Digital is the new way to business and while the global businesses were moving towards adopting it slowly & steadily, the pandemic pushed them to the edge compelling them to move faster than sooner. This has opened up a Pandora of IT gaps than they ever expected. A new research from Pegasystems (NASDAQ: PEGA) also stresses that around 74 percent of the participants agree to it as the crisis exposed more gaps in their business operations and systems than they originally expected. The research also reveals that most business leaders overestimated the state of their digital transformation efforts, which has hampered their ability to adapt to the pandemic.

Conducted by research firm Savanta in last May, this global study highlights that out of five, four leaders though they were fairly deep into their DX initiatives, with 35 percent accessing themselves in ‘advanced stages’. But this has surely left them vulnerable to a host of customer engagement failings triggered by the pandemic as over 54 percent leaders conceded they should have done more to help their customers during the crisis. Around 37 percent of the leaders communicated at least one message to customers, which they was badly received and damaged their brand reputation, while 36 percent said they lost customers during the pandemic due to failings in their communications.

While the global businesses faced such a situation of such crisis for the first time, business leaders are preparing themselves to fix the lags in their technology infrastructure to ensure they do not face any such risk in the next crisis if any. Hence 71 percent of the leaders say the pandemic has forced them to accelerate their DX plans, 62 percent will increase their priority level of DX within their organization, and another 56 percent will add more DX investment. No wonder, with such DX plans, around

What this research makes clear is that digital transformation can no longer be a 'nice to have' for today's businesses

nine out of 10 business leaders feel confident that they will be better prepared to face a similar crisis if one hits in the next two years. The survey also found the three most popular DX projects that business leaders need to prepare for a future crisis. These are cloud-based systems (48 percent), CRM software (41 percent) and AI-driven analytics and decisioning (37 percent).

Despite opening all the loopholes in the businesses and its IT infrastructure and processes, the pandemic has brought some sunshine too. 74 percent of respondents say their business learned a lot during the crisis and will permanently change the way they operate for the better; 69 percent learnt to be more empathetic with customers; 61 percent learned more about their customers during the crisis than they did in the past two years combined. As remove working has been the lifeline for organizations during this pandemic, 71 percent feels this new working trend has been successful and will likely continue even after the crisis ends; and 52 percent reported employees being more productive now than before pandemic, while 17 percent saw a slight dip in productivity and three percent reporting significant drop.

“What this research makes clear is that digital transformation can no longer be a ‘nice to have’ for today’s businesses,” says Don Schuerman, CTO & Vice President of Product Marketing, Pegasystems. “Even those that thought they were digitally advanced now realize they’ve only scratched the surface. Organizations may need to reexamine every part of their business for digital readiness or face consequences, regardless of whether another crisis of this magnitude happens again or not.”