Progressly, the world’s first cloud-based Operational Performance Management solution, today announced results from its first ever Achieving Operational Excellence survey, which took the pulse of more than 500 global executives over a span of two months on how they are pursuing key initiatives in operational excellence and the problems they’re encountering in achieving their operational goals.

“The survey findings further validate that businesses are increasingly aligning their strategy with operational excellence to drive scalable, enterprise-wide transformation like never before,” said Progressly CEO and co-founder Nick Candito. “Operational excellence on the C-suite agenda is now a mandatory requirement.”

The majority of survey respondents (65 percent) were in the energy sector, other sectors represented included high tech, healthcare, retail, transportation, the public sector, and manufacturing.

Among the survey’s key findings, more than 83 percent of company executives identified manufacturing as a key area for cloud infrastructure use in their organization, followed by forecasting, planning, and scheduling (78 percent), and purchasing, procurement, and sourcing (66 percent). Many respondents (29 percent) also identified logistics, transportation and warehousing, inventory and materials management (19 percent), and customer service and collaboration (18 percent) as key areas for cloud infrastructure use in their company.

Nearly 90 percent of respondents identified improved competitiveness as the primary outcome they wanted from achieving operational excellence, and nearly 90 percent said delivering customer value was their organization’s top challenge in operations. Empowering lines of business with IT reliance or development, IT itself, and real-time data and analysis were the most commonly identified initiatives by respondents for achieving operational excellence.

Nearly 70 percent of professionals felt there was a lot of room for improvement in working with IT leadership to introduce new technologies that can improve business performance.

“Clearly organizations are seeking operational excellence and digital transformation – and getting IT aligned on business goals and driving excellence will be a key initiative to getting there,” said Candito. “It’s also important to have visibility of what’s going on across the whole business in real-time and then adapt as needed. Change doesn’t mean an overhaul of everything in one go, nor ripping and replacing existing software. It’s much easier for organizations to first model and build flexibility and efficiency within their existing infrastructure.”