About 54 percent of Indian companies have implemented artificial intelligence (AI) and analytics for business functions. According to global consultancy firm PwC, digital champions from across the six sectors in India believe that being resilient, transparent and sustainable will prepare them for future growth. However, they believe that greater innovation and faster time to market will help them remain competitive in the coming days.

"Organisations are focusing on improving the efficiency of processes, such as reducing the downtime of assets, minimising the maintenance cost of expensive equipment, cutting down the cost of poor quality by understanding the parameters needed for the golden batch using digital twins, automation of processes like connected workstations using IoT for better visibility at the shop floor and workflow-based automated solution for efficient scheduling," said Sudipta Ghosh, Partner, Industrial Products Sector and Data and Analytics Practice Leader, PwC India.

About 38 per cent of Indian companies revealed that they do not have any plans to adopt digital technology for their businesses. The report said that Indian manufacturing companies currently prefer to adopt one standardised digital solution across plants compared to global companies which prefer one standardised digital solution with different functionalities or modules.

"Analytics continues to play a significant role in improving the decision-making process, both at the shop floor as well as across the entire supply chain. The return on investments will be governed to a large extent by how organisations are using the data to generate insights and take timely decisions," Ghosh said. Further, the report said that Indian companies tend to focus more on people, policies and mindset while global companies prefer to build up the right system for driving any transformation.