Customer experience, business intelligence top tech buying priorities: IDC

Customer experience, enterprise intelligence and digital self-determination are among the top priorities for technology buyers according to recently released results of a survey by analyst company IDC.  

The firm outlined insights into the benefits and challenges of the recent burst of digital transformation in The Future Enterprise Resiliency and Spending (FERS) survey, which asked representatives at organisations worldwide about their investment plans for digital resiliency, and the benefits and challenges they were seeing due to that investment.

IDC released some of the results across three categories: customer experience, enterprise intelligence and digital sovereignty.

Customer experience

The IDC survey results showed that 34 percent of respondents found that their customer experience initiatives resulted in improved profit margins.

of those surveyed, 27 percent attributed this to increased revenue, 25 percent to reduced personnel costs, 22 percent to marketing, and 18 percent to customer acquisition.

IDC said that to anticipate customer intentions and respond with empathy at scale, enterprises will require a thorough understanding of customer data orchestrated by the right technology solutions. 

According to 78 percent of respondents, data from and about the customer is ‘critical’ for CX delivery, with 21 percent indicating that customer data plays an ‘extremely significant’ role.

Enterprise intelligence

Of those surveyed that are investing in enterprise intelligence, 76 percent said that investments in had either continued or accelerated in response to the pandemic.

In addition, enterprise intelligence skills were highest rated among the skills that enterprises are looking to hire in the next six months.

When it came to what was vital to properly leverage enterprise intelligence to stay resilient, 33.7 percent of respondents pointed to the ability to adapt quickly, 32.6 percent to being able to learn continuously, and 37.5 percent to having cloud infrastructure to support enterprise intelligence.

Digital sovereignty

IDC defines digital sovereignty as the capacity for digital self-determination by states, companies, or individuals. 

When asked if digital sovereignty improved their ability to shape digital transformation efforts in a self-determined way, 77 percent of the respondents agreed or strongly agreed.

The top regulation or guideline for digital sovereignty is to ensure providers adhere to geographic specific measures to not monetise, sell and/or use their customers' data without intentional and expressed consent and compensation, according to 75 percent of those surveyed.

Further, 48 percent indicated that their top challenge was to protect and maintain the visibility of data in public cloud providers' facilities in accordance with regulatory requirements.

IDC said that digital sovereignty regulations – those that impose territorial data boundaries – present obstacles and potentially limit the flexibility of global digital platforms and public cloud services. It added that organisations are increasingly looking to digital sovereignty as a way to gain greater self-determination in their efforts to shape their digital transformation efforts.