A new global study from Pegasystems Inc. on the state of business complexity found that nearly three out of four ANZ employees (71%) feel their job complexity continues to rise as customer demands increase. At the same time, employees at all levels report feeling overloaded with information, systems, and processes, making it difficult for them to adapt to these new challenges and meet their customers’ growing needs.
As the pandemic bore down, enterprises accelerated digital transformation efforts to help address the new reality. But the survey finds these initiatives did not go far enough.
The survey of 500 employees across Australia and New Zealand suggests these initiatives were implemented in silos without a unified vision.
In fact, 47% of respondents think that digital transformation may have even increased their job complexity – a surprising perception that should cause some organisations to re-examine their digital approach.
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It is imperative to reduce business complexity. Simplification is a stated goal of large enterprises in Australia
But before they can redefine a new strategy to reduce business complexity, organisations must first understand the key drivers that are rapidly increasing it.
Survey respondents identified a mix of organisational, technological, and societal factors that are adding complexity to their jobs, the top of which include:
- Managing information overload, reported by 93% of respondents
- Keeping pace with rapid change (92%)
- Navigating internal processes and bureaucracy, and managing projects, teams, and people (89%)
- Collaborating across teams (86%)
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How can businesses better address these complexity drivers?
Start by breaking technological silos
According to survey respondents, they should start by breaking down technological silos. The presence of too many/different systems was the top technology issue driving complexity in their organisation, selected by 50% of respondents.
When asked what businesses can do to make their technology experience less complex, their top remedy was to deploy systems that more easily integrate with other technologies and make them easier to use (selected by 41% of respondents).
This suggests that businesses need to take a more unified approach to digital transformation as opposed to piecemeal projects implemented in isolation.
With the pandemic triggering rapid change, many employees want their organisation to adapt even faster: two-in-five reported their organisation moves too slowly to react to change.
Technology still remains the key to streamlining their job functions, as 99% agree that technology is vital to getting their jobs done right.
