Is your company winning, digitally?

This week SAP revealed its Digital Transformation Executive study findings at its Leonardo Live conference in Frankfurt. TIANA CLINE reports back.

Is your business ready for digital transformation? And if so, does it have a digital transformation strategy in place?

Vivek Bapat, SAP SE’s senior vice president of Global Head of Marketing Strategy and Thought Leadership, says that digital transformation is no longer an option.

“It’s an essential driver of revenue, profit and growth. Executives need to move from simply understanding the high stakes to activating complete end-to-end execution across their business.”

According to an innovative study from SAP SE (supported by Oxford Economics), 84% of companies around the world say that digital transformation is critical to their survival in the next five years, only 3% have completed company-wide transformation efforts.

What’s interesting is that SAP surveyed over 3 100 companies worldwide and their top 100 are not all from the technology industry, they’re spread across a wide range of industries, from retail to manufacturing to financial services.

What’s more is that the economics are also diverse – 37% of the digital transformation leaders are big – with US$10 billion or more in revenue – others are as small as $100 million in revenue.

The study also shows that to be what SAP are terming a “digital leader”, you need to view digital transformation as a business model transformation, not a technology project.

In a nutshell, true digital transformation requires innovative technologies, digital skills investment and retraining the existing talent. It’s a continuous process, not a once-off end goal.

“The next two years will be a key inflection point, which will separate the digital winners from those left behind,” says Bapat.

Click here to view the full findings of SAP’s Digital Transformation Executive study.