One-Third Of Ukrainian Transport Companies Spend Less Than 1% Of Their Budgets On Digitalization - Study

Thirty-two percent of the respondents in a survey conducted as part of the "Industry Control: Digitalization in Transport Businesses" project admitted that they spend less than 1% of their budgets on digital solutions.

Andrii Shkliar, a leading expert with the CFTS, announced this during the presentation of the results of the survey at the American Chamber of Commerce in Ukraine.

"Thirty-two percent of the respondents (the largest group) spend less than 1% of all their company budgets on digital solutions. Companies that spend more than 10% of their budgets on this constituted only 4% of the respondents," he said.

According to him, 71% of the respondents in the survey said that cybersecurity was the main factor in the introduction of digital technologies.

In addition, 82% of the respondents in the survey said that digital solutions were important to businesses primarily because of the need to increase the transparency of public administration and reduce corruption.

“The problems around which businesses are uniting through the use of digital solutions are those that extremely reduce the potential of the Ukrainian transport sector. These are theft, risks, and corruption,” Shkliar said.

Moreover, the majority of the respondents in the survey agreed with the notion that the success of implementation of digital solutions will determine the competitiveness of their businesses in the near future.

“The industry expects competition of a new quality – digital competition – tomorrow. This is when companies will compete not only on price and services, but also on the level of digitalization, specifically, the level of convenience of customer interfaces and user accounts, availability of B2B data synchronization, the possibility of online monitoring of cargoes and passengers, and the possibility of collecting and processing data. All this will grant businesses access to qualitatively new solutions," said Dmytro Pavlenko, director of Deloitte’s tax and legal department and co-leader of the "Infrastructure" industry group.

"Industry Control" is an annual survey that is conducted jointly by the CFTS and Deloitte, the purpose of which is to examine problems and trends in the Ukrainian transport industry. The IT Enterprise company is also a partner this year. This year’s survey focuses on digitalization of the transport industry. Companies that collectively control more than 90% of the cargo flows in Ukraine shared their assessments, provided information about the main areas of introduction of digital solutions in businesses, discussed the obstacles to their broad expansion, and evaluated the immediate prospects for implementation of electronic document management, web platforms, artificial intelligence, and big data in the areas of transport and infrastructure.