A growing number of CIOs are pushing the C-suite to making digital transformation a priority, and those who listen are reaping significant operational and financial benefits, according to a new report by Palo Alto, Calif.-based cloud software and services provider VMware Inc.
What’s more, according to the company’s latest State of the Digital Workspace report, released Wednesday, the business gains of digital transformation outweigh their operational counterparts by a significant margin.
“Companies that have successfully executed digital workspace initiatives reported higher mobile workforce effectiveness, user access to mission-critical applications, and user satisfaction with IT than non-executing companies,” the reports authors wrote. “For all except two categories, business-related improvements were 10-20 percent higher than the categories of operational improvements.”
For example, the study found that business mobility investments resulted in an average ROI of 150 per cent, and that businesses reluctant to jump on the mobile bandwagon have increasingly rare company: 62 per cent of organizations – up from 56 percent in 2015 – now recognize mobility’s potential to transform their businesses and view a lack of adoption as an impediment, the report said, while 78 per cent have now successfully executed or are actively pursuing mobile initiatives.
Meanwhile, 41 per cent of IT and business decision makers saw improvements in total management costs after successfully executing digital workspace efforts, versus 30 per cent of their non-executing peers; and 39 per cent of decision-makers reported cost improvements in end-user support after embracing digital workspaces, compared to 23 per cent among those who did not.
To produce the research behind the report, VMware conducted online surveys of 1263 business decision makers and IT influencers, 41 per cent of them VMware customers and 500 from North America – that is, the U.S. and Canada – to examine their progress in transitioning from the client-server era to the mobile-cloud era. (An additional 458 respondents were from Australia, China, Japan, and New Zealand, and 305 were from Europe.)
For the purposes of the survey, VMware defined “digital workspace” as one that enables employees and customers to accomplish work anytime, anywhere across smartphones, tablets, laptops, PCs, and virtual workstations; and that supports critical business processes such as clinical patient care and customer service. Implementing a digital workspace, the authors emphasized, requires coordinated planning and execution involving both IT and business leaders.
The company also recommended that businesses interested in implementing a digital workspace take the following steps:
- Invest in user education before implementing software.
- Weigh strategic gains higher than cost savings.
- Establish a business mobility center of excellence.
- Factor in time to assess and properly deploy.
VMware released a handy infographic summarizing the report’s findings, which you can check out below (click for a larger version), or download the report here.
