In October 2021, we surveyed over 1,000 senior executives in the US, with a goal to understand their digital appetite and aspirations for 2022.
The survey revealed interesting insights on Corporate America’s readiness for various digital initiatives, which we consolidated in our 2022 State of Digital Transformation report. This blog is a condensed version of the survey’s most compelling digital transformation statistics.
Digital Transformation Statistics from Modus Create’s Survey
69% of American organizations consider digital initiatives critical for their organization.
Digital awareness in Corporate America is at an all-time high, and there are no signs of slowing down. Most American companies understand the importance of digital initiatives and will invest in them in 2022.
38% of large enterprises plan to spend over $1 million on digital initiatives in 2022.
After being disrupted by nimble, agile players for decades, large enterprises are fighting back with significant investments in digital initiatives. On the other hand, 22% of medium and 2% of small companies plan to invest more than $1 million on digital initiatives in 2022.
82% of larger enterprises, 74% of mid-level firms, and 57% of smaller American businesses consider digital initiatives critical to their business.
Executives in larger enterprises are more likely to understand the importance of digital initiatives. Strengthened by higher digital investment, large organizations will get more effective at dealing with the threat from new entrants.
Improving cybersecurity posture is the most popular digital initiative for 2022.
32% of American organizations are planning to invest in cybersecurity-related initiates. High-profile data breaches and data privacy legislations have boosted cybersecurity awareness among executives, making it the most popular digital initiative for 2022.
Only 11% of American organizations plan to create an innovation lab in 2022.
Creating an innovation lab is the least popular digital initiative for 2022, as many organizations struggle to align innovation goals to business outcomes. What separates high-performing innovation centers from the rest is their emphasis on throughput over theater. Organizations that use innovation labs to solve real-world problems for potential customers will continue to gain value from them.
49% of executives don’t have a clear plan or goal for their digital initiatives.
Almost half of the American executives lack clarity on their digital goals. This is primarily due to increased departmental silos, making it difficult to strategize cross-functional digital initiatives.
56% of executives feel that they are currently equipped with the resources, team, and budget to implement digital initiatives,
More than half of American executives believe they are equipped to handle planned digital initiatives in-house without requiring any support from outside agencies. This number is higher than executives who have a plan for their digital initiatives, signifying a preparation and expectation mismatch.
66% of executives feel confident that their company can successfully complete digital initiatives.
Executive confidence exceeds preparation when it comes to digital initiatives. 66% of executives feel confident of finishing their digital initiatives even though less than half have a plan in place for them. Even though implementing digital initiatives can be notoriously tricky, executive sentiment isn’t timid at all. Departmental silos, underestimating the scale of the challenge, and a disconnect from customer pain points, are a few reasons behind misplaced confidence levels.
39% of executives in large enterprises aren’t aware of their total planned digital spending for 2022.
There is ambiguity in spending as digital initiatives involve multiple departments, and their costs are often distributed across multiple shared resources. As a result, digital budgets are often confused with routine operational IT spendings such as servers or existing software development teams.
31% of companies in the finance industry plan to spend over $1 million on digital initiatives in 2022.
The finance industry is modernizing rapidly and has the highest percentage of companies that plan to spend over $1 million on digital initiatives in 2022.
41% of large enterprises will invest in IT modernization in 2022.
Application modernization initiatives such as resolving technical debt and cloud migration are the most popular planned digital initiatives for organizations with over $500 million annual revenue.
Media/Entertainment (66%), Finance/Accounting (59%), and Research/Engineering (54%) have a high percentage of executives who believe digital initiatives are either extremely or very critical to their organization’s overall health.
The level of digital awareness varies considerably with the industry. Certain industries have reached a higher level of digital maturity, while others remain unconvinced. As organizations realize the need to embrace digital initiatives, this industry-based disparity will continue to fade away. In today’s world, every company is a technology company. They just need to realize that.
57% of large organizations have adopted an Agile framework for implementing digital initiatives.
Agile is officially mainstream with high adoption rates among enterprises. However, companies need to be careful about adopting Agile workflows before automating their processes. Many teams succumb to Agile theater rather than embracing true agility with automation.
Digital Transformation Statistics from Other Sources
Here are a few more interesting statistics from reputed sources we found during research.
The average cost of a data breach is over $4 million — IBM.
The average cost of a data breach is more than the average seed funding of an American startup and 10% up from the year before. This is a major factor behind the popularity of cybersecurity-related initiatives in 2022.
Total fines under GDPR have exceeded $1.5 billion — Data Privacy Manager
With more data privacy regulations on the horizon in 2022, it’s unsurprising that cybersecurity initiatives are a top priority for organizations this year. A strong security posture helps organizations manage user data better and adhere to relevant privacy regulations.
Engineers spend 33% of their time dealing with technical debt — Stripe
Technical debt is a severe impediment to the pace of product development. By modernizing their applications, organizations can reduce technical debt and put measures in place to acquire less of it in the future.
80% of federal IT projects follow Agile methodologies — Deloitte
Even the federal government, which is traditionally seen as a slow-moving monolith, has embraced Agile methodologies for its IT projects. This is a visible indication of Agile’s mainstream adoption.
5G will account for 21% of all mobile internet connections by 2025 — GSMA
With significantly higher speed, a 100x increase in network capacity, and a 10x decrease in end-to-end latency, the 5G network would be critical to the success of several emerging technologies such as AI, IoT, autonomous vehicles, AR, and VR.
The global business process automation market will grow to $19.6 billion by 2026 — Marketsandmarkets
Both intra-departmental and interdepartmental automation will accelerate in 2022 with the wider adoption of cloud-based SaaS solutions such as Jira, HubSpot, Trello, Salesforce, etc. As a result, APIs and integrations will play a vital role in delivering a cohesive automation experience at the company level.
55% of operations teams have largely or completely automated their SDLC — GitLab
In a 2020 GitLab survey, the percentage of respondents who had largely or even completely automated their SDLC was 8%. In the 2021 edition of the report, this has jumped to over 50%, largely due to the widespread adoption of CI/CD. SDLC automation is a vital step in any organization’s agile transformation.
Only 5% of executives agree their organizations have flexible budgeting for large-scale Agile teams — Bain
Business requirements change rapidly in IT. An Agile product development process can only work with an Agile financing infrastructure. Therefore, CFOs must work towards supporting Agile teams with flexible budgeting.
54% of organizations manage their customer experience operations in silos — Business 2 Community
In cultures prone to departmental silos, executives often underestimate the time, resources, and effort required to complete digital initiatives, leading to misplaced confidence levels. When all teams understand the pain points of the customers, it becomes easier for executives to align business plans roadmaps and make more informed decisions.
Download 2024 Digital Transformation Report from Modus Create
For more digital transformation statistics and insights, download the complete 2024 Investing in Digital Transformation & product Development report. You’ll also find practical tips and recommendations on running cross-functional digital initiatives from our executive team.
