Global Corporate Survey 2023: Operational Excellence Budgets, Priorities And Tech Preferences
Joe Lamming
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Executive Summary
This report provides senior managers in operations, engineering, maintenance, process safety, and data science and IT roles who are responsible for operational excellence with a benchmark of peers’ budgets, business priorities and technology preferences. The data collected through the Verdantix survey – from 304 respondents across 20 industries in 14 economic regions, with 84% representing firms with revenues greater than $1 billion – also support strategic decision-making and business planning by executives at technology vendors and service providers, helping them understand trends in customer requirements. Budgets for the remainder of 2023 and into 2024 continue to look healthy, with 95% of respondents planning to maintain or increase spend. Respondents provided insights into predicted spending changes and implementation plans for software and technology in 2023 and 2024.Operational excellence programmes are coordinated across multiple functions and regions
Operational excellence budgets will continue to grow, driven by optimization, digital transformation and safety
Spend on operational excellence will grow further in 2024
Industrial firms are accelerating digitization efforts to address global challenges and harness new technologies
Corporate decarbonization targets, cost reductions and supply chain issues are top of mind for digitization leadership
Consolidation of solutions for asset management activities continues to drive investment in software
Operational risk and process safety management activities generate further demand for software solutions
Data management improvements and drastic advances in AI are forcing firms to rethink operational excellence
Multimodal generative AI will reframe the industrial digital twin
Industrial DataOps will maintain robust digital infrastructure for next-gen technologies to succeed
Figure 2. Survey respondents' business function
Figure 3. Industry breakdown of survey respondents
Figure 4. Geographic location of survey respondents
Figure 5. Change in operational excellence spend for the next 12 months
Figure 6. Level of digital maturity for industrial firms
Figure 7. Factors driving digital transformation of plant operations
Figure 8. ESG and net zero priorities for industrial firms
Figure 9. State of software deployment for industrial asset management
Figure 10. Change in investment in asset management software
Figure 11. Investment plans for asset management software
Figure 12. Process safety management digitization goals
Figure 13. Industrial risk management software spending plans
Figure 14. Perceived effects of generative AI on industrial operations
Figure 15. Plans to use digital innovations for operational excellence
Figure 16. Industrial data management challenges
About the Authors
Joe Lamming
Senior Analyst
Joe is a Senior Analyst and Technical Lead at Verdantix, specializing in AI-first platforms and applications and data management. Combining hands-on development of software an...
Malavika Tohani
Research Director
Malavika is a Research Director at Verdantix, guiding research that explores how digital technologies and services are reshaping industrial operations to become safer, more ef...
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