Figure without hype – Newspaper Kommersant No. 147 (7348) of 08/15/2022

The role of digital technologies in the next 10-20 years will decline, capital will again move to the manufacturing sector, according to a report by research company Gartner. This, however, according to its experts, will not be a retreat from technological progress, but the approval of technology as a sustainable, but already familiar engine of economic development. Data from another study conducted by the global WalkMe service suggests that ill-conceived digitalization or incomplete use of its capabilities leads companies to financial losses.

The next one or two decades will become the “era of productive capital” – the hype around the numbers will subside, and finances will be directed to real assets that create goods and services, experts of the American research company Gartner believe. This is important for development, because, despite all the talk about the possibilities of digitalization, over the past 15 years, labor productivity has been in a state of stagnation.

Such a transition does not mean a stop to technical progress, the decline in the role of numbers is not a sign of decline, but a recognition that it has become a sustainable engine of economic development, Gartner notes. After digital transformation, it’s time to reap the benefits of change, said Ed Gung, managing vice president of research at the company. At the same time, the word “digital” will no longer be a talisman, and technology leaders will have to decide what to do in an environment where digital technologies become ubiquitous and less visible.

Pavel Rudnik, Deputy Director of the Institute for Statistical Research and Economics of Knowledge at the National Research University Higher School of Economics, believes that such forecasts should be treated with some caution – they are partly caused by the current situation: “We see elements of the food crisis on a global scale, problems with supply chains, in production.” According to the expert, at least three facts indicate a trend opposite to Gartner’s forecast: this is a huge amount of investment in digital technologies (not only in production, but also in research and development), accomplished and expected breakthroughs in this area), the use of IT as a tool competition and the formation of technological superiority of countries. In Russia, according to Pavel Rudnik, a lot of money is also being invested in digitalization: “Digital technologies are not going anywhere, they are an integral part of modern production.”

Meanwhile, according to a survey by WalkMe (a multinational company providing software as a service), if a company does not fully use the digital resources at its disposal, then it incurs permanent losses. Businesses with more than 10,000 employees lost almost $100 million last year because of this (1,475 executives from North America and Europe, as well as from Australia and New Zealand participated in the survey). A third of the losses ($32.5 million) were overspending to achieve strategic goals. Companies lost $26.2 million on digital transformation projects that did not achieve their goals due to improper use of technology by end users. It cost $21 million to compensate for the lack of digital skills among employees, $16 million to compensate for the inability to get the full return on investment, and $1.14 million to replace employees who left due to dissatisfaction with technology.

The survey showed that 60% of organizations do not have a clear strategy for implementing digital technologies, 59% do not have KPIs to measure the effectiveness of the process. It should be noted that Russian researchers also raise the question of the effectiveness of the implementation of the figure. For example, a report by the Center for Strategic Research noted that AI-based solutions for the public sector in the Russian regions largely remain “abstract, obscure and distant entities that have almost no practical value for solving current problems of managing the socio-economic situation” (for more details, see . “Kommersant” dated May 23).

Venera Petrova