Barrie Sheers - Managing Director, Microsoft New Zealand
There’s a huge gap between the digital transformation ambitions of New Zealand businesses and the reality.
Only 36 per cent of New Zealand business leaders have a full digital transformation strategy in place, according to a recent Microsoft study, while 17 per cent said they have very limited or no strategy to transform.
However, three quarters of respondents agree that they need to transform to enable growth.
Worse, new revenue opportunities may be going begging. 88 per cent of business leaders agree that new data insights can lead to new revenue streams for their organisations.
Microsoft’s study, undertaken in late 2016, found the top six barriers to digital transformation are, in order of priority:
1 - Lack of a digitally-skilled workforce able to optimise digital businesses
2 - Lack of government policies and ICT infrastructure to provide a sound digital transformation platform for organisations
3 - Lack of a technology leader who is also business savvy
4 - Lack of organisational leadership to ideate, plan and execute digital transformation
5 - Tight regulations that limit ability to transform digitally and,
6 - No urgency or need to counter disruptors within the industry
Microsoft New Zealand Managing Director, Barrie Sheers, said it’s concerning to see that while there is widespread acknowledgement on the need to transform, Kiwi businesses are doing so incrementally and not keeping pace with their regional counterparts.
Only 47 per cent of respondents are in progress with specific digital transformation initiatives for selected parts of their business, the study found.
“Leaders need to rethink business models, uncover and use data insights and embrace a different way of bringing together people, data, and processes which create value in a new digital business,” Sheers said.
Along with the top six barriers, there is also a persistent perception among business leaders that the cloud is less secure than in-house IT.
This is potentially impacting on the uptake and speed of implementing a digital transformation strategy, Microsoft said.
The Microsoft Asia Digital Transformation Study was conducted between October to November 2016 involving 1,494 business leaders in 13 Asia Pacific markets.
All respondents were involved in shaping their organisations’ digital strategy and working in firms with more than 250 employees.
100 respondents were from New Zealand.
