Annually, CGI leaders around the world meet face-to-face with business and IT executives to gather their perspectives on the trends affecting their enterprises, including business and IT priorities, IT spending, budgets and investment plans. In 2020, we conducted in-person interviews with 84 client executives in the communications industry, who indicate a continued focus becoming on digital organizations and on improving the customer experience. Interviews were conducted before and after the pandemic declaration by the World Health Organization (WHO) on March 11, 2020, providing unique insights into evolving priorities. We provide a short summary of some of these insights here.
Becoming digital to meet customer expectations still dominates
| Once again this year, becoming a digital enterprise to meet customer expectations remains the most impactful trend. Increased investment in network continues as the second most impactful trend. However, increased investment in new products and services rises to become the third most impactful trend ahead of cybersecurity and leveraging robotics and artificial intelligence (AI) to reduce costs and enhances the digital experience. |
2020 top trends by impact
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Post-pandemic declaration trends show rise in optimizing operations
When comparing interviews before and after the pandemic declaration by the WHO on March 11, 2020, investment in new products and services as a trend lessens in impact (-33%) while robotics and artificial intelligence (AI) rises (+12%).
More executives indicate digital strategies are becoming operational
This year, 92% of communications executives say they have some form of a digital strategy in place. Forty-six percent of executives say their digital strategy is operational or producing results, up from 38% in 2019. Additionally, 46% indicate they have an enterprise-wide strategy, but just 23% report their enterprise strategy extends to their external ecosystem. This year, more executives cite using advanced automation, including enhanced process automation (54%) and algorithmic automation (29%).
Business models are becoming more agile
In 2020, 24% say their business model is highly agile (score of 8 or higher on a scale of 1 to 10 with 10 highest) when it comes to addressing digitization, up 13 points from 2019.
Interest in substantial managed services rises after pandemic declaration
This year we asked communications executives to share why they use managed services and how they plan to leverage them. The top reasons are business agility and cost savings to redirect toward funding business priorities. Responses concerning plans for using managed services vary before and after the pandemic declaration, as in the example shown.
% planning to leverage substantial managed applications in 3 years 36% 2020 post declaration 22% 2020 prior to declaration 41% 2019
Benchmarking clients’ satisfaction with their own IT organization
(Scores from 1 to 10, with 10 most satisfied, showing 3 out of 10 available attributes)Â
For the third year, business and IT executives interviewed ranked their satisfaction with their own IT organizations based on the 10 key attributes of a world-class IT organization. Compared to IT leaders, business leaders gave higher satisfactions scores for the IT department’s ability to run a secured IT environment and ensure data privacy, while IT leaders scored themselves higher for knowledge of the business domain.
Learn more about the 2020 CGI Client Global Insights.
Learn more about CGI in Communications.
Speak with a CGI expert
To consult with one of our industry experts to learn more about client insights and CGI’s perspectives on business and technology trends, contact us.
