Close to 90% firms will invest in tech in response to Covid-19: Report

A study by HCL Technologies summarising the digital technology investment and deployment by enterprises in the wake of Covid-19, has found that 89% of the companies surveyed report an increase in their digital initiatives.

Titled 'The Digital Acceleration for Business Resilience' report and done in conjunction with Vanson Bourne, the study saw participation from 420 senior business and IT decision-makers across industries. The respondents state cybersecurity and cloud are the top two technologies to receive increased investment as a direct result of the pandemic.

A key finding of the survey is a major increase in board-level focus on digital transformation pre-pandemic to today, jumping from 42% at the start of 2020 to 55% currently. As the pandemic situation evolves, this number is expected to keep rising. Additionally, those industries that started 2020 at the bottom in terms of board-level digital focus have reported the greatest increases throughout the year, closing the gap and representing a leveling of digital investment focus across industries.


The survey also said that 88% of organizations already have a formal digital transformation strategy in place, and 57% have a roadmap for the same.

The survey said that 45% of respondents use a partner ecosystem to execute their enterprise digital transformation and 48% report external partners as playing a role in defining their digital transformation strategy.

Respondents stated the top three barriers to digital transformation are data security/governance (40%), legacy technology (35%), and lack of internal skills (35%).

More than half (58%) of respondents reported they have created new in-house teams to execute digital transformation, while only a slightly smaller proportion (55%) are executing within business units.

Up to 70% of organizations with a robust data strategy provide a consistent omnichannel customer experience, vs 27% of organizations with incomplete or nonexistent data strategies.