In one survey of large corporations, quality of leadership, workplace culture, and level of trust in top management outweighed technological currency

To gather insights into what has been happening inside organizations, KPMG conducted a survey* of large enterprises via 480 senior leaders (C-suite executives, business unit heads and vice presidents) and 1,600 line leaders at hundreds of firms with at least US$500m in annual revenues.

One trend noted from the results was that 29% of respondents in the senior leaders group indicated they considered their technology foundation readiness to be “very high”, and 76% believed that generative AI, neural networks, and digital twins would significantly enhance the likelihood of transformational success.

Another trend is: 88% of respondents were running two or more transformation programs, and 54% were running three or more concurrently.

Other findings
Next, the respondents from such large corporations indicated that the top five barriers limiting digital transformation in their workplaces were: lack of resources, skills or expertise; stakeholder resistance to change; stakeholder and employee resistance; competing business goals; and a lack of funds or an unclear business case.

Finally, outperformers in the data were likely to have strengths across four areas:

  1. Resilient cultures: 73% of digitally mature enterprises have high levels of trust in their leaders. Based on this, the report asserts that “establishing a culture of trust, shared values and alignment to the strategic vision is key to transformation success and long-term organizational resilience.”
  2. Digital maturity: Two-thirds of the respondents in the senior leaders group rated their tech foundations as no better than adequate, while most expected the impacts of technology on transformation to rise in the next one to three years. Based on this, the report asserts that “digitally mature enterprises are more likely to outperform. Yet, many enterprises are not leveraging the full value of their data, technology, and people.”
  3. Strong orchestration capabilities: Approximately 60% of respondents in the senior leaders and line leads groups cited their belief that “adopting advanced technology will increase the likelihood of transformation success.” Based on this, the report asserts the same belief.

The report’s authors have concluded that, based on the sample population of respondents in large corporations, there is a “need for leaders to build and maintain trust and resilient, agile cultures. The most successful leaders are more likely to continue to manage for value while selecting and harnessing the right technologies as they emerge. Technology can improve efficiencies, help enterprises create new revenue streams, reveal competitive insights, and unlock innovation. But leadership rather than technology will define the outperformers in the years ahead: no app or platform can deliver long-term value without vision, inspiration and motivation.”

*Conducted in March 2024, with respondents from firms headquartered in the US, the UK, Australia, Canada, and China. The six Industries involved included Technology, Media and Telecommunications; Consumer and Retail; Financial Services; Industrial Manufacturing; Healthcare and Life Sciences; Energy, Natural Resources and Chemicals