Report shows businesses' significant strides in digital transformation

The business digital transformation report is an annual publication implemented by the Ministry of Planning and Investment’s Enterprise Development Agency as part of a programme supporting businesses in digital transformation for 2021-2025. Its 2022 edition was compiled based on a survey of 1,000 firms nationwide from a wide range of sectors, including agro-forestry-fishery, processing-manufacturing, retail-wholesale, and education.

As per the report, polled enterprises have demonstrated strides in applying digital technologies in marketing, distribution and multi-channel sales to enhance customer experiences and care. Digital technology is also more commonly applied in a number of operations such as the management of inventory, production lines, and purchasing. Many companies have digitised data and standardised processes to move towards the transformation on a broader and more synchronous scale.

However, the application of digital technology in many businesses, especially small- and medium-sized enterprises, was still local and desultory due to a lack of clear goals, plans and strategies from the beginning, therefore their investment in the process has yet to gain successes as expected.

The direction and strategy, people and organisation, customer experiences, and multi-channel sales are the areas with the best digital transformation readiness, said the report, adding that risk management remains a limitation of most businesses across fields and industries.

Addressing the ceremony, Trinh Thi Huong, deputy director of the Enterprise Development Agency, said despite COVID-19-induced difficulties last year, the inevitability of the digital transformation trend was recognised by many enterprises and their increased investment in related applications helped them adapt to and even accelerate during such unprecedented difficult period.