Less Than A Third Of Senior Leaders Believe Their Tech Foundation Is 'Very High': KPMG

While rapid technological breakthroughs fuel company transformation objectives, less than a third (29%) of senior leaders consider their technology foundation readiness to be very high, according to a survey by KPMG International.

The report underlines the importance of advanced technologies in driving transformation, with 76% of senior leaders believing that generative artificial intelligence, neural networks and digital twins will significantly enhance the likelihood of transformational success.

Despite this, enterprises are scrambling to keep up. For most enterprises, transformation is no longer episodic, but a state of continuous reinvention. A majority (88%) of enterprises are now running two or more transformation programmes, while 54% are running three or more concurrently.

The top five barriers limiting digital transformation include: lack of resources, skills or expertise; stakeholder resistance to change; stakeholder and employee resistance; competing business goals; and a lack of funds or an unclear business case, according to the report.

The report highlighted four areas that could help enterprises unlock capacity and value:

Resilient Cultures: Establishing a culture of trust, shared values and alignment to the strategic vision is key to transformation success and long-term organisational resilience. It comes as the research revealed that 73% of digitally mature enterprises have high levels of trust in their leaders.

Digital Maturity: Digitally mature enterprises are more likely to outperform. Yet, many enterprises are not leveraging the full value of their data, technology and people. Two-thirds of senior leaders rated their tech foundations as no better than adequate, while most expected the impacts of technology on transformation to rise in the next one to three years.

Partner Ecosystem Alignment: Leading companies are leveraging partnerships to accelerate go-to-market strategies, overcome supply chain challenges and improve technology capabilities. Research showed that only one-third of senior leaders believe their current partner ecosystem is strongly aligned with their transformation goals. Looking ahead, these leaders expect to invest more in partnerships rather than in building or buying technology.

Strong Orchestration Capabilities: Approximately 60% of senior leaders and line leads believe that adopting advanced technology will increase the likelihood of transformation success.

The report also emphasised that new technologies and expansive data repositories are helping enterprises to create greater value. These and other tools enable better resource allocation, data analysis and insights, customer understanding, risk management, and product and service innovation.