Survey: Success of Global Enterprise Depends on Adaptation to Hyper Disruption

Thanks to rapidly advancing technologies, an increasing new crop of competitors and ever-changing customer demands, businesses are facing a new reality in today’s hyper-digitized world. Regardless of whether they are a “tech company” or not, technology is creating a new norm, impacting the way businesses operate, engage and ultimately compete.  
 
Today, we released the results of our “Adapt or Perish: The New Reality in a Hyper-Digitized World” global research report. Working in partnership with independent market research firm, Vanson Bourne, we aim to shine a light on some of the market forces impacting the world’s biggest companies and their reaction to these new business imperatives: Hyper Disruption, Pervasive Digitization, Autonomous Action, The Cloud Imperative, and Enterprise Consumerization.  

Hyper Disruption

Defined as disruption occurring on an unprecedented scale, the recognition of hyper disruption at the center of today’s new enterprise reality is an essential first step towards successfully adapting to it.
Whether driven by new competitors and dynamic business models or advancing consumer expectations, our research found a major consensus among those surveyed that the pressure is on with:

• 94% of businesses confirming they are experiencing disruption and are under pressure to rethink their approach and processes to keep pace, and 61% admitting to being underprepared to strategically address market-disruptive competitors —citing the need for greater simplification and improved operations.
• Respondents also expressed concerns about keeping up with advancing customer demands and dynamics (87%), which was exacerbated by other sources of internal disruption such as workforce pressures, e.g., skills gaps, talent retention, etc. (85%).

Pervasive Digitization

Pervasive digitization was also found to be a contributor to the hyper disruption taking place in today’s enterprise. While the survey found most companies (99%) are making progress with their digitization efforts – leveraging or piloting digital technology to change business models, processes and/or systems – the journey is still considered long with only 10% fully realizing widespread digital transformation or “digital nirvana.” When drilling down further into the drivers of pervasive digitization, our survey reveals:

• Nearly half (45%) of respondents believe their business requires improvement in their approach to managing data accessibility, including breaking down the many data silos in their organization, a critical requirement to becoming a digitally pervasive business.      

However, monitoring access to that data and navigating how and where it should be used is leaving room for ambiguity, which was viewed as challenging when determining the right level of oversight or when organizations look to implement artificial intelligence (AI), for example.       

Autonomous Action

With hyper disruption and pervasive digitization comes a guarantee that enterprises will be gathering more data than ever before. As businesses look to operationalize and leverage these increasing volumes of data, there is a need to look to more advanced, technologies, like machine learning, to help find the answers to some of businesses’ toughest challenges. AI in particular has the potential to take a lofty and pervasive role in the future of digital transformation. Our survey findings are indicative of this growing trend with:

• Nearly 60% of organizations who have at least limited digitization agree their digitization efforts were done with AI in mind.
• Whereas for most, the AI future is now with 68% of businesses confirming that AI was currently being leveraged in some areas of the business, with around a third (30%) confirming pilots in progress.
• And of the businesses yet to adopt AI, one in five confirmed they planned to embark and begin investing in AI within the next 12 months. 

The Cloud Imperative

Given the frequency of modern enterprise data collection and the processing power AI requires to do its job, AI adoption requires the elasticity and flexibility provided by the cloud. And while our survey indicates there is a clear connection between the perceived benefits of AI and how it leverages cloud analytics efforts, more work is to be done in terms of advancing cloud analytics initiatives within the organization. Our survey findings suggest that:

• Almost two-thirds (64%) of organizations who have data analytics and workloads that exist in the cloud are looking to AI as playing a major role in their overall cloud analytics strategy in the next 12 months.
• Despite AI-Cloud optimism however, 69% of the same respondents are concerned their cloud analytics strategy lags behind other cloud initiatives, with 61% confirming less than half of their data analytics applications and workloads currently exist in the cloud. 

Enterprise Consumerization

Though cloud adoption is becoming a bigger priority (especially with the increasing adoption of AI), more enterprises than ever before are citing operational complexity as an issue and are turning to technology that has roots in the consumer world to simplify, become more agile and take friction out of business processes. For example:

• Nearly 60% of respondents agreed that one of the more pressing issues they face is transforming business operations to be more agile.
• 74% of respondents state that new competitors and new business model complexity are driving a need for greater simplification and operational excellence within the business. 

The survey findings suggest that enterprises across the globe are dealing with the challenge of how to master these same market-changing forces in order to successfully adapt to our new hyper-digitized world.
 
By investing in easier-to-use technology that targets and eases these pain points, and leveraging genuine and actionable intelligence derived from all of a company’s data, businesses can start to gain a cohesive view of their progress and see how they measure up to their competition – before it’s too late.


About the survey:
In September 2019, Teradata commissioned independent market research company Vanson Bourne to conduct a quantitative research study of 270 IT and business decision makers across US (100), UK (50), France (30), Germany (30), China (30) and Japan (30). Respondents were from organizations with 1,000 employees or more and with a global annual revenue of more than $250 million. The organizations could be from a variety of private or public sectors including financial services and IT, technology and telecoms. Interviews were conducted online using a rigorous multi-level screening process to ensure that only suitable candidates were given the opportunity to participate.