Aiming to move closer to a data-centric enterprise, business leaders steps up technology investment drive, said EY recently when releasing results of a global survey.
The EY Tech Horizon survey collected responses from more than 1,600 senior executives across seven industries, on the role of technology in their transformation plans, the firm noted.
Survey highlights
- 53% of respondents identified data and analytics as their top investment priority to build their transformation strategy over the next two years, an increase from 35% compared with the 2020 survey results.
- Combined with a new technology infrastructure of cloud (49%), internet of things (IoT) (42%) and artificial intelligence (AI) (35%), business leaders are laying the digital foundation to help them realise maximum value from their technology investment.
- Businesses are planning to extract value from these investments by predicting trends and needs of customers (44%), creating new products (42%) and improving existing products and operations (34%).
- Business leaders report significant data and technology barriers to executing their transformation plans. More than a third of the executives surveyed (35%) cited the high cost of technology as their number one challenge, followed by complex security and privacy requirements (27%) and the complexity of integrating multiple systems (25%).
Humans remain at the center of technology-enabled change
According to EY Tech Horizon 2022, skills shortages are a constraint on businesses looking to make the leap toward becoming a data-centric enterprise, with 71% of respondents saying that their companies are increasing spend to develop technology skills.
At the same time, respondents pointed out the challenges of successfully upskilling (30%), the struggle to retain existing skilled talent (29%) and high compensation requirements (25%) as leading barriers to acquiring digital skills, EY noted.
Given the structural talent shortage, upskilling and retention take center stage with 70% of respondents saying that they are focusing on re-skilling rather than hiring, the firm added.
Combined with the right technology strategy, the right talent strategy is the key to the new generation of data centricity, said Errol Gardner, EY Global Vice Chair – Consulting.
“Those organisations that put the human experience squarely in the centre of transformation by encouraging the spread of data literacy, and the digital mobilisation of the broader workforce are those who will succeed,” he advised.
