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It is important to invest in digital competencies, according to a study conducted by Riverbed. According to this research, these competencies are indispensable for the achievement of business objectives.

As many as 98 percent of respondents from the EMEA region said that digital competencies are important for, for example, revenue growth, service quality, achieving the company’s mission, customer satisfaction and profit growth.

More than 500 senior business and government managers surveyed in North America, the EMEA region and the APAC region were interviewed for the survey.

Shortage of digital competences

It is striking that 56% of EMEA respondents state that they find it difficult to achieve their objectives because of a lack of digital competences.

In addition, 67 percent of EMEA respondents said that their digital competence gap had a negative impact on the user experience. This may be the reason why almost half of them indicate that the digital experience management needs to be improved.

IT plays an important role in closing the competency gap, and that IT must be flexible. As a result, 78 per cent of the world’s high-performers say that modernising IT infrastructure and transformation are the most important digital competencies to achieve their goals.

Focus and communication

The high-performers further state that better communication and collaboration between IT and the rest of the organisation can significantly improve digital performance and user experience.

This group also considers a constant focus to be important. For example, 57 percent are fully committed to improving all digital competencies, compared to 46 percent of the other groups.

High-performers also use a broader approach to develop their competencies. These include a broad-based digital competence centre or the appointment of a Chief Digital Officer.

Health care

The biggest problems are in the health care sector. There, only 56 percent of respondents worldwide see the advantage of digital strategies. In the retail sector this is no less than 74 percent.

This news article was automatically translated from Dutch to give Techzine.eu a head start. All news articles after September 1, 2019 are written in native English and NOT translated. All our background stories are written in native English as well. For more information read our launch article.