Digital Budgets by Core Technologies

We also asked our 820 survey participants to show their digital budget another way: by spending in each of the digital five forces.

Across all respondents, the largest percentage of digital technology spending (28%) will be allocated to Big Data and analytics software. A much smaller percentage (20%) is directed at mobile computing and miniature devices, and social media and online communities, with nearly as much spent on cloud (19%). AI and robotics receives just 13% of funding, an amount that is likely to grow as rising labor costs and concerns over IP theft lead an increasing number of American companies to bring their factories back to their native country.

But North American companies spend the greatest percentage of their digital technology budget on Big Data and analytics (29%). It’s also the dominant category in Europe, Asia- Pacific, and Latin America. Latin American companies spend a bigger portion of their budget on cloud than the other three regions (19%), while North American companies spend the smallest portion on cloud (11%). (See Exhibit II-14.)

Exhibit II-14: Regional Digital Budgets by Technology

Exhibit II-14 Regional Digital Budgets by Technology

Countries with strong industrial sectors spend the most on AI and robotics, including Brazil and Mexico (19% each) and Germany (17%). Japanese companies spend the greatest share of their digital budgets on Big Data and analytics, while companies based in Brazil, where the economy is sluggish, spend the smallest share (20%) in that area. In Brazil, the largest economy in Latin America, a healthy service economy leaves it tied with the U.S. in the proportion of their ‘digital’ budgets spent on social media (22%).

Regional Differences in Digital Spending
Most Companies have brought a Digital Product or Service to Market