Report

In tough times, companies do better when they do good.

Smart companies understand that taking environmental, social, and governance (ESG) matters seriously isn’t just the right thing for our planet. It’s smart business.

It’s never been clearer that the right ESG strategy can help a company control costs, drive growth, and manage risk. In today’s unsettled economic environment, ESG champions are positioned to come out on top. Perhaps that’s why so many companies proudly state their intentions to take on the toughest problems of our time.

But the world needs more than just noble intentions. It’s time to turn intent into impact.Fortunately, organizations have never been better equipped to be bold. As an experienced auditor and finance professional, I know that you can’t manage what you can’t measure. Digital technology gives companies the tools to understand their impact and help them achieve their ESG goals. To be sure, technology isn’t enough. Success also requires strategic acumen and committed and passionate people. The human element is essential.

In the spring issue of Workflow Quarterly, ServiceNow makes the case that organizations can generate meaningful and proven value for all only by bringing all these elements together.

In collaboration with ServiceNow and ThoughtLab we surveyed 1,000 global C-level executives about what steps they’re taking to meet today’s pressing ESG challenges. The results are clear: The most successful companies aren’t just setting targets. They’re intelligently deploying emerging tech to make real progress.

As IT gains increasing responsibility for customer experiences, cloud, cybersecurity, and observability are emerging as key areas of investment.

Elastic and ThoughtLab conducted a global survey of 800 executives in September–October of 2022 to understand how companies and public entities derive value from building a modern data and IT infrastructure. The survey also examined how organizations use technology to improve digital customer experience and trust.

Survey respondents included a mix of c-suite executives, including CIOs, CTOs, and CISOs, and IT decision-makers, such as VPs of Security, IT, Data, Engineering, and Business Operations. These executives worked in eight industries: financial services, healthcare, manufacturing, media and entertainment, public sector, retail and e-commerce, telecommunications, and technology. They were based in eight countries: Australia, Brazil, France, Germany, Japan, Netherlands, United Kingdom, and United States.

In addition to the quantitative survey, ThoughtLab interviewed 10 executives from various industries responsible for IT in their companies to gather qualitative insights about how their organizations are harnessing data and using a modernized IT infrastructure to boost their performance.

Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are the heart and soul of the Australian economy and community. They generate more than half of Australia’s economic growth and employ about two-thirds of the local workforce. They are the main catalyst for innovation, responsible for creating most of the country’s new products, services, processes, and business approaches.

The cloud is a game-changer for mid-sized enterprises. It is not just an IT platform; it is a launching pad for business transformation and supercharged performance. When fully adopted, the cloud enables companies to leverage their inherent competitive advantage—their ability to move nimbly in a fast-evolving marketplace.

However, cloud computing entails more than just relocating workloads from a physical data centre to a virtual one. It requires a management team that agrees on the value the cloud can bring to their business and a structured, outcome-driven approach to make it happen.

Despite myriad potential benefits, mid-sized enterprises have been slow to adopt the cloud. They have trailed their larger counterparts in cloud usage, since they have smaller budgets, fewer resources, and less digital talent. With smaller IT teams and more limited access to cloud expertise, these companies often face greater headwinds when transitioning from well-established on-prem IT systems to cloud platforms.

However, as the global pandemic made painfully clear, migrating to the cloud is essential for smaller companies in a digital-first world. These enterprises are now moving fast, shifting applications and business functions to the cloud, modernizing their applications, and expanding their use of different cloud services.

To study the unique drivers and concerns of mid-sized enterprises as they adopt the cloud, in the fourth quarter of 2022 ThoughtLab, a global research firm commissioned by SoftwareOne, surveyed 300 senior technology executives at North American companies across industries. These companies have less than $1 billion in annual revenue and fewer than 7,000 employees. The research showed that nearly all the companies (95%) started their cloud journeys in the last five years, and most within the last 2-4 years.

To assess how cloud migration influences business strategy and performance results, ThoughtLab identified the percentage of applications and business activities that each of the surveyed companies operates in the cloud. Using those percentages as a guide, it plotted each of the companies along a cloud progress bell curve, and classified 25% as beginners, 58% as intermediates, and 17% as leaders.

