In Roc ‘Accelerating the Future’ priorities survey, Business Process Acceleration and Robotic Process Automation combine with Workforce Productivity and Cloud Services

A survey by Roc Technologies, one of the UK’s fastest growing transformation service providers, has found that Digital Transformation (42 percent) and Business Growth Initiatives (25 percent) were the top priorities for business process and IT leadership in organisations surveyed at its annual Achieving Excellence Europe conference held on 1st February 2018.

While the fast-looming GDPR (13 percent) regulations and Skills Shortages (13 percent) in the workforce were also both identified as priorities for 2018, only 3 percent nominated IoT as their top focus area and the UK’s Brexit from the European Union failed to receive a single vote.

“Attendees at Achieving Excellence have senior leadership roles in programme management, business process, technology, and IT, and span both public and private sector organisations, so this survey measures the priorities of key stakeholders at the coal face of transformation,” commented Matt Franklin, CEO of Roc Technologies.

“The results paint a clear picture of digital transformation and business growth investments being the clear underpinnings of growth, productivity, and profitability. Organisations are clearly prioritising the investments that drive differentiation and growth and provide the momentum to succeed irrespective of the major events that are outside of their direct control. And with a growing number of attendees recognising the benefits of process automation and the future potential of AI across their organization, the future is being fast-tracked driven by both business and technology leadership.”

The survey was conducted as part of Roc’s annual Achieving Excellence Europe event, attended this year by over 130 organisations from public and private sector, with senior delegates from both business process, IT leadership, and programme management.

* Digital Process Acceleration highlighted a growing interest and understanding of the potential of adopting automation and AI technologies. Nearly half of respondents believed the adoption of Business Process Optimisation (17 percent), Automation (19 percent) and AI (8 percent) would be important tools in their digital transformation strategies for 2018.

* Delegates cited a range of differing views on the potential role of Artificial Intelligence value in their organisations with 27 percent recognising AI could transform customer experiences, 22 percent looking for AI to transform business models, 16 percent seeing AI at the core of the services transformation strategy, and 11 percent looking to AI to improve their use of digital data.

* IT priorities placed Workforce Productivity (27 percent) investments and Cloud Services (22 percent) adoption and migration as top focus areas. IT operational improvements (14 percent) and Cyber Security (8 percent) demonstrated a recognition that transforming the way IT delivers services to users and the growing and continuing threat of cyber risk continues to be top of mind for many.

* While Digital Transformation was cited as the primary priority for 2018, 44 percent of delegates stated they were concerned about their ability to run multiple digital programmes.