57% of global companies in these five countries plan to invest more in ICT in the next two years and 35% invest the same, after the pandemic phase where they have accelerated their ICT strategy and are now in a better position than before (60%) .

The study highlights that 48% of the organizations consulted (42% in Spain) developed an ICT strategic plan (which includes collaborative and cloud technologies) to deal with the pandemic. Meanwhile, 31% of companies quickly change their business and review their ICT, 17% analyze the technology they own and use it more effectively, and only 2% of those surveyed admit to not making any changes.

Likewise, more than half of the companies surveyed highlighted as a key lesson learned in the pandemic that adapting people and processes to their technology strategies resulted in significant efficiency gains compared to how they had previously done so. This result is more visible in companies in the biotechnology sector (80%), retail (76%), finance (72%), food and beverage (70%) and public administration (68%).

Respondents pointed out the importance of having greater collaboration within companies to make better ICT decisions (47%), particularly highlighted by companies in the health sector (72%), agriculture (69%) and energy (67%). This was followed by the fact that 31% of the study participants -26% in the case of Spain- said they had been exposed to possible security vulnerabilities due to bad practices in remote work before the pandemic.

The balances made by companies also show that 20% did not use the tools available to them because 15% had made poor ICT decisions before the pandemic. In addition, 13% of those surveyed admit that they realize that they cannot combine old processes with new technologies, but that change needs to happen at the same time.

Brakes for ICT development
The study shows that the pandemic poses several important challenges that companies must face today. 44% of companies (45% in Spain) admit that, despite increasing the efficiency of their technology, they need to implement people-based processes to, for example, analyze how technology is used, see how data is shared and cooperate and involve employees in decisions about how the company uses technology to innovate for future growth.

This challenge was followed by others such as the need to have more training in order for employees to meet new operational demands (as stated by 39% of all surveyed), allocating time to review and take stock of the state of the business to decide next steps (35% of companies ) and trying to make better use of data for strategic information (according to 21% of those consulted).

Businesses face several significant obstacles in achieving their strategic ICT aspirations. These include: lack of budget and internal skills (by 41% and 32, respectively), partner limitations (30%) and unproven technology and strategy options (both by 24%). ).