An email survey was done of a broad swath of industrial concerns and a trend analysis completed. The survey benchmarked the evolving landscape of digital transformation, which we define as the adoption of new manufacturing and business processes made possible by new automation, communications and computing technologies. These are represented by conceptual models such as data analytics, the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) and Industry 4.0.

In the past 3 years of surveys, the number of respondents who believe digital technology will have a “high” or “critical” impact has increased substantially from 45% to nearly 70%.

Top List of Benefits of Digital Transformation

The 3 most important benefits of digital transformation identified by survey respondents fall into the category of incremental performance improvements, namely- Increased Productivity, Reduced Costs and Optimized Asset Utilization.

It became clear to the survey respondents that people present the biggest challenge to progress on their digital transformation initiatives. Even so, the ranks of those with no strategy in place has dwindled rapidly, from 45% to only 19% in the past 3 years, which is a great improvement.

Number One Concern about Digital Transformation

The number one concern to progress on digital transformation was a broadly distributed lack of business impact understanding and skills in the workforce.

More respondents also were concerned about regulations, such as for data privacy and also were concerned about regulations that can affect data privacy.

People are the Biggest Challenge

The key factors in order of importance were – talent and human resources, securing funding, leadership support and idea creation.

Apparently more and more companies realize the implications of digital transformation for their organizations—they know what they need to do, but lack the people, the skills or the culture to realize that vision.

To review all the interesting survey data you can download the report at: click here to get the report!