Retailers lead ranking of UK’s Top-Ten Digital Leaders

A new study released today (6th November 2018), ranking companies for their digital maturity, reveals that the UK Retailers lead the list of the UK’s Top-Ten Digital Leaders.

BearingPoint's Digital Leaders Study, ranking companies for their digital maturity, reveals that the UK operations of Amazon (ranked 1.), ASOS (2.), AO.com (3.), Argos (4.) and Tesco (5.) lead the list of the UK’s Top-Ten Digital Leaders.

The study also identifies the Telecoms sector as the UK and Global Digital Leader, with EE (ranked 7) and O2 (ranked 8) also appearing in the top ten ranking of digital leaders in the UK.

Digital Leaders Study 2019  published by management and technology consultancy, BearingPoint, analyses 593 companies across eight countries (72 companies spanning ten different industry sectors in the UK) – revealing the UK’s digital maturity, and each firms’ digital presence and areas for development. The research is based on more than 250 best practice criteria in six digital dimensions – digital marketing, digital product experience, e-commerce, e-CRM, mobile and social media.

The study also found that UK Companies achieve higher digital maturity scores (within the top 10 range) than their international counterparts, exceeding average scores of all European countries except Germany. However, few of those companies are in the top 10 by digital dimension – so they are digitally mature overall rather than leaders in one or more dimensions.

Industries like telecoms and retail have been hit by new technologies, international competition and changing customer behaviour early on, and they are therefore top performers in our study.

Tony Farnfield, Partner, BearingPoint

The official UK rankings (top five only) by company and industry sector are as follows:

Although the UK’s most digitally enabled companies perform very strongly in comparison to their European peers, the UKs overall calibre is let down by companies beyond the top 10 ranking, and results show a disproportionate drop in scores due to industries, such as Water and Utilities, approach to digitalisation

Tony Farnfield, Partner, BearingPoint

Social media neglected by many UK companies

While unsurprisingly the BearingPoint study found that retailers dominate the top 10 rankings for social media prevalence, across the sample of UK companies, it was the most neglected dimension in the analysis. This was illustrated in the huge disparity between the digital leaders and the average scores. UK companies displayed an average Social media score of 2.8/5 compared to leaders like Boohoo (UK) – 4.4 and Missguided (UK) – 4.4.

Whilst presence across social media platforms is an offering of engagement, our study shows that more is required in order to fully utilise the platforms reach. Companies should focus not only on exposure but incorporate content creation and original media as part of their digital strategy, as a means of capturing and expanding their audience. At the same time, it should be recognised how social media, whilst its own dimension, ties closely with e-CRM as a point of contact between business and customer.

Tony Farnfield, Partner, BearingPoint

Focus areas for UK companies to become digital leaders in customer interaction:

• Companies must become better at creating awareness among prospective customers and attracting them to their digital channels – 31% of companies were barely visible in organic search engine results, with 63% not visible in paid search engine results relevant to their business.
• For B2C companies, there is still huge potential for up-selling and cross-selling on their websites – 58% of companies do not offer related products or more expensive options at the checkout stage.
• Companies must harness the opportunity to build customer relationships through their digital channels - by developing the customer feedback process, loyalty programmes, and email marketing.

For more information about the Digital Leaders Study research and to access country specific reports and results, visit digitalleaders.bearingpoint.com/UK

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