Only six per cent of world's top companies have a chief digital officer - PwC

UK has largest proportion of CDOs, and European firms are hiring CDOs at a faster rate than companies elsewhere

Only six per cent of the world's top 1,500 firms have appointed a chief digital officer to oversee the digital transformation of their business, according to a study from PwC's strategy consulting business, Strategy&.

Computing has looked in-depth into the chief digital officer role - speaking to several CDOs from the likes of Lastminute.com, Atkins and Travelex who all have different interpretations of the position. While some believe that CDOs should sit within marketing rather than IT, others think it is the CDO's duty to merge marketing and IT, and some suggest that it is the CDO rather than the CIO that should lead digital transformation in an organisation and one day replace the CIO.

Of the 86 CDOs that the Strategy& study identified, more than a third (31) were appointed last year, and over 80 per cent had been hired since 2012. Forty per cent of CDOs identified are members of the C-suite.

PwC found that the most common backgrounds for CDOs were marketing (34 per cent), sales (17 per cent) and technology (14 per cent).

UK firms have hired the biggest proportion of CDOs, and European firms are hiring CDOs at a faster rate than companies elsewhere.

Thirteen per cent of CDOs are found in European firms, with seven per cent in the US, five per cent in South and Latin America, three per cent in Asia-Pacific and two per cent in Middle East and Africa.

PwC also found that a larger proportion of big companies have appointed a CDO - the proportion of firms with more than 10,000 employees that have appointed CDOs lies somewhere between five per cent and nine per cent, but falls to one to three per cent for companies with fewer employees.

In terms of sectors: consumer-oriented firms including media and entertainment (13 per cent), food and beverage (11 per cent) and consumer products (nine per cent) are most likely to have a CDO in place.

Martin Roets, a London-based principal at Strategy&, suggested that the CDO role had come about under very different circumstances than the CIO or CMO roles and that it wouldn't just be large global undertakings that would be hiring CDOs in the future, but also SMEs.

Ashley Unwin, head of UK and EMEA Consulting at PwC, said that it was encouraging to see major European firms lead the way in creating senior roles solely focused on digital transformation.

He said that once digitisation is firmly entrenched within a company's everyday operations, then the question will become whether the role is needed anymore - a suggestion that Computing made several months ago. However, he believes that day is still a long way off.