Three quarters of firms ‘stuck’ in their digital transformation journey due to data fragmentation

New study finds that 74% of European organisations are struggling to introduce digital tools and practices to improve decision making.

  • 4 years ago Posted in

The majority (74 per cent) of businesses across the UK and Europe are still facing major obstacles trying to introduce new digital tools and practices to support their decision making, according to a new report.


The primary barrier, according to 57 per cent of European C-Suite leaders, is data fragmentation. Siloed data results in a lack of visibility across business processes, and in turn a poor decision-making culture. 

These difficulties are compounded by the findings that 65 per cent of leaders feel significant pressure to deliver a successful digital transformation strategy. They need to be able to act and react fast enough to dynamic market conditions and innovation opportunities – and open themselves up to critical risks.

In partnership with IDC, Domo, a business to business cloud software company - polled 375 employees across multiple industries to understand how they are using modern digital technologies to improve and help deliver value across business. 

The study also found that C-Suite leaders find it difficult to create a holistic view of their business. This restricts leaders in taking an integrated approach to digital transformation, as they struggle to connect the dots between varying stakeholders. Key barriers include:

  • Data fragmentation (57%) - data being held in disparate systems and not easily brought together to provide the right content for making business decisions.  

  • Lack of visibility across business processes (28%) - decision makers don’t understand the implications of their decisions. 

  • Organisational complexity (45%) - barriers in getting all the right stakeholders together to agree on decisions that affect the business.  

“Leaders are facing unprecedented amounts of pressure from technological, social and regulatory forces. It’s no longer about driving digital transformation in vertical stacks, but rather horizontally across the entire enterprise,” said Ian Tickle, Senior Vice President and General Manager for EMEA at Domo. “However, when data is stuck in silos across the business it hinders new and efficient ways of working, and ultimately stalls digital transformation”. 

The research predicts that by 2029, 75 per cent of European organisations will be completely digitally transformed or what IDC defines as a ‘Digital Native Enterprise’. It is clear, however, that in order to achieve this the right processes need to be put in place - plans and predictions can’t happen without effective business decision-making. 

Most firms have not fully embraced digitisation of business processes, products and services. For example, only 4 per cent of ‘digital laggards’, have integrated tools such as Domo to harness the power of their data and accelerate time-to-value. Compared to 67 per cent of ‘digital leaders’ who, as a result are able to react quickly and accurately enough to cope with the dynamic market conditions. 

Tickle summarises: “True Digital Transformation isn’t just about creating a ‘digital outside’ to your organisation: leaders must consider every business element, investing in reinventing their data, expertise and workflows to create advantage. Having effective business decision-making tools that harness all the data available is the key foundational step to advance any digital transformation journey.”

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