Bankia : Spanish companies earn a pass in digital competitiveness but could do better

• The companies analysed in the report obtain an average score of five out of ten
• Eight out of ten businesses have already made a start along the road to digital transformation, although 77% of them have room for improvement
• The companies perform well in SEO and web analytics
• Mobility and social networks are the main opportunities for improvement for Spanish companies
• Asturian companies, boosted by the large number of trade sector companies analysed, obtain the best score, 5.3
• Bankia chairman Goirigolzarri: 'Four years ago only 14% of Spanish companies sold online; today the figure is 20%. This is the best proof that the change is under way and the trend is unstoppable.'

Spanish companies obtain a pass in digital competitiveness but have ample room for improvement, considering that they score an average of five out of ten, according to the '2016 Bankia Índicex Report: The digitisation of companies in Spain'.Open in a new window

Eight out of ten Spanish companies have already embarked on the digital transformation. 10.9% have become competitive in the digital sphere, while a majority (77.8%) still have scope for improvement. Only 11.3% of Spanish companies are rated as uncompetitive.

The report has been prepared based on the information provided voluntarily by more than 5,000 Spanish corporations, SMEs and entrepreneurs through the website www.bankiaindicex.com.Open in a new window

Bankia ÍndicexOpen in a new window is a free tool launched by Bankia that assesses more than 100 measures of companies' performance in nine broad areas of digital competence: SEO, mobility, user experience, security, content, digital marketing, social networks, e-commerce and web analytics. Based on this analysis, it delivers a diagnosis of companies' competitiveness and an overall score that helps businesses identify their strengths and weaknesses and thus optimise their digital strategies.

Goirigolzarri: 'the change is already under way and the trend is unstoppable'

'When we announced the startup of Bankia Índicex in the summer of 2015, we explained that our aim was to offer Spanish companies a tool that would help them in the digitization process in which they were already engaged. What we actually found, just four years ago, is that only 14% of Spanish companies were selling online. Today the figure has risen to 20%. That is the best proof that the change is already under way and that the trend is unstoppable,' says José Ignacio Goirigolzarri, chairman of Bankia, in the report.

'The results presented in this report show the degree of transformation Spanish companies have achieved to date. They also show that, just as in banking, we still have a long way to go and there are improvements to be made that will help boost companies' sales,' Goirigolzarri adds.

According to the data analysed, Spanish companies score highest in web analytics (6.2), which has become a fundamental tool for knowing customers' habits and preferences, and SEO or search engine optimisation (6.1), which is the gateway to the internet.

There are still some challenges waiting to be addressed, however, such as improving mobile access, exploiting the potential of the social networks and investing in online marketing campaigns. All these challenges have to do with technologies that hardly existed a decade ago, 'so improvement in these areas will doubtless come about eventually,' the report points out. The areas in which the companies score lowest are mobility (4.3), social networks (3.9) and digital marketing (3.5).

'E-commerce offers great opportunities, especially to small companies and retailers, because it gives them access to markets in which they couldn't dream of establishing a physical presence. At very little cost, it opens a window to the world, which can be immensely profitable,' says Juan Luis Vidal, Bankia's Corporate Director for SMEs.

Vidal adds that, 'the digital transformation is bringing about changes in the sales channels, in company organization and, above all, in the demands and behaviour of customers, all of which force companies to adapt and change the way they relate to their customers.'

Knowing the customer as a digital success factor

The report reflects the fact that Spanish companies have made a considerable effort to be present in search engines and have realised that they need to analyse the profile of their web visitors, as is apparent from the good results in the areas of SEO and web analytics.

Web analytics is the main method for analysing the results of a company's digital strategy and studying the habits of its customers. Spanish companies have started to use web analytics tools on their websites but could do better, considering that 39% still have no measuring tool. On the other hand, nearly 94% of the companies that do have such a tool use it.

Knowing your customers is vital in order to be able to give them the content they demand. 63.6% of the companies update their websites at least once a month. However, only 25.6% of the websites analysed have any audiovisual content. These figures suggest that companies would be well advised to add more multimedia content to their websites, as this is well known to be more attractive to customers, the report notes.

