Are we ready? Even if we aren’t, should we just start out anyway? What is the risk of not starting compared to delays from a competitive point of view? What if we get further behind the competition?

This is not getting any easier the longer we delay. There are technologies we can’t realistically ignore. These technologies—artificial intelligence, robotics, infinite computing, ubiquitous broadband networks, digital manufacturing, nanomaterials and synthetic biology—that will enable us to make greater gains in the next two decades than we have in the past 200. They will have a radical impact that hard for us to imagine today. The will happen whether our company is ready or not.

The C-Suite needs to get it. The rate of change is too hard to fathom. But they need to be aware that many of today’s Fortune 500 are in danger. A study from the John M. Olin School of Business at Washington University estimates that 40 percent of today’s F500 companies on the S&P 500 will no longer exist in 10 years. That is staggering.

Digital transformation may be the promised land for many forward-looking enterprises, but few are actually ready for it. There are many organizational and cultural issues to address — getting executive and employee buy-in, determining what processes need to be digitized, and getting people to rethink their roles. If that isn’t enough, technical issues also appear to be getting in the way as well. Scalability issues, resource issues, and application backlogs are quickly getting in the way of making progress on the journey.

That’s the latest revelation of a survey of 463 business and IT leaders released by Appian and conducted by DevOps.com, which show organizations don’t quite appear to be ready to do the heavy lifting that digital transformation requires. The Appian/DevOps.com survey explored the technical issues, and its authors conclude that organizations are too “overwhelmed by mounting technical debt and the number of software applications needed to support changing IT environments.

Source: Revelation: Many Are Simply Too Busy To Pursue Digital Change

Photo: Joe McKendrick

Digital change: on everybody’s mind, but a difficult commitment.