According to the survey “The Barometer of Digitalization in Romanian companies” conducted by the business consulting company Valoria in collaboration with Doingbusiness.ro, there are significant differences between the way CEOs and managers relate to the opportunities and challenges of accelerating digitalization. In this context, the results of the survey show that 7 out of 10 CEOs and only 4 out of 10 managers say that digitalization has had a huge influence on their business in 2020.
Thus, 67% of the managers and 59% of the general managers who answered the questionnaire said that they are confident in the digital transformation of the company and have the necessary knowledge, according to their role, to manage this process, while 63% of the general managers and 65% of managers know that the industry sector in which they operate has been affected to a large, and a very large extent by digital business models.
On the other hand, 27% of CEOs and 49% of managers said that there is not enough knowledge and expertise in the management team to evaluate and develop a digital business model but will give priority to building such expertise.
Moreover, the results of the survey show an important difference in perception between the general managers and the managers of the responding companies. While most CEOs (35%) say they have competitors affected to some extent by digitalization, most managers (31%) believe that competitors are largely affected. This difference in perception may cause delays in funding decisions for digitalization programs.
Other research findings show the following:
Obstacles to capitalizing on digitalization
Regarding the obstacles on the first three places in the case of CEOs are the following: the perception that they do not have digital consumers (47%), too high costs (43%), resistance to change (39%). In the case of managers in the first three places are the obstacles: the perception that they do not have digital consumers (43%), resistance to change (31%), and too high costs (27%).
The benefits of digitalization
The most important benefits of digitalization in the perception of CEOs are increased operational efficiency (55%), simplification of processes (54%), reduced costs (45%), followed by increased revenue (32%), and increased company brand (27%). In the case of managers, the most important benefits are the simplification of processes (68%), reduction of costs (59%), better operational efficiency (43%), an increase of revenues (24%), and improvement of the decision-making process with data analytics (19%).
Increase revenue by 10% through digitalization
In the first place among the digital products/services that managers want to adopt to generate 10% more revenue in the next 5 years are intelligent operational management systems (62%), Big Data and Data Analytics (51%), and IoT (40%). In the case of managers, the percentages are as follows: intelligent operational management systems (48%), IoT (48%), and Big Data and Data Analytics (39%).
Strategy on the inclusion of AI
Artificial Intelligence is not yet on the agenda of CEOs and managers in terms of strategy to increase the company’s business capabilities, and the results of the study show that 60% of CEOs and 61% of managers gave a negative answer to this question.
Using Robotic Process Automation (RPA)
Robotic Process Automation is the technology that has exploded into adoption in companies in all areas of activity this year, especially due to the favorable effect on the efficiency and resilience of the company’s processes. In Romania, however, RPA is not on the agenda of general managers and managers, as the findings of this study show. CEOs and managers of companies using RPA said that this technology is present in the financial field (39% vs. 33%) and general accounting (27% vs. 19%).
The impact of digitalization on turnover. At this edition of the study, 32% of the general managers of the responding companies said that digitalization will contribute to the increase of turnover by 10%-20% in the next 3 years, and 29% of managers believe that digitalization will increase the company’s turnover by 5%-10% in the same period. However, 15% of CEOs and 9% of managers said that this contribution will be over 30%.
The impact of digitalization on the profit margin
In 2020, 18% of the general managers of the companies responding to the study, and 18% of the managers said that digitalization will increase the company’s profit margin by over 20% in the next 3 years, of which 15% and 7% respectively said that the growth rate will exceed 30%.
The impact of digitalization on the company’s market value
Some 37% of the CEOs and only 24% of managers said that digitalization will contribute to the company’s market value by 5%-10%. On the other hand, most managers (27%) said that digitalization will not impact the value of the company in any way.
In conclusion
In the pandemic, more and more companies have become convinced of the importance of digitalization. Firm options for a mode of operation that favors tangibility have collided with the new reality that proposes the intangible. The result of this meeting is the growing need for companies to move towards digitalization.
According to the results of the survey “The Barometer of Digitalization”, the digitalization process among Romanian companies has entered the agenda of general managers but is advancing by small steps. Forced by circumstances, top managers seem to wait until they have nowhere to go to consider adopting digital products and allocating resources to digitize the companies they run.
