INVESTIGATING THE READINESS OF ICT PALESTINIAN ORGANIZATIONS FOR DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION
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Date
2022-01-27
Authors
Abu Mansour, Ayman
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
An-Najah National University
Abstract
Background: The digital transformation (DT) shows the changes within society in all human life aspects. It became an important subject in the last decades both in academics and consultancy, due to the massive growth in digital technologies. Therefore, top management levels realize this significance, and they think about how to implement it within their organizations to get new opportunities, competitive advantages, new revenue streaming, and customer experience.
On the other hand, DT implementation may face many challenges and barriers, which may lead to a risk of failure in implementation. In order to minimize this risk, they need to apply readiness assessment for the organizations prior to the DT considering it the initial stage of the process.
Objective: In Palestine, the ICT sector experienced high growth. Penetration ratio of technology is high within Palestinian society, and government represented by MTIT gives the DT the highest priority in its agenda to improve all over governmental e-services that are offered to citizens. All of these factors have led the ICT and Telecom organizations in Palestine to consider the DT process the top point in their agenda. However, there is a considerable gap in digital transformation studies inside Palestine. Hence, this study aims to fill this gap and to measure the readiness of Palestinian Telecom, and ICT organization or DT process and implementation, since these sectors are considered the cornerstone in any DT process in the sense that if they are ready, all other sectors can follow them.
Methodology: To fulfill the study objectives, the Digital Transformation Frame has been espoused to assess organizations’ readiness by shedding the light on four main factors and drivers in this research: the use of technology, value creation, and new products, organization structure change, and financial aspects. The quantitative approach is used by preparing a questionnaire targeting to assemble data that measure the mentioned factors. The survey sample has targeted top managerial or decision-making levels (Telecom, ISPs, ICT, and Software development) organizations. Furthermore, the quantitative results were validated by using semi-structure interviews approach with expertise in the targeted fields.
Results: The results of statistical tests on collected data have shown that targeted organization are ready to proceed with DT for the four measured drivers. Results have also depicted that 82% of opinions that agreed on using the technology, and create marketing value and new products are main dimensions for apply and implement digital transformation. While 75% of the respondents have agreed that organizational structure and procedure change. Besides, 83.6% of the respondents have agreed that financial aspects constitute the driving force for implementing digital transformation.
Results have also affirmed that there is a difference in respondents’ answers regarding the overall organization readiness for DT. Their answers juggle between the organization size based on the number of employees and the availability of IT department in the organization. Furthermore, the results have indicated a strong correlation among all dimensions, also with the main objective of the study since the lowest Spearman's correlation coefficient was (0.833) which is very high positive relation and near to one.
Conclusion: This concludes that Palestinian Telecom and ICT organizations are ready for DT process. On the opposite side, interviews showed many challenges and obstacles related to Palestinian political situation which narrow and limit the expansion in DT process among different sectors.
The outputs of this study can be regarded as a viable option to be used for other academic studies the same topic in Palestine, and may be used as reference for other organizations studies.
Description
Background: The digital transformation (DT) shows the changes within society in all human life aspects. It became an important subject in the last decades both in academics and consultancy, due to the massive growth in digital technologies. Therefore, top management levels realize this significance, and they think about how to implement it within their organizations to get new opportunities, competitive advantages, new revenue streaming, and customer experience.
On the other hand, DT implementation may face many challenges and barriers, which may lead to a risk of failure in implementation. In order to minimize this risk, they need to apply readiness assessment for the organizations prior to the DT considering it the initial stage of the process.
Objective: In Palestine, the ICT sector experienced high growth. Penetration ratio of technology is high within Palestinian society, and government represented by MTIT gives the DT the highest priority in its agenda to improve all over governmental e-services that are offered to citizens. All of these factors have led the ICT and Telecom organizations in Palestine to consider the DT process the top point in their agenda. However, there is a considerable gap in digital transformation studies inside Palestine. Hence, this study aims to fill this gap and to measure the readiness of Palestinian Telecom, and ICT organization or DT process and implementation, since these sectors are considered the cornerstone in any DT process in the sense that if they are ready, all other sectors can follow them.
Methodology: To fulfill the study objectives, the Digital Transformation Frame has been espoused to assess organizations’ readiness by shedding the light on four main factors and drivers in this research: the use of technology, value creation, and new products, organization structure change, and financial aspects. The quantitative approach is used by preparing a questionnaire targeting to assemble data that measure the mentioned factors. The survey sample has targeted top managerial or decision-making levels (Telecom, ISPs, ICT, and Software development) organizations. Furthermore, the quantitative results were validated by using semi-structure interviews approach with expertise in the targeted fields.
Results: The results of statistical tests on collected data have shown that targeted organization are ready to proceed with DT for the four measured drivers. Results have also depicted that 82% of opinions that agreed on using the technology, and create marketing value and new products are main dimensions for apply and implement digital transformation. While 75% of the respondents have agreed that organizational structure and procedure change. Besides, 83.6% of the respondents have agreed that financial aspects constitute the driving force for implementing digital transformation.
Results have also affirmed that there is a difference in respondents’ answers regarding the overall organization readiness for DT. Their answers juggle between the organization size based on the number of employees and the availability of IT department in the organization. Furthermore, the results have indicated a strong correlation among all dimensions, also with the main objective of the study since the lowest Spearman's correlation coefficient was (0.833) which is very high positive relation and near to one.
Conclusion: This concludes that Palestinian Telecom and ICT organizations are ready for DT process. On the opposite side, interviews showed many challenges and obstacles related to Palestinian political situation which narrow and limit the expansion in DT process among different sectors.
The outputs of this study can be regarded as a viable option to be used for other academic studies the same topic in Palestine, and may be used as reference for other organizations studies.
Keywords
digital transformation (DT), information and communication technology (ICT), readiness models, digital transformation framework (DTF), value creation, financial aspects, organization structural and procedures.