Customer expectations drive over 70 per cent of UK digital decisions

It turns out the customer actually is always right, according to a Computing survey

The "competitive force" most driving digital decision-making in the UK IT industry is evolving customer expectations, Computing research shows.

In a recent whitepaper entitled Putting data properly in its place, 130 UK IT decision-makers were asked "Which competitive forces driven by digitalisation are currently impacting your business?".

The overwhelming response was that it is customer expectations upon them that are driving digatilisation of infrastructure, data management and even general business decisions.

Other answers included "competitors disrupting traditional business model with digital innovations", which accounted for 39 per cent of responses in this multiple choice question.

A further 39 per cent identified "emerging digital technologies eroding demand for products/ services".

New entrants into an industry or sector starting out with digital business models and challenging the status quo, as well as changing, digital-led supplier delivery models made up 35 per and 32 per cent of responses respectively.

In light of of these findings, the report recommends:

"The only way of guaranteeing [digital transformation] quality and avoiding the potential pitfalls of getting it wrong in this kind of environment is to place greater emphasis on data management and to invest in the technologies and processes of a holistic data framework and management tools able to put the plumbing to rights and data properly in its place."

Only five per cent of respondents, when asked if their organisation was effectively leveraging data assets effectively to create business values, replied that they "full agree" with the statement, whie 36 per cent sat on the fence, neither agreeing or disagreeing.

However, a total of 39 per cent of respondents mostly or strongly agreed that data management was critical for the success of an organistion.

To read the full digital transfomatiomn and data management report and discover more findings, conclusions and recommendations, click here.