondents believe that they are already implementing to one degree or another projects on digital transformation, another 35% are currently being determined regarding the strategy. Another 10% believe that the new concept is generally understood by the company's management, but it is not planned to implement it yet.
In the next two years, digital transformation will be a priority process in 45% of organizations. More important tasks were called “increasing customer focus” (62%) and “developing new products and services” (52%).
Be that as it may, in two years the state of affairs will change significantly: 25% of respondents believe that digital technology is transforming the entire business, 45% believe that the basic business functions will change, and 21% believe that certain individual areas of activity will change ( another 9% believe that by 2019 their companies will only begin to study the prospects of digital transformation).
Most respondents are convinced that the technological revolution requires an improvement in the corresponding “uniforms” of companies. Now, judging on a five-point scale individual technologies that are an integral part of digital transformation, respondents considered that on average they are best able to store data (3.8) and ensure their confidentiality and protection (3.7). The ability of organizations to work with data, especially unstructured data, to analyze it, to turn the knowledge gained into a real help to business, the respondents rated much lower - less than the "three".
At the same time, without advanced social network analytics, the Internet of things and other data sources are simply useless. Respondents understand this: as indicated above, almost two-thirds of them consider analytics to be key technology.
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