Businesses are abandoning digital transformation strategies because they are struggling to find common ground with vendors on cultural alignment and are receiving poor advice.

A Censuswide survey of 3,032 business decision makers in the UK, US, Australia, France, Germany and the Nordics for enterprise applications company IFS, found that when selecting technology vendors 29 per cent look at the company’s ethics, while 27 per cent look for innovation, as their most desired traits.

The top two vendor traits selected were specialist industry expertise (32 per cent) and long-term solutions (30 per cent). Poor advice from vendors topped the list of why digital transformation projects fail, at 37 per cent.

Nearly half (48 per cent) of respondents at companies with revenues between $850 and 950 million stated that they had been forced by senior management or the board of directors to use a well-known vendor that was a poor technological fit.

Failure in past projects makes management more reluctant to engage in future digital transformation efforts, according to the research, with budget overruns topping the list of reasons management may put the brakes on critical projects at 28 per cent. A further 26 per cent stated that blown timelines on past projects have made management more risk averse.

The success of digital transformation projects primarily hinges on finding the right technological fit (44 per cent) and establishing clear objectives (50 per cent). The top three vendor trust factors highlighted by respondents were on-time delivery (44 per cent), support before, during and after project completion (41 per cent), and delivering projects faster to value (35 per cent).

IFS chief customer officer Michael Ouissi said: “The fact that a non-tangible such as ethics is ranked among the top three vendor traits is inextricably linked to the fact that poor advice from vendors was rated as the top reason for failure.

“Companies investing in technology should expect their vendors to adhere to sound sales and marketing practices based squarely in actual customer value.”

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