Similarly, the companies analysed have started selling their products and services online and appreciate the need to work on the security of their digital businesses in order to protect both their own data and that of their customers.

They were not found to have any 'critical vulnerabilities' in terms of security (48% are classified as robust, while the rest have room for improvement). One of the main weaknesses detected has to do with 'programming errors', leaving loopholes that a hacker could use to launch an attack on the website (47.2% of the companies were classified as uncompetitive in this respect).

Mobility and social networks are the great opportunities

The social networks and mobility are the areas of digitisation in which Spanish companies need to work hardest to increase their competitiveness.

Internet access through mobile devices and use of social networks are among the most important trends currently shaping the digital habits of Spanish society. And yet the use of social networks by Spanish companies is still not widespread. Seven out of ten companies do not have a profile on the business and employment-related social networking service LinkedIn. 51.9% of companies do not have a Facebook page and 45.2% do not have a profile on Twitter.

The companies analysed could also improve their use of social networks to support their sales and marketing efforts. Even though 66.5% of the companies have a customer database and conduct marketing actions using that database, a similar percentage (62.7%) do not use the social networks as a platform for digital campaigns. Consequently, only 19.2% of the Spanish companies analysed obtain a competitive score in respect of their use of social networks.

The spread of internet access by mobile phone and tablet is transforming business in all sectors of the digital economy. Companies face the challenge of adapting to their customers' new habits and offering them the same facilities via mobile devices as on desktop computers.

Mobility is therefore a fundamental area in the future of digitisation and demands special attention. Often, a great deal can be gained from relatively simple improvements such as reducing page load times (37.7% of the businesses analysed are uncompetitive in this respect).

E-commerce has established itself as a catalyst of digitisation

The ability to sell online is one of the major advantages of digitisation - one that a fair number of Spanish retailers and businesses are already exploiting to their advantage. Especially for small companies and retail businesses, e-commerce offers enormous opportunities to increase sales, compete with larger firms and expand their business internationally.

E-commerce is also a major driver of digitisation. Companies with sales-focused websites obtain a significantly higher overall score (5.5) than those that use their website merely to inform (4.8) about their products or services. Similarly, companies that sell online make up a larger percentage (19.4%) of those classified as competitive than companies that have no online sales ambitions (8%).

International business

Cross-border sales is one of the main niches in which e-commerce is growing, given that more than 55% of online purchases by Spanish users are made in online stores belonging to companies based outside Spain. Yet only half the Spanish companies analysed that sell online allow purchases from other countries.

A majority of the Spanish companies that engage in e-commerce have a secure site seal and accept online payments via an integrated payment gateway (75%) or other less common alternatives (66.7% have PayPal and 8.5% iupay).

Their performance would be improved in the future if they increased the security of their websites to win customers' trust and adapted their websites to mobile devices, given that more than five million people use a smartphone or tablet to make their purchases, which represents 24.7% of those who buy online.

Digitisation sector by sector

The retail sector and large corporations lead the way in digitisation.

Technology services such as telecommunications, electronics and computers are the ones that have gone furthest in digitisation. However, the economic activity with the best overall score (5.5) is wholesale and retail trade, which has ventured online in search of new customers, aiming to exploit the advantages of online sales.

The companies in this sector excel in the use of digital marketing techniques (where they score 31% above the average) and e-commerce tools (where their score is 26% higher than that of the rest of the companies).

Similarly, manufacturing and the textile industry have also started the digital transformation and score well in e-commerce (6.7) but need to improve their adaptation to mobile devices and the social network environment.

Agriculture, livestock and fisheries score above average in e-commerce

The advantages of digitisation are apparent in the scores obtained by such traditional economic activities as agriculture, livestock and fishing. For this sector, which by its nature belongs to the rural environment, the internet provides a new way of bringing its products to market. Its score in the e-commerce area is 7.5% better than the average.

The hotel and tourism sector, by contrast, scores a modest 4.9. In a digital world where travel plans are made at the computer screen and destinations are chosen by recommendation in social networks, it is vital that small Spanish firms improve their online presence.

Large companies are the leaders in digitisation in Spain and excel above all in the more technical areas such as security, digital marketing and web analytics.

