Boomi has published a report it commissioned from Vanson Bourne. “The State of Modernization, Transformation, and Innovation in the Digital Age,”(registration required) is based on a survey of more than 1,200 IT decision-makers from 19 countries across North America, EMEA, and Asia Pacific. Respondents represented eight key sectors and companies ranging from 500 to more than 3,000 employees. As such, it is a significant sample, and the findings are notable. The eight industry sectors are:
- Retail
- Higher Education
- Manufacturing
- Healthcare
- Life Sciences
- Finance
- Insurance
- Public Sector
The report itself contains an executive summary and is divided into three sections: Modernisation, Transformation and Innovation. It concludes with five recommendations drawn from the findings. At the end of the report are some further demographic information and responses from the survey.
Modernisation
The report defines modernisation as “the process of replacing legacy technologies with newer systems and services to streamline processes and increase efficiency.” The study found that while 94% of organisations are in the process of modernisation, many are in the early stage. Most advanced were Life Sciences where 38% have actively finished and Finance, where 37% have done so.
The most popular priority for modernisation is IT Enterprise Architecture (61%), followed by Cloud adoption (56%). It may indicate that many organisations are struggling to modernise legacy solutions and need to turn to IPaaS solutions to bridge the gap. The report also looked at regional differences. While North America is ahead of the world, the report did not draw out many other differences.
Companies see multiple benefits and challenges to modernisation. While more than half (54%) saw budgets as a challenge, 45% see the benefit to operational costs in the longer term. This discrepancy may be because of a short term outlook in many firms.
Transformation
The report defines transformation as “the process of updating and evolving the way that a business interacts with its customers, employees, and partners.” Again the vast majority (92%) are currently transforming their organisations. On average, 28% have already completed the process, but 10% of the public sector has not yet started.
The focus of transformation varies, but 54% see a priority as Customer experience, 50% see employee productivity as key. Organisations are realising the right benefits, with 48% seeing improved customer satisfaction. Barriers still exist for a variety of reasons across different countries. For example:
- US: 38% – Insufficient in-house skills
- Canada: 39% – Unwillingness to spend the required amount
- UK: 34% – Insufficient in-house skills
- Norway: 48% – Lack of a clear direction/focus of the efforts
- Denmark: 46% – Employee buy-in
Companies are looking to invest in technology to complete their transformation. Many see low-code platforms as key. More than half (51%) not using a low-code platform today, plan to have one in place within 12 months. Only 8% have no plans to deploy one. Other key elements include:
- Digital process automation platforms 48%
- Platform as a Service (PaaS) 45%
- Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) 44%
Innovation
Most respondents (93%) claim to be innovating. The report highlights the slightly odd statistics that in North America: “44% of organisations claim to have finished actively innovating.” This seems odd, as innovation should rarely end for most organisations. It is a finding that could have been examined in a follow up qualitative interview.
Companies are investing in different technologies to secure innovation. These include
- Big data analytics (41%)
- Artificial Intelligence (37%)
- Security Innovation (36%)
Why are companies innovating? The top reason is the same as transformation, to improve the customer experience. Broadly speaking, business leaders and IT leaders are aligned. The exception is that while only 42% of business leaders see exploiting new technologies as a key driver for innovation, 52% of IT leaders do. It is an indication that perhaps they like the technology for its own sake rather than for what it can do for their company.
Again, there is some significant regional variance across the data set as to what different countries see as the barrier to innovation. In Asia, this is mainly around a shortage of in-house skills and spending restrictions. The survey also looked at where innovation sits with most senior leaders having the responsibility. However, in three years, 56% of respondents believe that innovation will be everyone’s responsibility. The authors propose that “Instead of today’s top-down model, responsibility for innovation may be more broadly shared across organizations in the near future.”
Enterprise Times: What does this mean
As the report concluded, it looks at they need to make a difference. Technology (59%), People (42%) and processes (42%) are critical. Why is this important? Two reasons stand out from the findings.
- 86% say that technology will dramatically change the way their organisations operate over the next ten years
- 76% say that the way we work is changing and that organisations must keep up or they will fail
The report looks at the new technologies that are likely to influence these changes with iPaaS (Integration Platform as a Service (24%) a clear requirement or data migration. With more changes to different industries likely, and the idea of hybrid architectures as companies evolve products and service offerings, this comes as no surprise.
The concluding recommendations are a logical extrapolation from the findings, though also common sense. They include:
- Don’t jump on the latest tech train without evaluating ROI
- Accelerate connectivity: build Integrations faster and easier with Low-code development.
These are wise suggestions and one might add that while Dell Boomi is a leader in the IpaaS space, it is not alone. IPaaS is not a new technology sector, but some interesting things are happening in it with the introduction of AI, for example. This is an interesting report that has several statistics and insights that make it worthwhile reading in full.
