Study: Middle Market Companies Lag Behind In Digitization

A report from the National Center for the Middle Market details the growing importance of organization-wide digitization.

A new survey by the National Center for the Middle Market​ and branding agency Magneto found that middle market managers are giving lackluster evaluations to their organization’s efforts to digitize despite placing great emphasis on the importance of digitization.

“How Digital Are You? Middle Market Digitization Trends and How Your Firm Measures Up” incorporates responses from 500 C-level middle market executives surveyed in October 2015. Middle market refers to companies with annual revenues between $10 million and $1 billion while digitization is defined as the process of converting manual, paper-based or offline business processes to online, networked, computer-supported processes that facilitate a real-time operating and decision-making environment. For the back end, that means things like invoices and HR enrollment documents, while the front end pertains to customer-facing interaction such as websites, apps software and analytics.

The reports looks at the pace at which middle market companies are digitizing their workload. While the survey found that 63% of respondents say digitization is very or extremely important relative to other business activities, barely a third view their organizations as digitization leaders. Asked to rate their companies on digital performance, the majority of respondents awarded themselves a C+.

Zach Brooke

Zach Brooke is a former AMA staff writer turned freelance journalist. His work has been featured in Chicago magazine, Milwaukee Magazine, A.V. Club and VICE, among others. Follow him on Twitter @Zach_Brooke.