SMEs outperform large companies in user experience

In spite of everything, the smaller companies obtain similar results with fewer resources in important areas such as SEO and user experience. Even in the area of mobility and adaptation to mobile devices they score 10% better than the large corporations.

Micro-enterprises and the self-employed also achieve results comparable to those of the large companies in e-commerce. This finding reflects the digital ambitions of Spanish entrepreneurs and the efforts they are making to sell their products and services on the World Wide Web.

Entrepreneurs have understood that their businesses need to be present online, in social networks and on their customers' mobile devices and that they can compete through online marketing campaigns without having a huge advertising budget or costly High Street outlets.

Digitisation by Autonomous Community

Most of the companies analysed by Bankia Índicex are concentrated in the Madrid and Catalonia regions. Both these Autonomous Communities score above the national average (5.1 and 5.2 respectively). Even so, some other regions, including Navarra and Murcia, achieve results similar to those of the country's two economic powerhouses.

Thanks to the large number of trading companies in the sample, the companies based in Asturias obtain the best average score in Spain (5.3).

The regions whose companies have the lowest score are Extremadura (4.5), Castilla-La Mancha (4.7) and Galicia, La Rioja and the Basque Country (each with 4.9). Last in the ranking come the enclaves of Ceuta and Melilla, whose companies score an average of 4.2.

Bankia Indicex

What is the '2016 Bankia Índicex Report: The digitisation of companies in Spain'?

This report shows the main digitisation trends in Spanish companies and their level of digital competitiveness, with special attention to the self-employed and SMEs, which account for the bulk of the country's productive capacity.

It is intended to reflect strengths and weaknesses in the adoption of various digital technologies and help Spanish entrepreneurs continue to improve their businesses and optimise their marketing and sales strategies. The report has been prepared from the exhaustive information supplied by the more than 5,000 Spanish companies that used the Bankiaindicex.com service last year.

The '2016 Bankia Índicex Report: The digitisation of companies in Spain' analyses the performance of Spanish businesses in the main online areas a business needs, as well as the situation in the different sectors of economic activity and performance by autonomous community. It also provides a breakdown of the participating companies' adaptation to the digital economy by size and business model.

Analysis of all the data provides an overview of digitisation in Spain and leads to conclusions that help understand the competitiveness of the country's businesses.

What isBankia ÍndicexOpen in a new window?

Bankia ÍndicexOpen in a new window is a tool developed by Bankia that analyses companies' digital competitiveness through an assessment of their online performance. The result of this analysis tells companies the real quality of their digital environments and provides tips and recommendations for optimising their digital strategy.

The tool analyses nine areas of measurement and generates a wide-ranging report on the company being analysed, with an overall score and specific scores for each area, pointing out the strengths and weaknesses of the company's digital strategy and offering suggestions to improve more than 100 different parameters.

The areas analysed are SEO, mobility, user experience, security, digital marketing, content, social networks, e-commerce and web analytics. Bankia Índicex is a free service available to any user, whether they are a Bankia customer or not.

All the user has to do is go to www.bankiaindicex.com Open in a new window and enter the web address of the website they want to analyse. The tool automatically identifies the company's online characteristics and features of its website that influence the nine areas mentioned above. Users can also obtain a more in-depth analysis of the strengths and weaknesses of their digital performance.

To obtain the more in-depth analysis they must answer a series of questions about their business. The questions concern the type of company, the sector in which it operates, the province it is located in, the types of customers it serves, the company's size and sales, whether it has export sales, whether it sells products or services, whether it has online sales channels and accepts online payments, and so on.

This information, added to the initial study, allows Bankia Índicex to issue a detailed report of more than 40 pages, which can be downloaded in PDF format.

The Bankia Índicex report provides an overall score (from 1 to 10) and a particular score for each of the areas analysed. The benchmark for the scores indicates whether the business is 'competitive' (score above 6.6), 'could be improved' (score between 3.4 and 6.6) or 'uncompetitive' (score below 3.4).

A specific assessment is given for each of the more than 100 parameters analysed, with a recommendation for improvement, where applicable. Companies can also add the Índicex Seal to their website as an expression of their innovative digital spirit.