Tech savvy enterprises used COVID-19 pandemic to widen lead over laggards, says Accenture

A survey conducted by Accenture found that companies that had been leading in terms of technological growth widened their lead to five times that of least-developed companies during the COVID-19 pandemic, using the opportunity to increase investments in Internet of Things, cloud, automation, artificial intelligence and data management, ZDNet reports.

Accenture said leading companies were able to widen their lead because of digital innovations that were already in place, while laggards had to focus on survival amid the pandemic. Among the findings of the poll on 4,300 company leaders was that companies with the largest lead already had strong enterprise IT architecture, had undertaken replatforming to the cloud, developed strategies focusing on innovation and allowed multiple functions and departments access to its technology. They were also able to allocate 60% of their budgets on innovation by leveraging technologies such as cloud computing and automation.

In terms of investments, the largest share went to cloud security, with 72% of leaders accelerating spending on this area, followed by Internet of Things at 70%, hybrid cloud at 68% and robotic process automation at 60%, according to the survey.