The business world is undoubtedly currently on a race to maximise digital technology advancement, with leaders pondering on the best ways to win.
Skills are critical for digital business success and finance leaders need to ensure the organisation has access to the resources required to develop and defend their competitive advantage and to achieve their strategic objectives, according to Dan Bieler, principal analyst at Forrester.
Working with the right service providers, prioritising critical skills, and leveraging technology are among the keys to staying competitive and continuously adaptive to customer needs.
A recent global Forrester report found that multiple people own the digital budget, necessitating better alignment on priorities, highlighting that, on average, organisations spent US$221 million on digital initiatives over the past 12 months.
In addition, digital budgets are growing despite — or because of — economic uncertainties. According to the report, in 63% of cases, multiple people or functions own the digital budget, which is spread across tech, services, and headcount.
While businesses with strong digital growth spend slightly more on tech than they do on services and headcount, the divided ownership requires organisations with shared budgets to ensure alignment around customer outcomes and strategic priorities.
Leaders are also observed to develop skills needed internally, with the digital strategies and initiatives serving as primary driver of growth prefer to develop employees internally.
Where businesses can’t develop the right talent or redeploy talent internally, they need to either hire talent externally or work with service providers to plug the gaps.
