Businesses face digital ceiling in transformation progress: Infosys study

Davos: Businesses are facing a digital ceiling in their transformation process and few companies globally have reached the advanced stage on this front, an Infosys study released here showed on Wednesday.

However, India ranks the highest in the digital maturity index and Indian companies are ahead of the global average, particularly in operating at scale in Application Programming Interface (API).

Digital marketing is a particularly strong capability for Indian companies, according to the new global study by Infosys Knowledge Institute.

The Infosys Digital Radar 2020, which measured companies’ progress against 22 digital initiatives, this year found that India ranks the highest in the Digital Maturity Index at 71.4, whereas the overall digital maturity, stands at 62.3.

The study reveals that 38 per cent of companies are in the visionary category which is a significant percentage for India.

The report, which surveyed over 1,000 executives globally, ranked the most digitally advanced companies as “Visionaries”, followed by “Explorers” and then “Watchers”.

While influenced by high representation in the digitally strong high-tech sector, this is still a strong showing for India.

Compared to the rest of the world, India excels in cybersecurity and APIs (60 per cent in India vs 51 per cent globally).

One of the strongest digital transformation initiatives in the Indian market is digital marketing (62 per cent in India vs 45 per cent globally).

The biggest challenges to transformation in India is managing risk-averse cultures to tech advancement (45 per cent in 2020 vs 47 per cent in 2019).

Infosys’ study found that, globally, enterprises in India perform better than Explorers in all initiatives.

The top drivers for companies in India in achieving digital maturity is a quick response to changing and improving efficiency (78 per cent).

Infosys Digital Radar 2020 assessed the digital transformation efforts of companies on a Digital Maturity Index and found year-over-year progress in basic areas, such as digital initiatives to improve a company’s efficiency.

However, most companies come up against a “digital ceiling” when trying to achieve the most advanced levels of maturity.

Salil Parekh, CEO and MD at Infosys, commented: “We’ve seen enterprises successfully employ emerging technologies to optimise productivity and efficiency, but struggle at the next stage of digital maturity.

“Faster, better, and cheaper technology alone will not provide the improvements enterprises need,” he said.

Parekh said the research has shown that companies which can keep pace with digital transformation are those that design digital initiatives to improve customer experiences and empower their employees, differentiating themselves and propelling their business to the most advanced levels of progress.