Industry Summary Articles

Tata Consultancy Services published the findings of a commissioned research that revealed that German companies have sharply increased their investment in digitization and are focusing on change management and agile processes to drive their transformation initiatives. The study titled ‘Don't Panic! Keep Calm and Digitize’ focused on German companies having 100 or more employees, polling 953 senior managers and decision-makers responsible for digitization within their organizations.

German companies are focusing on the necessary change management processes in addition to the use of new technologies in their transformation journey. According to the report, almost every second company (47 percent) uses change management methods to adapt to new structures and prepare the workforce, versus 36 percent in 2017. Among large companies with 500 or more employees, 57 percent rely on change management methods. In more than one third of the companies (35 percent), the change process is the responsibility of the digitalization units or the Chief Digital Officer. In around one in four companies, the management or the executive board (26 percent) or internal corporate communications (23 percent) is responsible.

For project management, companies are more likely to rely on agile methods. For example, 43 percent of companies now state that they sometimes, mostly or always use agile methods (vs 35 percent in 2018). Agile adoption is even greater among large companies with 500 or more employees. More than one in two (52 percent) companies increasingly use agile methods, an increase of ten percentage points compared to 2018 (42 percent).

To succeed in a digital world, companies increasingly expect digital skills from their employees. Eight out of ten companies (84 percent) say that employees should have general digital skills in order to drive the digital transformation of the company. This is a significant increase compared to the previous years with 74 percent (2018) and even only 66 percent (2017). Eight out of ten companies (81 percent) state that they help employees develop digital competences. A year ago, the figure was 77 percent, two years ago it was 75 percent.

Every second company (50 percent) states that employees quickly adopt new technologies. However, a similar number (44 percent) also complain that the effort to convince employees to use new technologies is very high. This is one of the reasons, a large majority – two thirds of companies (66 percent) train their employees to use new technologies.

“Our study shows that German corporations are accelerating their digital transformation journeys, increasing the scale and complexity of their initiatives, necessitating robust change management processes, and investments in talent development. Additionally, to gain better speed to value, organizations are embracing agile methods,” said Sapthagiri Chapalapalli, Managing Director, TCS Germany.“TCS’ domain knowledge across multiple industries, contextual knowledge of our customers’ businesses, investments in research and innovation, Location Independent Agile Model, and proven track record in executing large and complex programs have made us the preferred partner for our customers’ growth and transformation initiatives.”  

For more information and to download the trend study ‘Don't Panic! Keep Calm and Digitize’, go to: https://studie-digitalisierung.de/en

Methodology: The study is based on telephonic interviews conducted by Bitkom Research on behalf of TCS in June/July 2019, involving 953 senior executives responsible for digitization in their organizations, including managing directors, board members, and decision-makers in the fields of IT, digital technology, and operations. The companies included in the study were those with 100 or more employees and covered all sectors of the German economy. This is the fourth annual study commissioned by TCS.

To view the original press release, please click here.

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