Businesses looking to modernise their businesses using IT transformation are failing because companies aren't able to find skilled workers, think too much in the short-term, don't collaborate or spend enough money, a BPI Network study has revealed.
The firm questioned IT professionals about their working environment and the organisation's IT transformation strategies. It revealed that 80 per cent of workers in the IT department spend half their time troubleshooting and maintaining legacy systems rather than developing new modern ways of working.
Additionally, 17 per cent of the IT workforce spends 90 per cent of their time carrying out routine maintenance tasks instead of innovating better working practices.
The biggest barrier to IT transformation was collaboration, with 45 per cent of IT professionals saying their organisation lacks communication with business leaders and decision makers. More than half of those questioned also said business managers take too long to approach IT staff after making a decision and when they do, they don't provide enough funding or resource to carry out the wishes.
"Corporate executives tell us technology-led business innovation is now a critical competitive factor in every sector of the global economy. But, as this study clearly demonstrates, most companies lack the people, processes and investments to make transformation a reality," said Donovan Neale-May, executive director of the BPI Network. "We can expect to see a continuing shakeout between the leaders and laggards in technology-led transformation."
Another alarming finding of BPI Network's report was that 70 per cent of IT workers said their company has not yet even started the transformation or are only just getting started to modernise their business' IT systems.
However, half of IT leaders think their company will eventually move everything or most operations to the cloud.
"Companies are at the start of a major shift to new technology models and a dependency on next-generation infrastructures, applications and services as they embark on the journey to becoming a digital enterprise," said Kevin Leahy, General Manager of Data Centre Solutions at Dimension Data.
"The expertise and resources to get this done are clearly in short supply. Companies will need to tap into the right partners with the right capabilities and resources to ensure they are not left behind."
