Accelerate to value

Where are companies placing their bets on digital technologies to reinvent offers and processes, and create new cost savings and revenue streams?

Organizations are making bold bets on digital engineering, driven equally by cost reduction and topline improvement.

Over half aim to save in development and after-sales costs, and to improve their market share through better or more cost-effective offers.

Nearly as many also see digital technologies as a route to reducing time to market and improving their customer experience.

What are the top benefits your firm will realize with the integration
of digital technologies in products and operations?

By when does your firm plan to achieve scale with
its digital engineering endeavors?

Firms are ambitious about
their timescales for digital engineering at scale…

…but firms are not very confident about their existing capabilities

…and those that are trying to catch up with their competition, state they face challenges finding the right digital engineering talent and technology vendors

How would you rate your current digital engineering capabilities?

Why do you think you are behind the competition in your
digital engineering capabilities?

(of those behind)

What are the top internal challenges your firm faces in
implementing its digital engineering strategy?

(% listing challenge in their top three)

In fact, skills and talent retention are seen as big problems at all firms, even the most advanced.

This can largely be attributed to the competition for skilled professionals, especially from fast-moving tech firms. Organizational silos and cultural roadblocks further exacerbate digital progress.

Two threads stand out in firms’ digital engineering investments: hybrid AI* as a technology enabler and as-a-service business models.

Generative AI came in as a top three priority for 22% of companies - impressive for such a new technology, though with some way to go to realize its promise.

* Hybrid AI merges Gen AI with other types of AI and other engineering and scientific models.

What are the top three threads incorporated into your
digital engineering capabilities?

(144 responses)

To solve the skills problem, firms are deploying a mix of
in-house training, recruitment, and, to a lesser extent, outsourced training programs.

How do you meet or plan to meet requirements
for your digital engineering endeavors?

Digital is the great disruptor. Companies are creating entirely new digital product lines, like autonomous driving and remote health monitoring.

They are embracing cloud and data to build connected product ecosystems that enable new as-a-service business models.

They are applying AI – and increasingly Gen AI – to R&D and customer data, to home in on new product possibilities faster, and using cutting edge digital engineering technologies to reinvent how they design and simulate their products. These bold bets promise big benefits, but can also place significant demands for change on the business, which can be hard to navigate.

Case Study: Sanofi

Since 2010, the average cost of launching a new medicine has risen by 67%, with clinical trials accounting for two-thirds of R&D costs alone. As a key industry player, Sanofi’s trial protocols must incorporate personalized and new therapies, while developing more flexible designs to address patients’ and sites’ needs.