In terms of its effects on people’s work and private lives, the digital revolution has surpassed all previous technological revolutions. Following the eras of mechanisation, electrification and automation, the era of digitalisation now represents the next revolutionary change in industry and business, which involves formidable challenges and major risks for the corporate landscape.

This was reason enough for Lobster, as a specialist in data integration, data management and data interchange, to take a look behind the scenes and ask IT managers the crucial question of how they keep up with digitalisation. In March 2018, 120 IT decision-makers in management positions were questioned on this subject by the renowned Institut SSI Survey Sampling Germany GmbH on behalf of Lobster GmbH.

Several challenges are cited by the CIOs, but the subject of data security and data protection is considered the most challenging: 46% of the IT managers cite this as one of the greatest challenges, closely followed by the need to find new digital business models (43% of the answers).

But what use are new business models if companies do not have the employees needed to implement them? The subject of employee qualification is therefore also a source of concern for the CIOs and is on a par with the need to be able to use data via data and system integration. These two challenges made up 39% of the answers in each case.

And finding the appropriate available technology for implementation is not always straightforward: This was cited as a difficulty by 37% of respondents. But the topic of real-time data processing, which ensures prompt provision of data, is also cited by a third of the managers. By contrast, the associated time and cost seem to provide the least cause for concern; they were only mentioned at the end with 22% and 18% respectively.