KPMG says its survey of 198 Australian business leaders conducted in collaboration with global analytics platform Faethm shows “a concerning lack of readiness for technological change amongst Australian organisations” with most business leaders unprepared for the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR), which it describes as “the convergence of the physical, digital and biological worlds.”
The 2020 Fourth Industrial Revolution Benchmark survey sought to assess organisations’ uptake and understanding of technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI), robotic process automation (RPA) and IoT.
KPMG says it found most Australian business leaders lacking a deep understanding or experience with the technologies, with 47 percent having “little” knowledge and nine percent having “never heard of” the concept.
Only 46 percent of respondents said they felt their organisation to be strongly prepared for technological change. “On average, respondents rated the maturity of their organisation’s adoption of Fourth Industrial Revolutions technologies below three out five (as siloed and inconsistent in implementation),” KPMG said.
Cloud services was the only technology to rate highly (3.9 out of 5), indicating it is the gateway 4IR technology for most organisations.
Leaders who do understand the 4IR concept well, however, are more prepared for it. “They spend a higher proportion of research and development (R&D) expenditure on these technologies compared to those with a weaker understanding (30 percent vs 20 percent),” KPMG said. “They also rate their readiness for change much higher (57 percent rate high preparedness versus 36 percent).”
“There are many reasons for adoption of 4IR technologies, but customer experience (CX) improvements is the current key driver (selected by 75 percent). CX is seen as the area of greatest impact on businesses (4.3 out of 5), over products and services, innovation, operating model (all 4.1) and workforce (3.9). Increased productivity (67 percent), innovation (64 percent) and process automation (62 percent) are other key drivers of adoption.”
