Microsoft is the latest company to release figures highlighting the sluggish adoption of new technology, claiming that 71% of UK companies have “failed to deliver digital”.
While many companies are aware of this, adoption – particularly successful and well-thought-out adoption – is relatively small, and those that do adopt often fail. For example, worker support tools have been found to slow workers down when incorrectly deployed.
The data comes from 600 UK companies, 72% of which said their organization needed a clear path to achieve their digital transformation goals, and significant change was not happening due to such slow progress.
A digital workplace
While the study showed that business leaders understand the need for better technology, it’s clear they don’t have the right information to make an informed decision about what tools they need. More than three-quarters (76%) said they saw an increase in administrative tasks such as data entry and document processing with the tools they have today.
The reason for this may be that more than two-thirds (69%) were overwhelmed by the amount alone collaboration tools available to them. Guidance is clearly needed as a quarter (26%) of respondents said they plan to increase the number of tools available to employees, possibly to keep up with a race where they have little context. More than half (59%) of decision makers had no plans to consolidate solutions.
Moving forward, Microsoft believes it has a solution: artificial intelligence. The company has been publicly supporting organizations such as OpenAI (creator of ChatGPT) for several years, so it’s no wonder that the IT giant wants to promote artificial intelligence; already integrated it with his Bing (opens in a new tab) search engine and business software.
Less biased, however, is the company’s observation that employees generally do not feel part of the decision-making process regarding the tools they use, which makes it clear that more open dialogue should be promoted in most companies.