Half of UK enterprises admit they delay digital transformation projects due to the fact there are too many barriers to overcome and too much existing pressure on IT.
That's according to new research by technology and services provider NTT, which found that the two most common barriers to digital transformation include concerns over security and regulation non-compliance (faced by 42% of surveyed enterprises) and the significant upfront investments required before companies are able to trial a new transformational concept (37%).
Other frequent obstacles included limited access to emerging technology skills, such as AI or blockchain and concerns about business disruption.
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The new report by NTT on “The Hesitancy Gap”, which was based on a survey of 200 IT decision-makers in large UK enterprises with over 1,000 employees, found that IT teams spend over a quarter (26%) of their time just laying the groundwork for digital transformation projects. This, according to NTT, comes at a cost of roughly £2.01 million per year.
Companies are wasting time as well as money. According to the report, building a partner ecosystem and cloud infrastructure, as well as implementing connectivity, adds an estimated nine months to digital transformation projects. NTT recommends businesses look into new concepts in a vendor-neutral ecosystem before taking the digital transformation plunge.
“Having access to a full-scale, production-ready environment where a new project can be trialled ‘in the wild’ using a multitude of cloud platforms, connections, technologies and service providers, without the hassle of having to pull everything together from scratch, would undoubtedly be a significant boon for digital business,” claims NTT’s report.
Earlier this month, NTT also found that reducing security risks is the biggest challenge faced by IT teams globally, as well as the top reason for managed service provider (MSP) consideration.
Other popular reasons for considering MSPs were to aid the development of key IT skills and to help with updating and improving internal processes or operational efficiencies.