This paper focuses on cloud leaders, since they provide evidence-based insights into the performance gains from cloud migration and the practices that will deliver the best results.

Examples abound of cities around the world doing something clever with technology—installing thousands of sensors, hundreds of solar panels or dozens of rooftop farms—and putting a “smart city” label on it. While some of these initiatives have achieved a degree of success, most haven’t lived up to the hype.

With the alarming acceleration in catastrophic weather events, natural disasters and global health emergencies, there’s no question cities need what some might call “more smarts.” From their sheer density to their often aging infrastructures, cities’ vulnerabilities are plentiful and must be addressed.

The increasingly widespread availability of 5G has made the concept of a smart city more of a reality than ever before. But while cities are called to deliver what smart city visionaries have long promised—economic opportunity, high-quality education and healthcare, clean air, safe streets, a rich cultural life and an efficient transportation system—they must do so while considering not just today’s challenges and opportunities but also those of tomorrow.

Beyond being smart, then, cities need to be future-ready. Becoming a future-ready city requires building the foundation to be resilient in the face of both predictable and unpredictable challenges and adapting to fast-changing social and economic situations.

5G will play a big role in achieving a futureready vision. This technology’s ultra-low latency, blazing speeds, extra-large bandwidth and fail-proof reliability promise to breathe new life into the technology capabilities cities now rely on and deliver enormous improvements in quality of life.

But while making the best use of technology is essential, it’s not enough. In recent research co-sponsored by Cognizant, we found the city of the future will need more than 5G and a wide range of other technologies. It will require strong ecosystems of local governments, infrastructure providers (telcos) and integrators (tech partners).

The study also found, however, that today, well-functioning ecosystems are few and far between. Also lacking are sophisticated capabilities to not just create high-quality data but also to manage, share, protect and make that data actionable. Survey respondents are feeling the brunt of these shortcomings.

The study, conducted by ThoughtLab, surveyed 200 city officials from around the world. It also included a series of interviews with policymakers, business executives and other experts, to understand where cities stand in terms of their future-preparedness, what challenges they are encountering and what solutions they are exploring.

This research is part of ThoughtLab’s multi-client study: Building a Future-Ready City

Industry leaders gain major benefits from migrating data and operations to cloud while safeguarding sensitive information.

Moving vital data and operations to cloud has been a bright spot in an otherwise trying period for healthcare providers.

The COVID-19 pandemic showed these enterprises the importance of transitioning to cloud. Providers that are leading the vanguard of this change saw improvements in multiple areas, including data management, which helped them increase productivity and efficiency.

Moving to cloud helped the industry’s leaders realize other benefits as well, including an average 6.58% revenue gain from their cloud use and an annualized return on investment (ROI) of 54%, both higher than the healthcare industry averages of 4.24% and 51% respectively. Those achievements came despite tighter budgets and cloud spending that is slightly less than all other industries. More healthcare providers expect to follow in cloud leaders’ footsteps in the near future.

To further ensure their cloud efforts’ success, healthcare providers can also consider reinvesting cloud savings, taking a multicloud approach, closing the perception gap about security risks, and working with a cloud partner.

The insights shared in this report are based on a survey conducted for Wipro between June and September 2021 by ThoughtLab Group to analyze the current and future patterns of enterprise-level cloud adoption. Overall respondents included 1,400 executives from organizations ranging in size from less than $5 billion in annual revenue to more than $20 billion, with the largest share in the midsized category. The survey included 110 healthcare providers located in Australia, France, Germany, Switzerland, the U.K., and the U.S. All healthcare provider respondents are “knowledgeable” or “very knowledgeable” about the use of cloud technologies at their respective organizations. The largest portion of healthcare respondents (25%) reports directly to the C level, 14% are chief digital officers, 12% are business unit or division heads, and the remainder hold C-level positions such as CTO or CFO.

To calculate cloud maturity, we analyzed each healthcare provider to determine the cloud progress it is making, the percentage of applications it operates in cloud, and the number of advanced technologies it uses in conjunction with cloud. Based on those criteria, we classified the top 20% of healthcare provider respondents as cloud leaders, the middle 42% as intermediate users, and the remaining 38% as beginners.