Research conducted by 3Gem on behalf of Silico found that almost all UK businesses (94%) are comfortable with technology taking charge of decision-making and autonomous planning with little or no human involvement, indicating that UK business leaders no longer appear to trust ‘gut instinct’ or ‘intuition’ to influence the direction of their business. 

Technologies which can augment or make decisions autonomously, such as artificial intelligence (AI) and Digital Twins, are now seen as integral to decision-making and business planning efforts. A majority (93%) of UK businesses surveyed feel AI will be ‘very important’ for making strategic business decisions over the next 12 months, whilst over two thirds (69%) claim to already use Digital Twin technology to inform their business planning. One in five (22%) are planning to introduce Digital Twin technology into their business over the coming years to guide their business planning. 

Global economic pressures creating major planning challenges for UK businesses 

Increased trust in technology to make decisions and support planning efforts appears to follow a similar rise in anxieties around business performance and survival within a deeply turbulent global economic landscape. 

When asked about how current market conditions may impact business performance, just under three quarters (74%) of UK businesses stated they are extremely concerned by how well their business will deal with pressures stemming from the current global economy. This is particularly resonant in the IT and Communications sector, where three in four (73%) businesses said that current planning is extremely challenging. Almost nine in 10 (89%) say that current UK inflation rates make strategic planning extremely or very challenging.    

John Hill, CEO at Silico, said: "In the face of an increasingly difficult macro environment, it’s little wonder that businesses are becoming more risk-averse, leading to a reluctance to innovate and improve. But this hesitance stifles growth and leads to stagnation. Business Process Simulation offers a solution to this challenge. By allowing companies to test and analyse various scenarios in a controlled environment, process simulation can help businesses overcome their fears and embrace change. This powerful tool encourages continuous improvement and innovation, ensuring that businesses not only survive but thrive, even in the most uncertain times.” 

Dr. Philipp Fahr, Arcwide, Partner for Business Transformation, Technology & Process Excellence, GSA & Eastern Europe, said: “The strong economic headwinds mean that companies must be prepared for a range of disparate impacts, affecting numerous functions within their business. They will want to revisit and focus on bottom-line improvements around efficiency and effectiveness after many years of growth. This is going to be a challenge for small companies or teams with limited resources. Digital Twin technology and Business Process Simulation can help decision makers to simulate different risk scenarios and test decisions before implementing the most successful mitigation strategies and tactics.” 

Ric McCormick, Experienced Transformation and Process Leader, said: “Empowering teams to drive their own change is critical for business growth. Teams need capacity to both ID the right improvements and implement the changes. AI, Digital Twins and automation have a key part to play in this through both creating capacity to make the improvements whilst providing the data and opportunities for change that will have the biggest return on investment for what can be a small percentage of their time.” 

Methodology 

We commissioned 3Gem Media Group to interview 525 technology decision makers in the UK from companies of 251+ employees, with 11% from companies of 5,000+ employees, across all sectors. The decision makers interviewed spanned 20 sectors, including IT and communications, retail, healthcare, construction and business services.

All responses were collected between 12th February to 23rd February 2023. 3Gem abides by and employs members of the Market Research Society which is based on the ESOMAR principles.