EY: Industrial companies worldwide stunted in emerging technology use

Many companies from a range of industries worldwide are stuck at a trial stage of emerging technologies usage, according to the sixth annual EY Reimagining industry futures study.

The firm surveyed 1,635 enterprises in November 2024, including 9% in the UK, 6% in Germany and 20% in the US. Respondents were drawn from a range of industries, including financial services (13%), cars and transport (13%), energy, mining and utilities (13%), and manufacturing (12%).

The study has a strong 5G and internet of things (IoT) orientation, as it has done in previous years. The lead authors come from the firm’s telecoms, media and technology (TMT) practices, Rob Atkinson, area managing partner for UK and Ireland TMT; and Adrian Baschnonga, global TMT lead analyst.

The press statement that goes with the report says nearly half (47%) of the respondents are investing in generative artificial intelligence (GenAI), compared with 43% last year.

Some 43% are investing in IoT, and 33% are investing in 5G technology, suggesting an upward trend from 39% and 27% respectively in 2024.

However, the report finds that businesses struggle to convert technology trials into live deployments. Only 1% of organisations have active deployments of GenAI. And while IoT investment seems to be rising year-on-year, the proportion of businesses with active IoT deployments is in decline, slipping to 16% this year compared with 19% in 2024.

Active deployments of edge computing are also flat year-on-year, at 22%.

CEOs get more into technology selection

The report finds decision-making inside enterprises is spreading out across the C-suite, with 49% of CEOs now involved in emerging technology strategy, including in choice of suppliers. Organisations where the CEO is a key decision-maker are further along, the report found.

Over half (51%) of businesses with CEOs involved in new technology decisions are investing in GenAI, compared with 44% of organisations where the CEO is less involved.

“As well as posing a challenge to unlocking long-term value, a failure to progress beyond the trial phase means businesses risk missing out on the combined impact of different technologies deployed together, an area where four in five (79%) organisations are looking to achieve more,” said Atkinson. “There could also be a danger that too many emerging technologies initiatives will be conducted in isolation, limiting the resulting business benefits.”

The report discovered that respondents are limitedly aware of what IT suppliers have on offer.

Some 73% said they need a better understanding of the changing supplier landscape. EY comments that this reflects “an environment where collaborative ecosystems featuring alliances between different technology providers are becoming the norm”.

More than half (56%) the respondents believe they lack awareness of their technology suppliers’ partners. Less than a third of organisations have high awareness of new mobile technology capabilities such as network application programming interfaces (32%) and network slicing (26%).

“Organisations view ecosystem collaboration as a route to access new skills and capabilities but lack understanding of changing supplier ecosystems,” said Baschnonga. “With many companies under pressure to consolidate vendors, suppliers should prioritise their ecosystem and alliance strategies by concentrating on key partners and adapting their operating models and go-to-market approaches accordingly.”

The report found the ability to scale and integrate different technologies is important to one in four (25%) of those surveyed.

“The intention to focus spending on a smaller number of key suppliers makes it even more important that ICT providers present them as effective ecosystem orchestrators, able to provide end-to-end solutions with the assistance of partners and intermediaries,” said Atkinson. “As part of this, suppliers should take care to underline capabilities that extend beyond their core products.

“While enterprises remain committed to embracing leading-edge technologies like GenAI, IoT and 5G, they are facing challenges in translating their investments into real business value,” he said. “Now is the time for IoT suppliers to reposition themselves as holistic partners to their business customers and help them realise the full benefits of their spending on digital transformation.”

In the report itself, the authors say: “This year’s findings show that organisations across all sectors remain committed to investing in emerging technologies to transform their operations – but that issues around scalability and legacy integration are top of mind. Meanwhile, ICT vendors need to pay close attention to enterprises’ increasing focus on security and growing demand for ecosystem orchestration.”

Businesses dimly aware of datacentre environmental impact

They also pick out sustainability as an increasingly relevant theme for enterprise IT, especially with regard to datacentres. “Sustainability factors increasingly weigh on decisions about emerging technology investments, with organisations more sensitive than before to the potentially ambivalent role of new technologies in the decarbonisation agenda.

Datacentres, the report’s authors comment, are an area of low environmental, social, and governance awareness for businesses. Half the organisations surveyed are unaware of their datacentres’ emissions profiles.

Respondents are looking at a range of GenAI use cases, with no standout preferences, the report found. Some 50% of businesses see cyber security and data protection as a leading GenAI impediment, while 46% said a need to improve data governance to combat risks concerning data accuracy and ethics would be critical to future implementations.

Data governance scores highest among manufacturers (46%) as a GenAI concern, while capturing productivity gains ranks top among EY’s respondents in the consumer (48%) and energy (47%) sectors.

Across all sectors, the most favoured GenAI use cases are software development, customer service and employee training or collaboration. However, financial services, healthcare and manufacturing respondents rated predictive or real-time operations and supply chain management as top-five GenAI use cases.

Upskilling and more collaboration

The report says the two most important changes that organisations can make are employee upskilling and deeper collaboration across business functions.

On a country level, education and employee upskilling is highly ranked by German respondents (36%), while deeper collaboration between business functions leads as an action among Chinese businesses (31%).

Elsewhere, Indian (20%) and Japanese (18%) businesses are most likely to prioritise collaboration with suppliers.

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