More than half of employers undertaking digital transformation initiatives have stalled or abandoned select projects while dealing with the complex personnel, process and technology changes needed to modernize IT operations and enhance their ability to support business needs.
That is among the findings of a recent IDG Research Services survey commissioned by technology solutions provider Insight Enterprises. IDG surveyed 200 IT executives working in organizations with a median of 6,250 employees across a range of industries.
The study found that 44% have not yet made process, operational and/or technology changes to support IT transformation initiatives. This highlights the large number of enterprises that are still in the early stages of the transformation journey, the report said.
About half of the organizations (51%) have stalled or abandoned portions of their IT transformation programs because of challenges faced while undertaking these projects. This includes 65% of enterprises with more than 10,000 employees, which the study said reflects the complexities of implementing change across the disparate legacy technologies and distributed teams common for companies at that scale.
Nearly two thirds (62%) have failed to implement a strong foundation for transforming IT by both documenting and communicating their plan across the organization, and 39% have documented but not shared their strategy — limiting their ability to create the culture of change needed for success.
A majority of organizations (64%) cite legacy IT infrastructure, processes, and/or tools among the top five barriers to transformation, followed by data security (60%), technology silos (59%), budget (54%) and competing priorities (53%).
