A new study has outlined which areas of technology organisations are investing heavily in, to accelerate their digital transformation journey this year.
The study from PointSource has found that the largest area of technology businesses are currently investing in is voice-activated technologies, with facial recognition technology the least deployed initiative to date.
Currently almost half (45%) of decision makers within a company feel that their current digital footprint is outdated, in comparison to that of their competitors. Therefore, investment in technology areas is crucial to ensure businesses stay competitive in the growing digital market.
Responding to this concern, 94% of companies have said they have increased business focus on digital growth. Furthermore 90% also admit that digital technology plays a central role to achieving their business goals.
Therefore, it is encouraging to see that over 25% of business budgets have been invested into artificial intelligence (AI), blockchain and facial recognition. An encouraging 80% of businesses believe AI can make an immediate impact on their business, with 60% adopting AI for process humans cannot do and 40% using the technology to replace workers. However despite this positive figure, the study found that over half (53%) of businesses do not feel prepared to use these technologies.
To push forward digital transformation even further, over half (54%) of organisations have said research has been carried out into the growing trend of facial recognition. Additionally, further research has gone into AI for 65% of businesses and 61% are researching more into the use of Blockchain.
The study revealed an encouraging amount of businesses are already deploying digital technologies within their organisations. Almost three quarters (72%) already have voice-activated initiatives in place, followed by AI for 66%, Blockchain for 64% and facial recognition for 59%.
From the research carried out, it revealed that management and dissatisfaction from employees are the biggest drivers to changing the digital footprint. The study found over half (57%) of senior managers and above are unsatisfied with one or more of the technologies that are relied on in their business. Additionally CTOs have been found to be a big barrier to digital transformation, with only 11% of business CTOs leading the purchasing process.
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The survey also revealed over 60% of departments fight over budget and resource allocation, which is hindering the digital transformation process as well as driving costs higher. Wasted downtime currently costs businesses on average and hour of $7,739.64.
PointSource surveyed a total of 679 US senior-level decision makers and above, covering departments such as marketing, IT or operations.
