More than half of Austrian companies have not yet completed their digital transformation. Only 47 percent of domestic companies use information and communications technologies (ICT), such as cloud services, data analytics and artificial intelligence. This places Austria in the bottom third in a European comparison, Tobias Thomas, general manager of Statistics Austria, noted in a press release. The EU-27 average is 55 percent.
According to this research, Austria is “still far from the EU target of the “Digital Decade”, according to which at least three-quarters of companies should use advanced technologies by 2030,” Thomas said. According to studies by Statistics Austria, artificial intelligence is only used by eleven percent of companies. Data analysis is used in almost every fourth company (24 percent). And cloud services are used by a third of companies (36 percent).
Depending on the industry
The use of ICT depends, among other things, on the economic sector, the size of the company and the location. These technologies are used more in the service sector (50 percent) than in the manufacturing sector (40 percent). 85 percent of companies in the information and communications sector use at least one of the technologies, while in construction, for example, only 33 percent of companies use cloud services, data analysis or artificial intelligence.
About 85 percent of companies with 250 or more employees use these technologies. And 64 percent of medium-sized companies with 50 to 249 employees use the possibilities of ICT. However, for small companies with 10 to 49 employees this is only 43 percent.
Regional differences
But there are also regional differences: advanced information and communication technologies are mainly used in Vienna (55 percent) and Vorarlberg (54 percent). In this respect, Burgenland is at the bottom with 34 percent.
In a European comparison, Finland and Denmark are leaders in the use of ICT with a share of 88 and 77 percent respectively. This makes them the only countries that have already achieved the EU target of 75 percent, while Austria lags behind in a European comparison. The worst performing countries in Europe are currently Romania and Bulgaria, where only 29 percent of companies use advanced ICT.
Source: Krone
I’m Ben Stock, a journalist and author at Today Times Live. I specialize in economic news and have been working in the news industry for over five years. My experience spans from local journalism to international business reporting. In my career I’ve had the opportunity to interview some of the world’s leading economists and financial experts, giving me an insight into global trends that is unique among journalists.
