A study by two Deloitte partners says midmarket organizations have lagged behind their enterprise counterparts in digitization efforts, though progress has been made recently. We offer our thoughts on the survey and how it relates to MES conference attendees.
Consulting firm Deloitte recently completed its latest in-depth analysis of the midmarket to define the tech trends that are having the greatest impact on midsize enterprises.
Reading the report by Deloitte partners Roger Nanney, vice chairman, and Anthony Stephan, technology strategy and transformation leader, was eye-opening and a good way to compare the results from our varied Midsize Enterprise Summit audience surveys.
In summing up the study, Nanney and Stephan found that, in years past, midmarket organizations—publicly held, private and public sector—often lagged their enterprise counterparts in digitization efforts. However, in the 2017 study, they observed “notable progress in the adoption of emerging technologies.” This led them to conclude that there is “compelling evidence that these companies are taking dramatic steps to not only deploy emerging technologies but also to eradicate organizational barriers that once slowed their adoption.”
We would agree with some of those comments, but note that the IT leaders who attend our MES conferences believe their firms are far ahead of their enterprise counterparts in many tech areas. But the Deloitte survey was made up predominantly of C-suite execs, not just IT leaders, so the results do display the perceptions of senior management.
The report had six key findings which are detailed below.
• The Deloitte respondents recognize that a wide spectrum of technology-related trends produce productivity gains, and they are upping their IT budgets to capture them.
• A growing number of organizations see value in aligning business and technology requirements, and are accomplishing this by exploring governance practices.
• Companies cite stronger collaboration between IT and business leaders when it comes to managing the IT agenda, a nod to shifting dynamics in the C-suite.
• Analytics and cloud solutions remain at the top of the list, but most companies surveyed have plans to tap breakthrough technologies such as blockchain, machine intelligence, and mixed reality.
• The companies are more comfortable maintaining security around cloud integration and mobility, removing a key obstacle to their deployment.
• These companies are increasingly focused on using breakthrough technologies to attract customers and understand their behavior.
In coming newsletters, we will dive more deeply into the Deloitte research, but the heart of the study was encouraging for senior IT leaders, tech suppliers and solution and service providers in that it painted a rosy picture for tech investment. “Tech budgets are growing,” the Deloitte partners wrote, because midmarket companies are using tech to compete with larger peers in construction, media and biopharmaceutical industries. The survey found a new high-water mark for the percentage of midmarket firms that were spending more than five percent of their revenue on tech.
