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 175 manufacturing client executives in the commercial and industrial as well as natural resources sectors, who indicate a continued focus on becoming digital organizations to meet customer expectations. 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.
Meeting customer expectations still dominates
| Once again in 2020, becoming digital organizations to meet customer expectations is the most impactful industry trend. Digitization for data integration continues as the second most impactful trend, followed by cybersecurity. Increasing investments in new products and services emerges as a new top trend, ahead of transformation from product-centric to customer-centric organizations. |
2020 top trends by impact
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Post-pandemic declaration trends show a rise in investments in new products and services
When comparing interviews before and after the pandemic declaration by the WHO on March 11, 2020, increasing investments in new products and services rises (+21%) in impact as a trend, while regulatory compliance and sustainability lessens (-7%).
Results from digital strategies are still low
This year, 97% of manufacturing executives report they have some form of a digital strategy in place, up 5 percentage points from 2019; however, only 13% are producing results from those digital strategies. Additionally, 43% indicate they have an enterprise-wide strategy, but just 22% report their enterprise strategy extends to their external ecosystem.
Few executives cite having highly agile business models for digitization
This year, 14% of executives indicate 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 4 points from 2019.
Interest in substantial IT managed services rises year over year
This year, we asked manufacturing executives to share why they use managed services and how they plan to leverage them. The top reasons are to save costs and to maintain control.
% planning to leverage substantial managed applications in 3 years: 49% 2020 40% 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)
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. For most attributes, business leaders report lower satisfaction levels with their internal IT compared to IT leaders. Running a secured IT environment and ensuring data privacy has the highest average score at 7.8.
Learn more about the 2020 CGI Client Global Insights.
Learn more about CGI in Manufacturing.
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.
