The Digital Transformation of Businesses in Poland

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The Digital Transformation of Businesses in Poland

Digitalization is now a phenomenon that encompasses nearly every aspect of life and operations for both consumers and businesses. Especially for businesses, digital transformation has a huge impact not only on a company’s image (compared to its competitors) but, above all, on business growth and making the business more resilient and flexible.

There are many specific goals that can be achieved through investments in IT solutions and, more broadly, investments in digital transformation. In a PMR survey, more than 600 organizations were asked about the importance of selected goals and their timeframes.

Objectives in the areas of costs, efficiency, and infrastructure

This year’s PMR survey shows that just under 50% of companies in Poland cited both a reduction in overall costs and an increase in employee productivity among their goals that have already been achieved or for which additional investment has been made. This may be due to recent years, which—due to supply chain disruptions caused first by the pandemic and then by the war in Ukraine and the overall geopolitical situation—have forced companies to make changes to their cost policies and to intensify their operations, including by increasing employee productivity. For these two goals, 26% of companies also indicated that they are important to achieve this year, which may in turn be due to a noticeable decline in consumer spending.

However, the distribution of responses was slightly different for the other two objectives in this area. Reducing IT infrastructure costs and reducing technology debt and related costs were achieved by 34% and 35% of companies, respectively. Thus, as the survey results show, reducing these costs was not as prominent a priority in companies’ activities as overall cost reduction. Furthermore, for more than one-quarter of companies, reducing these costs is not a significant priority at this time.

In the case of technological debt, however, this goal is irrelevant to 27% of companies. This may be due to at least two factors. First, the phase-out of older solutions in favor of new ones has already been completed, and the reduction of in-house infrastructure took place in response to challenges such as those posed by the COVID-19 pandemic. Second, companies may view the need for reductions in other areas as a higher priority.

The Use of Tools to Support the Work of IT Departments and Developers

A survey conducted by PMR shows that 36% of companies already use solutions that automate IT department tasks related to monitoring and management. This practice therefore appears to be fairly widespread, but its growing popularity is further evidenced by the fact that 30% of the surveyed companies indicated they plan to adopt such solutions this year. This is consistent with a growing trend in the industry, where increasing importance is being placed on effective infrastructure management.

The majority of respondents do not use and do not plan to use solutions for rapid business application development (low-code)—39% of the companies participating in the survey indicated this. This may be due to both low awareness and limited availability of such solutions. However, low-code tools are becoming increasingly affordable, and the benefits they offer may lead to growing interest in these solutions.

In a low-code environment, developers can use pre-built components, libraries, and modules available within the platform (instead of writing code from scratch, they can use a graphical interface and drag-and-drop tools), which enables rapid prototyping, easy iteration, and adaptation of applications to changing business needs. This seems to be recognized by 20% of the surveyed companies, which are already using these solutions,
and another 20% that plan to use them this year. Looking ahead to the coming years, low-code is on the implementation agenda for another 20% of companies.

PMR Index: Digital Transformation

According to the PMR index, which measures the progress of digital transformation, the highest level of digitization is found in the telecommunications industry. Most companies in the retail and wholesale sectors, as well as in machinery and equipment manufacturing, are at a similar level of advancement. The construction and utilities sectors have made the least progress toward the
goals surveyed in the study. They are the most conservative in terms of the goals that can be achieved through digital transformation.

However, it is not only in these industries that there are groups of companies that have no plans whatsoever to achieve the goals supported by digital transformation and IT investments. The conclusion that can be drawn from the data cited is that some companies that are less convinced of the benefits of digital transformation may soon be persuaded to embrace it under pressure from competitors who may already be at a different stage of the transformation process.

This report draws on data from a business survey conducted by PMR in the first quarter of 2023 using the computer-assisted telephone interviewing (CATI) method. PMR conducted the survey on a sample of over 600 companies (SMEs and large companies). The survey covered a population of companies based on their primary PKD code. The survey focused on issues related to digital transformation, cybersecurity, cloud solutions, and data centers.

A comprehensive analysis of digital transformation and the full results of the study will be published in a PMR report dedicated to this topic. The report will be released in April 2023.

Index

The index was compiled based on responses from 611 companies representing various sectors of the economy. The survey asked about the use of 20 specific solutions within the company, ranging from basic remote work tools to systems supporting the management of various areas of business operations, as well as AI, big data, and advanced data analytics.

Next, each response option was assigned the following numbers (the higher the number, the more the solution has been implemented or is closer to implementation):

We're already using this solution = 100
We don't use this solution, but we plan to use it this year = 60
We don't use this solution, but we plan to start using it within 2–3 years = 40
We do not currently use this solution, but we plan to use it for 4 years or more = 20
We do not use it and do not take it into account / it is not included in our plans = 0
I don't know / It's hard to say = 0

The areas assessed in
this way were then averaged, and the result was scaled to an index range of 0 to 100. The index value for all companies was 50.5
.

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