High‑impact digital projects
- A new wave of 2026 surveys shows companies are narrowing digital spending to automation, data quality and customer-facing AI that can prove returns quickly. - PwC found 89% of U.S. operations leaders say tech investments have not fully delivered, while 72% rank automating operations among their top three AI bets. - India’s Digital Personal Data Protection rules are pushing companies to rebuild data systems around consent, governance and local control as open-source AI adoption rises. (ey.com)
Companies are trimming digital ambition down to projects that can show results fast: automation, cleaner data, and customer tools tied to revenue or cost. (pwc.com) (deloitte.com) PwC said April 23 that 89% of U.S. operations leaders think their tech investments have not fully delivered expected results, even though 85% say they are ahead of competitors in digital transformation. (pwc.com) That gap is steering money toward narrower use cases. In PwC’s survey of 767 leaders, 72% ranked automating operations as a top-three artificial intelligence investment focus, and 83% said AI agents and automation will break down functional silos. (pwc.com) Consultants are describing the same shift in broader terms. Deloitte’s 2026 technology outlook says the conversation has moved from “what can we do with AI?” to getting “real business value” out of it. (deloitte.com) McKinsey’s February survey of 632 executives found the companies getting the most value are not treating technology as a back-office cost center. It said top performers were using agentic automation and data products to drive growth, with at least 10% average revenue and earnings growth over three years. (mckinsey.com) The plumbing underneath those projects matters as much as the software. PwC said 87% of respondents blamed poor data quality for limiting value from digital initiatives, and only 30% reported significant improvement in data quality and reliability. (pwc.com) In India, that data problem is colliding with a legal one. EY said in January that the Digital Personal Data Protection framework is turning consent management, data governance, automated classification and continuous oversight into design requirements for enterprise systems. (ey.com) NITI Aayog’s February roadmap used a different phrase for the same pressure: digital sovereignty. It said AI-driven automation, platform delivery and geopolitical realignment are reshaping how technology is built and where nations want control over critical data and infrastructure. (niti.gov.in) That helps explain why open models keep showing up in enterprise plans. IBM’s India survey, reported in December, found 76% of respondents had already achieved return-on-investment-driven AI results, while 48% said more than half the AI tools they use are based on open-source technologies. (analyticsindiamag.com) The pattern across these reports is less “digital transformation” in the old, sprawling sense and more a portfolio of small, accountable bets. The projects getting funded are the ones that can survive two tests at once: measurable returns and tighter control over the data they run on. (pwc.com) (ey.com)
