Employee Productivity Drives Digital Transformation

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Most enterprises, 97 percent in fact, are somewhere along their digital transformation, according to a recent study from Dell.

The vast majority of the 631 IT decision makers polled by Dimensional Research on behalf of Dell said they are already investing in cloud applications, cloud infrastructures, mobile and/or Internet of Things (IoT) solutions to transform their businesses. By adopting these technologies, most companies hope to drive up employee productivity (75 percent) and grow their businesses (67 percent).

Not all organizations are on the same stage of their digital transformation.

Most respondents (89 percent) acknowledged that digital transformation has taken hold in their industries, but only half (50 percent) said they believed the same for their own organizations. Just over a quarter (27 percent) their businesses are in the middle of their transformations.

In terms of technologies, mobile- and cloud-related projects ranked highly at 72 percent and 68 percent, respectively. IoT is also gaining ground with 37 percent.

Security weighs heavily on the minds of IT pros in the midst of digitally transforming their organizations. A whopping 96 percent of respondents said security was a major challenge, due to the risk of security breaches and a lack of resources, among other factors IT specialists typically confront in their efforts to safeguard their organization’s data.

Worryingly, a mere 18 percent said security was involved in all digital transformation initiatives, including projects involving the cloud, IoT, mobile and self-service solutions. Seventy-six percent said security was brought into the loop a little too late.

Dell’s Digital Transformation Security Survey (registration required) also revealed some friction between IT security teams and the users they’re working to protect.

Fearing their projects may get shot down, most business users (85) avoid engaging with security teams. A majority of respondents (63 percent) said those concerns are unfounded.

The report suggests a couple of strategies to help change attitudes toward IT security teams, recasting them into enablers of digital transformation instead of obstacles.

“Identity management is a key building block for digital transformation and must be a business-enabler for the IT organization. Base identity and access decisions on a unified single definition of the truth (role, policy, workflow, authentication, authorization, etc.) so that every new system, user type, or access scenario doesn’t require reinventing the wheel,” stated Dell. Other tips include prioritizing rapid time-to-value and enablement versus customization and putting line-of-business personnel in charge of the digital transformation process as possible.

Pedro Hernandez is a contributing editor at Small Business Computing. Follow him on Twitter @ecoINSITE.