Annually, CGI leaders around the world meet face-to-face with business and IT executives to gather their perspectives on the trends affecting their enterprises, including business and IT priorities, budgets and investment plans. In 2019, we conducted in-person interviews with 167 client executives in the manufacturing sector who are focusing on cybersecurity, digitization, data integration, Industry 4.0 and customer centricity.

Becoming digital to meet customer expectations increases in impact

Becoming a digital organization to meet customer expectations is this year’s most impactful trend, rising from second last year. It displaces “digitization for data integration beyond the organization and across the entire value chain,” last year’s most impactful trend, now ranking second.

2019 Manufacturing top trends by impact
Cybersecurity rises to become the third highest-impact trend, from fourth last year. Transforming from a product-centric to a customer-centric business is the fourth most impactful trend this year, but ranked third in 2018. Pursuing Industry 4.0 remains fifth, as last year.
Digitization to enable data integration was the top trend in 2018 followed by becoming digital to meet customer expectations. Transforming from product-centric to customer-centric organizations was third, cybersecurity was fourth and pursuing Industry 4.0 was fifth.
2018 year-on-year comparison - Protecting through cybersecurity was the top industry trend for 2018

 

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Key findings

38% have a defined enterprise digital strategy 

Manufacturing digital transformation 2019
*Includes enterprise strategy and enterprise strategy extending to external ecosystem

Ninety-two percent of the manufacturing executives we interviewed report they have a defined digital strategy in place. Of these, 38% have an enterprise-wide strategy, while 26% have an enterprise-wide strategy that extends to external partners and suppliers, the second highest percentage among the industries we cover in these reports (communications is first).

Explore how organizations are gaining value from their enterprise digital transformation strategy.

“Cultural change and change management” cited as top challenge

“Cultural change and change management” remains the top barrier to digital transformation across the manufacturing industry. Executives also cite technology, legacy and agility constraints as their second top challenge, followed by cybersecurity concerns and acquiring digital insights.

Majority are using the cloud 

Manufacturing cloud usage 2019
Percentages represent "yes" answers. Executives can select multiple cloud usage types. "No" and "other" answers are not shown.

This year we asked manufacturing executives to share how their enterprises are using cloud-based solutions. Eighty-six percent report they use the cloud (44% both for their enterprise and for customers, 37% for their own enterprise only, and 5% for customers only). Additionally, they indicated how their organization’s cloud usage is divided between private, public and hybrid clouds (as shown in the above chart). In addition, 33% of executives do not have clarity on whether their enterprise has mechanisms in place to locate where critical data assets are processed and stored.

Benchmarking clients’ satisfaction with their own IT organization

Benchmarking clients’ satisfaction with their own IT organization
Scores from 1 to 10, with 10 most satisfied (showing 3 out of 10 available attributes)

For the second year, business and IT executives interviewed ranked their satisfaction with their own IT organizations based on the 10 key attributes of a world-class IT organization. Overall, satisfaction with internal IT is low within the manufacturing sector, at an average level of 6.7 out of 10. IT’s ability to run a secure IT environment and ensure data privacy is the highest area of satisfaction for manufacturing executives, with business and IT leaders equally satisfied.

CGI can provide clients with a discussion of all available benchmarking, including each client’s positioning, on topics such as digital maturity, IT spending, IT satisfaction, innovation investments and more. Contact us to learn more.

Learn how CGI helps clients on their journey to world-class IT.

Download the Manufacturing infographic

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Also see the industry summaries for our 2018 and 2017 CGI Client Global Insights.