Mexico. Adopting new technologies throughout the production process to make a company more efficient, faster and more competitive is the main objective of Digital Transformation. If the technology is not applied throughout the production chain, from the creation of a product or service, the production, and the logistics of its delivery or form of storage, its benefit will not be seen.
With so many tools and possibilities on the market today, it is possible to digitize everything; adapt sensors, make controls and analysis of information so that nothing is lost during the journey of an offer. However, each step requires investments, not only financial, but also time and labor.
According to a study by the consulting firm Gartner, released by the Mexican company Comscor, only 16% of the IT budget in Latin American countries will be used for Digital Transformation, compared to the global average of 19% during 2017. However, the good news is that that percentage aims to improve by 2018, reaching 28% according to the intention of 2,598 CIOs who participated in the study.
Overall, Latino companies will increase their IT investments by an average of 1.7% receiving more attention in 2017 Business Intelligence and Analytics (36%), infrastructure and Data Center (32%) and Enterprise Resource Planning - ERP (25%).
The main problem, according to the interviewees, is in the management of personnel and the training of specialists, although 33% of CIOs worldwide believe that the lack of skilled labor delays the process and that the knowledge acquired previously is not enough to meet the desired performance needs.
According to the study Latin America 4.0: Digital Transformation in the value chain, co-ordered by the gA group, the companies with higher levels of digitalization are those in the service sectors, especially health, financial and telecommunication. However, there is still a great disagreement between the level of digitalization of the manufacturing process with those of company administration, which creates a step in the production chain.
This study also shows that 75% of companies have some kind of digital strategy, but less than half, 46% are able to quickly implement that technology at some stage. In addition, almost 50% of executives believe that their companies' technology initiatives communicate little, and that they are isolated.
Coordinators of the gA study defend that Latin American companies must work four pillars to achieve some degree of Digital Transformation:
- Improve business processes by addressing them in a practical way.
- Manage, train and train a team so that they are good enough to solve the demands of the Digital Transformation process.
- Find indicators that can prove the value of digitalization regarding what the company could earn if it had all the processes involved with that technology.
- Have a specific business model for the way in which technology is intended to be used and how it will impact on the day to day of the company, in the relationship with customers, users, shareholders and suppliers.
A study conducted by Dell Technologies called the Digital Business Research Index, shows that developing countries are more technologically mature to drive Digital Transformation. In the first place, from the list of 12 countries appears India, in the second is Brazil and Mexico in the third.
The study considered the most mature companies those that have more innovation agility, vision of new opportunities, knowledge of the market and its competition, demonstration of transparency and trust, delivery of a unique experience to the consumer and real-time operations.
On the other hand, even being well qualified in several attributes, developing countries have extra difficulties in the lack of resources to invest, inadequate tools to work with, little possibility of offering a high degree of security and privacy to customers and users. In short, Latin American companies must know their markets, the tools and processes that are necessary to start the Digital Transformation, but they are investing the few, using enough budget so as not to become obsolete and lose the market.
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