The tightrope act

The managing directors of around 650 medium-sized to large European companies are certain that digital transformation is essential for their continued business success.

A study commissioned by Fujitsu and conducted in Germany, the UK, Sweden and Spain shows that many companies are optimistic that they will be able to successfully digitize their business.

However, some of those surveyed still do not have a clear strategy on how they want to achieve this goal. For a majority of respondents (70% in Germany), the success of their own digitalization strategy is still uncertain.

Many analysts and IT insiders are describing 2016 as the year of digital transformation. It is no longer about a vague vision of the future, but about gaining a measurable business advantage over the competition.

According to the results of the study, the transformation process is generally considered to be particularly important in order to improve the company's value creation process. In contrast to other European countries surveyed, digitalization in Germany is primarily driven by employees (65%) and not by management or department heads.

Furthermore, nowhere else are digital projects as widely distributed across the individual departments as in Germany. In the other countries, 51 percent of projects are only implemented by the IT department.

The German managing directors surveyed see customer retention and loyalty as the greatest benefit of digitalization (48%), while this only came in third place overall. The study also revealed that German decision-makers do not yet see any significant competitive advantage from digitalization.