The status of digitisation in Flemish companies
Companies and professionals can grow in their activities by starting to work more efficiently, more competitively or in a more personalised way. AI can be an important technology to help. But in order to do this, the company has to keep up: a certain degree of digitisation and data drive has become necessary for sustainable growth.
Voka, the Flemish network of companies, has conducted a digital audit of about 2,000 Flemish companies in the past 2 years. This digiscan provides a picture of how digitally mature Flemish companies are. These are their 11 conclusions, as published by Voka.
Digital divide between large and small companies remains significant
First, the digital divide between large and small companies is, and remains ,wide. Unfortunately, this is in line with indicators from other studies.
The category with the largest companies clearly sticks out with head and shoulders.
Companies in the category of 10 to 25 employees also score remarkably well. This can largely be explained by the amount of service companies in this category.
In many cases, lack of a clear strategy and action plan
We see that our Flemish companies often lack a clear strategy and action plan.
Almost 60% of companies have no documented strategy. This is cause for worry, especially knowing that a strategy is an important precondition for starting a digital transformation.
Also somewhat worrying is that almost 7 out of 10 do not yet have a concrete action plan. In the ideal scenario, there is a clear action plan with concrete deadlines, KPIs and responsibilities per project.
The results show that such a concrete action plan only exists with a very small minority. However, we do see a positive evolution: both percentages, lack of strategy and action plan, appear to decrease over time.
External developments insufficiently monitored
The majority of companies take insufficient account of external evolutions, whether they are market trends, technologies such as blockchain, artificial intelligence… new business models, or competitors.
No fewer than 44% of companies do not actively monitor trends and technologies.
On a positive note, 3 out of 10 actively monitor technological developments within and outside the sector, and therefore also look at other companies or organisations.
Small minority has fixed budget for digital transformation projects
When we talk about budgets, we see that only a small minority have an allocated fixed budget for digital transformation projects.
This is also positively correlated with company size. It is therefore mainly the larger companies that reserve an annual budget. Oftentimes this concerns a percentage of the turnover. The figures show that about 1 in 5 currently has no budget for digital transformation. In the majority of cases, resources are also allocated ad hoc.
“ Today, our companies are insufficiently up to date with the digital transition. About half of our companies go below the bar, both in terms of cybersecurity and artificial intelligence. Let these results be a wake-up call. Without a digital security strategy, companies are vulnerable in a rapidly digitising environment. Voka wants to assist companies and offers various solutions. Growing together requires a strong digital acceleration. ”
Roles and responsibilities regarding digitisation insufficiently defined
Roles and responsibilities regarding digitisation are insufficiently defined in the majority of companies.
However, this is an important factor to increase the success of all digitisation projects. As is the appointment of a person with ultimate responsibility.
Too little attention to human capital
Most companies still pay too little attention to the human capital in their company, or to the available talent. Substantially less than half of the companies have training plans for their staff, however crucial within digital transformation. Only 6% of companies have personalized training plans. On the upside, these figures are evolving positively over the years.
Majority has analog and digital sales channels, but lacks omnichannel
The majority of the surveyed companies have both analogue and digital sales channels to interact with their customers, but an omnichannel approach in which both channels are aligned, is still lacking in many cases.
In terms of online interaction with customers, we see that 40% have a website with nothing more than some contact information. (8%, on the other hand, offer their products via a digital platform with extensive customer support.)
The study also shows that 4 out of 10 companies lack any coordination between the two channels, even though this is important to ensure a frictionless and pleasant customer interaction.
Cybersecurity remains a crucial point of attention
Cybersecurity continues to be a very important point of attention. Even though Voka continues to stress the importance, still 6 out of 10 companies do not have a digital security strategy even though the recent CS barometer shows that 1 in 8 companies in Flanders were hit by cyber-attacks last year.
The survey also shows that it are mainly the smaller companies that do not make sufficient efforts to implement security measures. A worrying situation, since they might be slightly less targeted compared to larger companies, the damage done is proportionally greater.
On a positive note, we see that the percentage without a digital security strategy is decreasing in the scan. While this was still 61% in 2020, it was 58% in 2021, and fell further to 55% in 2022. Are the many awareness campaigns by Voka and partners gradually bearing fruit?
Still a lot of manual data work
In terms of data, we see that a lot is still done manually. For example, data is collected automatically in only 1 in 3 companies. For the largest companies, this happens in over 1 in 2. Almost 50% of the companies will gain insights based on reports that are prepared manually. On the other hand, about 30% of companies automatically gain insights based on data, a high percentage.
Also in production companies, processes are largely monitored manually
Finally , we also see at production companies that their processes are still largely monitored manually. The figures show that this still applies to more than 7 out of 10 production companies.
Big differences between sectors
As noted earlier, the service companies in particular are digitally mature (2.6 out of 5 versus 2.4 for manufacturing companies). They are also better represented in the digital quick scan (60% of all completed surveys). Apart from the distinction between manufacturing and service companies, we see that the companies that completed the scan are very widely spread across numerous sectors.
Sectors - most strongly represented in the Voka Digital Quickscan
- Computer Program Designing and Programming, Computer Consulting and Related Activities (IT) – 2.92
- Scientific and technical activities - 2.69
- Wholesale and trade brokerage - 2.60
- Activities of headquarters; consultancies - 2.60
- Financial services and insurance - 2.59
- Education - 2.56
- Administrative and support services - 2.53
- Manufacture of machines, apparatus and equipment - 2.47
- Architects and engineers; technical testing - 2.47
- Retail - 2.45
- Manufacture of metals - 2.44
- Food and beverage manufacturing - 2.43
- Transport and storage - 2.43
- Exploitation and trading of real estate - 2.21
- Construction sector - 2.19
General results
More than 1,900 respondents completed the scan, some of them partially. Approximately 1,100 different companies completed the scan from start to finish.
The scan was mainly completed by smaller SMEs, more than 50% (54%) of the companies are part of the category of companies with up to 25 employees. At the same time, 24% of the respondents are companies with more than 100 employees.
If you look at the average maturity level, this is 2.54 out of 5 (same in June 2022), which indicates a moderate degree of digitisation.
We also see that service companies are clearly more digitally mature. The difference between the two is particularly large in terms of strategy and customers/suppliers. These differences can largely be traced back to the fact that manufacturing companies are often less customer-oriented and struggle more with finding the right business model. Service companies are also often more agile.
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