London: New globally gleaned research that studied how organisations are evolving from a traditional office environment to a digital workplace reveals that gaining competitive advantage and improving business process are among the top goals of organisations’ digital transformation strategy.
The results are according to 40 per cent of 800 organisations in 15 countries on five continents that were interviewed for Dimension Data’s Digital Workplace Report: Transforming Your Business released on July 17.
The report contended that going digital is not just about adopting the technologies of the past: 62 per cent of research participants expect to have technology such as virtual advisers in their organisations within the next two years. Another 58 per cent expect to start actively investing in technology that powers virtual advisers in the next two years.
While artificial intelligence (AI) technology is still in its infancy, it is sufficiently advanced to be working its way into companies in the form of virtual assistants and, in certain industries such as banking, virtual tellers and virtual advisers, the report said.
Manifested as bots embedded into specific applications, virtual assistants draw on AI engines and machine-learning technology to respond to basic queries.
“It’s no longer enough to simply implement these technologies,” said Krista Brown, Dimension Data’s Group End-user Computing senior vice-president.
“Organisations have grown their use of analytics to understand how these technologies impact their performance: 64 per cent use analytics to improve customer services, and 58 per cent use analytics to benchmark workplace technologies.”
Meanwhile, around 30 per cent of organisations said they’re far along in their digital transformation initiatives and are already reaping the benefits, while others are still in the early stages of developing a plan.
