Особливості цифрової трансформації підприємств у країнах Європейського Союзу

Abstract

Digital transformation plays an important role in ensuring the competitiveness of enterprises in today’s environment. The COVID-19 pandemic has significantly exacerbated this trend, as many companies are facing the threat of bankruptcy due to their inability to quickly adapt to the digital format of work. The European Union is no exception, which, in order to prevent such crisis situations, has developed an appropriate digital transformation strategy for 2030, one of the directions of which is the digital transformation of enterprises. It is found that most scientific studies cover the general aspects of digitalization of enterprises in the European Union, without taking into account the specifics of individual countries, or contain an analysis of the digitalization of enterprises in the EU countries without a detailed consideration of its components. In view of the above, the aim of the article is to study the digital transformation of enterprises in different countries of the European Union. To achieve this goal, the digital intensity index and its main components were analyzed. The article uses the following methods: deduction, analysis, synthesis, generalization, comparison, and tabular method. The results showed that enterprises in Northern and Western Europe are characterized by a fairly high level of digital intensity and values for most of its components. This is especially true for European Union countries such as Denmark, Sweden, Finland and Belgium. The opposite trends have been found in the EU countries in Southern and Eastern Europe, which have a much lower indicator of digital intensity and the importance of its components compared to the above-mentioned ones. These include: Bulgaria, Romania, Greece, Hungary and others. In addition, it was found that the majority of enterprises in the European Union have reached at least a basic level of digital intensity, including small and medium-sized ones. However, in order to achieve the goal of digital transformation of small and medium-sized enterprises in the strategic plan by 2030, it is necessary to reduce the gap between the actual and target indicators by more than 20%. For this purpose, the main directions for increasing the level of the Digital Intensity Index were identified, including: stimulating the integration of e-commerce, especially in the direction of B2C, developing staff skills in the field of ICT, employment of specialists in the field of ICT, the use of industrial or service robots, as well as improving the values of most components of the Digital Intensity Index of enterprises in the EU countries in Southern and Eastern Europe.