Skip to main content Skip to footer
Technology Consulting

Close the widening gap

September 15, 2021

4-MINUTE READ

In brief

  • This is the 4th consecutive year for Accenture to launch the China Enterprises Digital Transformation Index Research in collaboration with CICS-CERT.
  • Following a significant increase of 5% over the previous year, the proportion of "Digital Transformation Champions" has reached 16%.
  • The gap between Champions and other enterprises has been widen. Strategy, Capability and Value are 3 key areas for companies to focus.
  • 7 imperatives to leapfrogging digital maturity.

Benefited from effective domestic epidemic prevention control, macro economy policy, smart digital tools and resilient supply chain, Chinese enterprises showed strong competitiveness under the pandemic. However due to uncertainties such as geopolitics and global economic trends, Chinese companies are still facing great challenges.

On the other hand, leading by national economic strategies such as "New Infrastructure", "Dual Circulation", and "The 14th Five-Year Plan for National Economic and Social Development", Chinese enterprises are on a fast track to promote their digital competitiveness. Then how to seize the opportunity and continuously intensify the preponderance?

The gap between Champions and other enterprises has been widen, while the Champions in China has reached 16%.

Upon the 2021 China Enterprises Digital Transformation Index Report, the digitalization of all industries has increased steadily in the past four years, with retail and logistics being the most prominent. From a vertical view, as digitalization penetrates across industries, following a significant increase of 5% over the previous year, the proportion of "Champions" with remarkable transformation achievements has reached 16%. The report also reveals that, the digital maturity gap between Champions and the others has been translated into bigger performance advantage, the revenue growth rate gap between the two has been widened from 1.4 times to 3.7 times.

 

3 challenges in the transformation journey

The transformation Champions showed great resilience and versatile capabilities under the pandemic, which released great anxiety to others. Through executive interviews, we can see that Strategy, Capability and Value are 3 key areas for companies to focus on their transformation journey. Facing aforementioned pain points, the Chinese enterprises need to start seeking new ways to unlock the full value of digital transformation through various sets of solutions.

 

Strategy missing

Facing great uncertainty ahead, many corporate leaderships found it extremely difficult to articulate a grand vision for their business transformation. Without the business strategy, digital transformation is without direction.

 

Capabilities hard to build

The second challenge is around capacity-building, including improving legacy IT systems, loosening up rigid managerial cultures, and hiring and retaining talents with the right mix of digital and business skills.

 

Value hard to realize

Successful digital transformation covers all business operations and functions of an enterprise, it requires long-term commitment. Yet many companies—anxious to show immediate results—opt instead for ineffective piecemeal, pilot, and/or other types of small-scale projects that undermine their transformation efforts.

 

Maximize the value of digital transformation

Facing the digital gap, it’s time for Chinese enterprises to accelerate the process of reforming their business. Through survey, executive interviews, financial and text analysis, Accenture has identified 7 imperatives to leapfrogging digital maturity:

Ensure strategic commitment

Envision and design the top-level digital transformation and perform the end-to-end implementation from strategy, management, execution, operation to evaluation throughout the whole company.

Adopt cloud and innovate in the cloud

Adopt cloud technology is the starting point of digital transformation, which enables the improvement of agility and resilience, and innovation at scale with the combination of other emerging technologies.

Establish data strength

Establish and execute strong data strategies and data governance, turning the data assets - these key factors of production - into foresights and differentiating the company.

Enhance experiences across the value chain

Deploy digital technologies and connected platforms to achieve the industrial integration, cross-company, -department, -function collaboration, client experience upgrade, and business model transformation.

Build future-ready operations

Enhance the automation and intelligence level of operations, effectively use data to support and optimize decision-making, and strengthen human-machine collaboration to achieve high-quality growth.

Harness the power of ecosystems

Explore digital business model through the creation of digital collaboration platforms on which built the ecosystem covering R&D, manufacturing and marketing.

Embrace a broader value agenda

Provide a sound base for aligning business goals with sustainability visions that drive 360-degree value for multiple stakeholders and address various agendas including but not limited to data governance, benefits of various social groups and climate change.

Related capabilities

Strategy & Consulting

Envision and execute change at speed and scale

Technology

Accelerate change across your enterprise to create lasting value

Intelligent Operations

Human + machine intelligence building new ways to embrace change and grow
Stay in the know with our newsletter
Subscribe