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Lack of resources cited as one of digital transformation’s major roadblocks locally

Digital transformation is a term that has been thrown around for years at this stage and it might be time to start looking at how companies have embraced the digital era.

While it’s all good and well to champion digital within an organisation, the journey toward digital transformation is complex and littered with challenges.

In a bid to find out where South African businesses are in their digital transformation, SUSE conducted an online survey where 2 130 respondents shared their thoughts on where their businesses are when it comes to digital transformation.

Firstly, the good news. As many as 76 percent of respondents say that their company is on the right path for digital transformation. What’s more is that 64 percent of respondents said they were actively working on their digital strategy.

“It’s encouraging to see that South African businesses are taking digital transformation seriously and that many of them are confident that they are on the path most suited to their business,” country manager for SUSE South Africa, Grant Bennett said of the survey results.

“While the term digital transformation has become a catchphrase, true transformation doesn’t come in a box – it is the sum of more than just the adoption of technology – it’s a new way of thinking that embraces disruption and technology to drive innovation and new processes. It challenges and changes business performance and how a company delivers value and it is for this reason, some companies are hesitant to start their digital transformation journey,” says Bennett.

Of course it’s not all good news. Some of the major aspects holding company’s back from digital transformation, as cited by respondents includes:

  • Lack of resources and in-house skills (30%)
  • Security concerns (20%)
  • Too many solutions to understand which one is best for the organisation (20%)
  • Lack of focus from top management (19%)
  • No digital transformation strategy across the company (11%)

The SUSE country manager says that often organisations opt for solutions in a bid to lower costs, only to have it fall short due to lack of foresight. Without aligning customer and business expectations with a digital transformation strategy, businesses can find silos appearing in their business or worse, fail as regards digital transformation.

This need not be the case with the technology and solution options that exist today that provide convenient, on-demand access for scalability – offering businesses new ways to improve efficiency, reduce costs or rebalance Capex and Opex expenditure,” says Bennett.

The country manager goes on to say that the availability of hyper-performance computing, cloud technology, artificial intelligence and other technologies give businesses today an idea of where digital transformation is leading them.

“Hyper-performance computing, cloud, big data, AI, machine learning and complex software are driving the businesses of the future – all pointing to adaptability to a changing environment. And South African businesses has the ability to leapfrog – we just need to embrace digital transformation and find partners that are able to help navigate the waters,” concludes Bennett.

That’s the important thing to note here. Digital transformation can be a complex journey and if you’re a small business, or even a massive one, enlisting the help of experts who can provide advice when you really need it.

[Image – CC 0 Pixabay]

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