Dive Brief:
- International Data Corporation (IDC) predicts worldwide spending on digital transformation technologies will reach $1.2 trillion in 2017, an increase of 17.8% over 2016, according to an IDC announcmement. By 2020, IDC says digital transformation spending with reach $2 trillion.
- "Changing competitive landscapes and consumerism are disrupting businesses and creating an imperative to invest in digital transformation, unleashing the power of information across the enterprise and thereby improving the customer experience, operational efficiencies, and optimizing the workforce," said Eileen Smith, program director in IDC's customer insights and analysis group.
- The areas expected to see the fastest growth in digital transformation tech include retail, healthcare providers, insurance and banking.
Dive Insight:
IDC includes a broad range of technologies in its forecast, including cloud infrastructure, business services, applications, IT services and connectivity services.
Digital transformation can become a vague category, representing almost all corporate investments in making internal systems digital. And while it’s difficult to put numbers behind all those varied technologies and services, it’s clear that digital transformation efforts and investments will continue strong growth in the near future.
When it comes to where companies will focus their digital transformation efforts, IDC predicts more than half of those efforts and investments in 2017 will go toward technologies that support "operating model innovations," or technologies that "transform how customers, partners, employees and things communicate with each other."
A recent report from McKinsey found the most successful companies invest more boldly in digital transformation efforts than their less well-performing counterparts do.
