The industry-specific findings are in from our latest global survey,"Organizational Agility: Roadmap to Digital Acceleration."We intended this to be an expansion and update to our original"Organizational Agility” study调查,但凑巧的是,发生在7月and August 2020, when most companies were decidedly not doing business as usual. However, we examined how companies around the world were dealing with the business implications of a global pandemic.
Professional services organizations are outperforming other key industries in important agility indicators, yet they still have a lot of work to do when it comes to digital transformation. This is because digital transformation, like many things, has been accelerated by the pandemic. Transformation projects with yearslong timelines are now just too slow. To ensure they can keep pace with ever-changing, ever-expanding needs, professional services organizations must accelerate their digital efforts.
We discovered that professional services companies outperform other key industries in agility indicators around adaptability, skills, empowerment, and measurement. However, the professional services sector falls behind others in aligning technologies with its digital transformation objectives, which is a key enabler for agility.
About the Survey
We collected written input from 1,024 respondents, including C-suite executives and their direct reports, and we interviewed 15 senior business executives, C-suite leaders, and transformation experts. Survey participants were from 14 countries and 12 industries. Breaking it down by industries, 18% worked in financial services, 15% worked in professional services, 10% worked in IT, and 9% worked in retail. The survey measured facets of the five key characteristics of organizational agility:
Responsiveness. Organizations that are responsive are more adept at continuous planningand driving change.
Adaptability. Fluid organizational structures and processes boost agility by allowing organizations to use existing resources toadapt to emerging requirements.
Skills. Agile leaders have plans to upskill the majority of their workforce, push specific initiatives to increase employee engagement, andattract top talent.
Empowerment. Employees can make better decisions when they are empowered with timely and relevantdata access.
Measurement. To effectively manage their digitally driven initiatives, organizations need tools and processes for continuouslymeasuring performance.
Key Global Agility and Digital Acceleration Trends
以下四个真理remained consistent in our survey results across industries and regions:
Digital revenues dominate and are accelerating. When firms were asked whether they expected 75% or more of their revenue to come from digital sources within the next three years, 36% said yes. Last year, only 12% of firms expected 75% or more of their revenue to come from digital sources within three years.
Smart technology is driving digital growth. Organizations that are deploying artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML), or robotic process automation (RPA) are more than twice as likely to report high levels of digital revenue as those that have made little or no such progress.
Changing tools is easier than changing minds and habits. While more than half of organizations (56%) say their technology is compatible with digital transformation goals, just 16% say the same about their company’s culture. Adopting new technology tostreamline workflows and help employees in their day-to-day rolesis critical for organizations to realize their technology ROI goals.
Agility builds resilience. One-third of leaders agree that faster digital growth improves organizational resilience, especially in the face of crises. For example, organizations thatrapidly responded to the pandemicwere more likely to have embedded agile capabilities such as data accessibility and cross-functional collaboration.
Professional Services Are Putting People First
So how do survey results from professional services respondents align with the other findings? When it comes to three-year digital-revenue projections, professional services is in the middle of the pack of all industries for bullishness on digital revenues. Professional services is behind retail and financial services, the other two industries where we did a deeper dive: