Digital Transformation – A Hungarian Overview

Abstract

Digital transformation is considered as an increasingly important process for organizations today, critical for the survival of companies. The spreading of digital technologies throughout our societies brings along various changes in organisational culture, people, business processes and business models. The perception of digital transformation's importance among the management of companies is lower in some European countries, among others in Hungary. Our research aims to provide an overview of digital transformation in Hungarian companies from the dimensions of strategy, technology and digital innovation capabilities. We discuss the objectives of digital transformation and the role of IT departments in digital transformation. The research is part of an ongoing research, in which IT-related practice of Hungarian organizations is explored on a yearly basis, starting in 2009. 167 organizations participated in our last study, in 2018. As our survey results revealed, there is a moderate-strong demand for digital transformation, but the consciousness and perception of how technology will change the nature of business varies among industries. Most of the questioned Hungarian companies deal with digitalization at the strategic level; however, there is still a large group of firms that manage digital transformation as an IT problem. Although the objectives of digital transformation are clear, organizations heavily lack preconditions for successful transformation.