Australian IT teams say they are the farthest behind in digital transformation timelines, a poll of 1000 business and IT decision makers found.

Platform provider Cyara commissioned the July survey of executives in Australia, the US, the UK and Ireland, of which around a third were in financial services.

It found a “misalignment” between business and IT leaders was setting back digital transformation at companies and Australia had the biggest discrepancy between business and IT teams – about 3 months.

“Compared to the other geographic areas, Australian IT teams expressed that they were the farthest behind and had the biggest discrepancy between business and IT teams,” the Cyara report says.

The 300 respondents polled in Australia said big data and real-time analytics, together with automation, were the top areas of investment for digital transformation. Application Programming Interface (API) modernisation ranked third.

Nine in ten Australian business leaders believe digital transformation will have a positive impact on customer experience, yet just 6% had sufficient resources to meet timelines, and insufficient resources were pushing timelines out as much as seven months.

Cyara says the COVID crisis stepped up the importance of digital transformation to stay resilient and responsive to customers.