Telecoms and Banking Sectors Most Advanced in Digital Transformation

Ovum’s latest ICT Enterprise Insights program found that across 14 industries, the telecoms and banking sectors are most mature in the drive for digital transformation.

The program was based on primary interviews with over 6,300 enterprises globally, asking senior ICT executives to rate their organizations against nine steps identified by Ovum as key to digital transformation.

These ranged from tackling cybersecurity, to developing digital skills, creating the necessary organization structure and culture, to digitizing processes, creating digital services, to having a clearly articulated digital strategy.

Ovum created a digital maturity index aggregating progress by enterprises in each vertical across the nine steps. While the telecoms sector was most advanced, the overall level of digital maturity is low, with its index score currently at 43.9 percent, with banking next at 42 percent; many providers in both sectors are still at early stages or mid-stream levels across most of steps.

Indeed, across the 6,300+ enterprises surveyed, only 8 percent consider themselves to have achieved transformation, and only a fraction over 16 percent believe they are well-advanced. Almost as many (23 percent) rate themselves to be still at the early stages.

The ICT Enterprise Insights program also examined the role of enabling digital technologies in path to digital transformation, including Big Data, blockchain, IoT, platform architecture/APIs, artificial intelligence (AI), and microservices. Here, enterprises are most advanced in adoption of Big Data and API-based architectures with close to 40 percent of enterprises actively trialing or deploying these areas, with just under a further 50 percent planning or considering to do so in the future.

Microservices and IoT are less currently advanced in terms of active deployment, but over 50 percent of planning or considering to do so in the future. In contrast, while AI and blockchain are much discussed, actual traction by enterprises to use such technologies for digital transformation is much less developed.

Daniel Mayo, director of IT Data Tools & Insights, Ovum, commented: “IT vendors and service providers that deliver the solutions that enable digital transformation can leverage Ovum’s ICT Enterprise Insights to identify the market segments with the most opportunity – by country, industry, or size of company. Along with prioritizing market segments, the survey is an essential input in product planning, market messaging, and salesforce deployment.”