Digitalization of business today is not a fashion, but a matter of survival. Huge amounts of information, as well as requirements for the speed of its processing, do not leave modern companies a chance to cope with new challenges “manually”.
Major players were the first to understand the lack of alternatives to the introduction of digital solutions, and COVID-19 became the impetus for global changes in this area. Before the pandemic, mainly specialized experts spoke about the prospects for AI and cloud technologies in optimizing business processes, and technologies were used on occasion. The massive transition to remote operation, associated with restrictions on movement due to the pandemic, forced everyone to look for urgent solutions.
Let’s turn to the data of 2020: according to information from a study in which more than 700 representatives of companies from the Russian Federation were interviewed, in the second half of 2020, 83% of domestic companies did not rise above the second stage of digitalization. In simple terms, they did not have a uniform digital infrastructure, and examples of technology use were rare and local.
And here are the results of a study of the Russian IT market at the end of 2023, in which 119 suppliers and customers from retail, education, finance, and construction were interviewed:
- 50% of respondents use cybersecurity solutions, 40% plan to implement them;
- in 22% of companies, AI is already part of business processes, while 61% of experts consider this area the most important for development;
- in making a decision, 55% of respondents rely on the results of big data analytics (Big Data), 31% plan to implement it;
- 42% of organizations are constantly using the cloud stack, and almost the same number – 41% – are going to do this in the near future.
The trend towards digital business transformation is clear. At the same time, it is noticeable that the potential of digitalization is not yet fully used by everyone.
Digitalization in 2024: the state of the market
The year 2024 is coming to an end, and preliminary results can already be summed up. Two factors remain the drivers of changes in the digital industry of the Russian Federation today:
1. The need to modernize the company’s IT landscape after the departure of foreign suppliers.
2. Opportunities that business optimization of internal processes brings.
Import substitution
The migration of information systems to domestic software remains the dominant trend. In addition to the need for a reliable and functional digital base, enterprises and organizations increasingly face the need to protect against cyber attacks.
First of all, this concerns state industrial and administrative facilities of critical information infrastructure (CII). The commercial sector is also familiar with this problem, but here this phenomenon does not apply to issues of the highest priority – private business solves such issues by determining independently the level of threat and the measure of counteraction.
The most in demand in this regard are the means of protecting the network perimeter for high-load networks, data centers and ASTPM. Domestic products are already on the market in sufficient quantities. The customers’ task is to select a supplier carefully and test.
The main problems in import substitution arise when implementing the following tools:
- Integrated operating systems. The difficulties include the incompatibility of the domestic pre-installed software with the equipment and, as a result, the need to improve the functionality.
- Storage software. In this case, many domestic solutions have limited capabilities, and companies have problems with seamless data transfer.
- Office suites. Often there are difficulties with the migration of users, and insufficient functional content.
- ERP systems. Digital resource planners almost always need adaptation and refinement for the specifics of companies, this slows down the process of transition to domestic counterparts.
A feature is also the need for constant, close contact with vendors – out of the box solutions are often not suitable for replacing foreign software one to one. As a rule, you need to either refine the product or reorganize the existing IT infrastructure in the company in accordance with the capabilities of the NGFW tool.
To some extent, the task is facilitated by the fact that for state-owned enterprises participating in the national program “Digital Economy of Russia”, the presence of more than 70% of Russian software is a mandatory norm: this forces participants to accept the terms of the game. It is more difficult with private business, here the rejection of foreign software is still perceived skeptically in some places.
In general, taking into account the fact that Russian companies have already managed to gain experience in migrating from foreign ERP systems to the 1C platform and have learned to customize the product based on industry specifics, it can be argued: import substitution is going well.
In the field of highly specialized solutions (ASTPM and MES), the situation is more complicated, there is a stronger dependence on foreign software. Nevertheless, new, mature offers from Russian developers regularly appear on the market of maintenance and repair systems – the trend towards replacement is obvious, and judging by the situation in the world, it will continue.
Digitalization for business optimization
Let’s move on from boring technical details to more interesting ones – the prospects that digitalization opens up for business.
Cloud technology
Today it is one of the most actively growing segments of the IT market in Russia, as well as in the world. The interest of domestic business in local IaaS, SaaS, PaaS solutions forces providers to develop and offer quickly new services to the consumer: competition is growing, which forces them to take more care of quality. Companies like Yandex Cloud or MTS Cloud have firmly ridden the trend and are already ready to provide services at the level of global players.
HR
The labor market crisis is forcing employers to search proactively for applicants using digital tools, and the introduction of AI algorithms makes CV screening more efficient, expanding the sample of candidates and increasing hiring efficiency. Using chatbots for primary interviews speeds up the selection process significantly.
The main obstacles to the digitalization of HR processes, according to analysts, are the high cost of implementation, inconsistency of structures and the absence of the company’s own development team responsible for the HRTech product.
Automation
The desire to optimize time costs, personnel hunger, as well as the advantage of AI in the speed and accuracy of information processing force the business to turn to automatic systems. Automation frees up time that a company can devote to improving the customer experience or something else that cannot be passed on to a person. Reporting automation services, corporate management systems and attendance tracking are at the top of demand.
According to research for 2024, 86% of companies are willing to pay more for better customer service tools, and 91% use CRM to one degree or another.
According to the results of a survey in which more than 2,500 managers took part, 68% of respondents believe that the effectiveness of generative AI levels the possible risks of its use, and declare their readiness to use it. I talked about the potential of machine learning (ML) to increase conversion, predict demand, manage logistics and keep track of warehouse balances using real-life examples in a separate article.
Digitalization is inevitable
In 2024, companies continue the process of import substitution. Stagnation and confusion caused by the departure of global giants from the Russian IT market are in the past, moreover, there is a dynamics of development.
If in 2022 the business carefully looked at local products in the hope of the return of global vendors, then in 2024 import substitution is in full swing: convincing cases have appeared, the volume of investments in the digital industry has begun to grow, industry leaders are updating IT infrastructure, and the rest are following them. Modern business automation solutions focus on cloud and generative AI, predictive analytics and the gradual transition from digitalization of individual solutions to full-fledged digital transformation. These trends are the current picture of the market, which shapes its future for the coming years.
By Andrey Nikonov, CEO Riverstart