Organisational buy-in greatest challenge in moving to digital, says UK enterprise

Over half of organisations still see general commitment outweighing even budget as main obstacle, finds research

Over half of UK organisations see getting their organisation to commit as the greatest challenge in moving to digital, Computing research has found.

During research published in a recent Computing whitepaper (Data strategy: building a framework for success), 130 IT decision makers were asked, "What do you consider to be the biggest challenges in moving digital business in your organisation"?

The overwhelming majority said that "getting the organistion committee to support the required change" was the key obstacle, accounting for 55 per cent of the survey answers.

Next was securing budget for the initiatives at 44 per cent, finding the right skills at 43 per cent, and finding the right technologies to support the initiatives, at 37 per cent.

The report recommends that "with strategy and leadership in place, businesses can start using tools and services to make the most of the data they hold. Such tools and services should not be bought on spec.

"A good place to start is creating a current baseline and specifying the required capabilities. This should be done as soon as possible - the longer it is left the more difficult it will be to reduce the gap between required and current base. A carefully considered roadmap will help employees around the business to comprehend the nature of transformation success."

Meanwhile, the biggest challenge around data generally within an organisation was identified as "integrating data between existing systems and databases", which accounted for 25 per cent of respondents in this particular section of the survey.

Improving data quality was a a challenge for 14 per cent, while a further 14 per cent found securing data was the biggest issue.

Utilising data in business process, extracting value from unstructured data and analysing data generally also figured highly.

To read the full report and learn more about the pain points and challenges of digital transformation, click here.