In a comment to the survey, Paweł Borys, CEO of the state-run Polish Development Fund, a research partner, said that "implementing new technologies and using the cloud is no longer just leverage for development, but is becoming a prerequisite of business survival and maintaining competitiveness."
Mateusz Marek/PAP

Digitalisation in Poland’s bigger firms significantly accelerated during the coronavirus pandemic, according to a survey by the Humanities Institute, an organisation focusing on social change.

The research found that 93 percent of managers and 88 percent of employees of the surveyed firms believe that the pandemic has sped up the digital transformation. Most medium-sized and large companies in Poland are committed to the digital change, with 78 percent of them already taking advantage of new technologies.

In a comment to the survey, Paweł Borys, CEO of the state-run Polish Development Fund, a research partner, said that “implementing new technologies and using the cloud is no longer just leverage for development, but is becoming a prerequisite of business survival and maintaining competitiveness.”

The digital transformation is most advanced in businesses employing more than 250 people, including state-owned companies, with nearly 60 percent of the biggest firms saying they use new technologies on a daily basis or are at advanced stages of implementing them.

For medium-sized companies, the proportion is just 46 percent.

The key benefits of new technologies include process automation, work efficiency and cost optimisation.

Poland plans to spend PLN 13.7 billion (EUR 2.99 billion) on digital transformation. The money will come from the EU’s multi-billion post-pandemic recovery fund. Poland’s share in the total recovery money is worth a total of EUR 58 billion in subsidies and loans.

The Humanities Institute carried out the research among 400 managers and employees of medium-sized and large companies as well as a sample of the general public.