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 2019, we conducted in-person interviews with 153 client executives in the retail, consumer packaged goods, wholesale and consumer services sectors, who indicate data insight and omni-channel services as the driving forces of change this year, spurred by a focus on improving the customer experience.
Becoming digital to meet customer expectations remains the highest-impact trend
|
Once again this year, becoming a digital enterprise to meet customer expectations remains the most impactful trend. |
 |
| Omni-channel as the new normal and customers’ ability to shop any time from any device becomes the second most impactful trend. It rises somewhat to displace optimizing operations, which is now the third highest-impact trend. The fourth most impactful trend continues to be big data and predictive analytics. Cybersecurity remains as the fifth top trend but with slightly higher impact measures this year. |
| Globally, as customer demands for seamless and highly personalized experiences intensified, the importance of becoming truly digital organizations to meet these expectations was the top industry trend. |
 |
| Optimizing today’s operations was second, followed by omni-channel as the new normal, applying big data and analytics, and protecting through cybersecurity. |
Key findings
Strategies have yet to produce tangible results
Ninety-one percent of retail and consumer services executives report they have some form of a digital strategy in place. Of those, 41% indicate they have an enterprise-wide strategy, but just 20% report their enterprise strategy extends to their external ecosystem. Just 11% are producing results from enterprise strategies
Explore how organizations are gaining value from their enterprise digital transformation strategy.
Cultural change and change management remains the top challenge
Once again, this year, cultural change and change management remains the top barrier to digital transformation.
85% are using the cloud
This year we asked retail and consumer services executives to share how they are using cloud-based solutions, and 44% are using them for their own organization, 1% for customers, and 40% for both. Additionally, they indicated how their organization’s cloud usage is divided between private, public and hybrid clouds (as shown in the above chart). Executives also were asked if they have mechanisms in place to locate where key data assets are stored in the cloud and over 40% report they do not have clarity on this question.
Benchmarking clients’ satisfaction with their own IT organization
For the second 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. Overall, IT satisfaction among retail and consumer services executives ranks slightly lower in comparison to other industries with some exceptions such as the attribute of providing cost-effective IT operations and services. For most attributes, business leaders report lower satisfaction levels with their internal IT compared to IT leaders.
CGI can provide clients with a discussion of all available benchmarking, including each client’s positioning, on topics such as digital maturity, IT spending, IT satisfaction, innovation investments and more. Contact us to learn more.
Learn how CGI helps clients on their journey to world-class IT.
 |
|
 |
