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Acorio reported in 2021 that digital transformation had overtaken service management as the leading initiative among respondents to its annual ServiceNow-focused survey. The result captured a pandemic-era shift in attention, not a verified ranking for all businesses: the survey had 492 responses, about three-quarters from current or former ServiceNow users, and its headline percentages have an unclear denominator.
What Acorio reported
In April 2021, Acorio announced findings from its third annual ServiceNow Insight and Vision Survey. The company said digital transformation had moved ahead of service management as the top strategic business initiative. Contemporary coverage reported a 20% year-over-year increase in digital transformation and described a 492-response survey. DevOps.com’s coverage of the announcement and TechTarget’s report provide the contemporaneous context.
The often-repeated comparison is 79% of organizations working on digital transformation versus 64% working on service management. Those figures appear in an Acorio-related company listing, but the accessible material does not establish the exact survey question or denominator. Read them as reported survey figures—not as independently audited measurements of every business. Growjo’s Acorio listing reproduces the percentages.
What the survey covered—and what it did not
The survey collected 492 anonymous online responses through SurveyMonkey. Respondents supplied information such as company size, role, department, industry, and ServiceNow use. About 75% were current or former ServiceNow users; follow-up questions about ServiceNow applied only to relevant respondents. Acorio was a ServiceNow-focused consultancy, described in contemporary coverage as an NTT DATA company, so the study is useful for understanding that technology community but should not be treated as a representative poll of the whole economy.
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The available reporting does not specify the precise wording behind the 79% and 64% figures, whether those percentages apply to all respondents or a subset, how respondents were distributed by geography and industry, whether results were weighted, or the response rate. It also does not resolve whether “working on” meant active projects, planned initiatives, or both. The survey records self-reported answers rather than audited spending or project outcomes.
The headline figures in context
| Finding | Reported figure | How to interpret it |
|---|---|---|
| Year-over-year change in digital transformation | 20% | Acorio-reported increase, as described by contemporary coverage. |
| Organizations working on digital transformation | 79% | Repeated in an Acorio-related listing; the exact question and denominator are not established. |
| Organizations working on service management | 64% | Repeated in the same listing; the exact question and denominator are not established. |
| Working on transformation for more than a year | 60% | Reported in contemporary coverage of the survey. |
| Describing transformation as “almost complete” | 14% | Reported in contemporary coverage; a self-description, not an audited completion measure. |
| Started implementing AI or machine learning after the pandemic began | 26% | Reported in contemporary coverage. |
The survey also reported that, among respondents’ organizations using ServiceNow, 86% used at least two ServiceNow products, 63% at least three, and 41% at least four. These are figures for the ServiceNow-using group in this survey, not market-wide adoption rates. Acorio compared them with lower figures from its 2019 report—54%, 27%, and 12%, respectively—but the available coverage does not supply enough methodological detail to treat the comparison as a controlled measure of adoption growth.
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Why digital transformation rose during the pandemic
COVID-19 made technology a direct condition of business continuity. Remote work required organizations to support employees outside offices; customer interactions shifted online; and companies had to digitize processes quickly enough to keep services operating. That pressure elevated work that connected systems, processes, and employee or customer experiences, rather than limiting modernization to isolated IT upgrades.
The pandemic accelerated underlying changes rather than inventing them. Cloud services, data and analytics, mobile access, automation, and more adaptable operating models were already part of digital transformation. TEKsystems’ 2021 analysis likewise discussed digital leaders’ use of these capabilities in building resilience and responsiveness. The Acorio results fit that period, but they do not by themselves establish that the pandemic caused each initiative or quantify its effect.
High priority did not mean transformation was nearly finished
The clearest counterweight to the headline is the maturity gap: Acorio reported that 60% had been working on transformation for more than a year, while just 14% said they were “almost complete.” In other words, transformation had become a prominent agenda while completion remained uncommon. The 26% that began AI or machine-learning implementation after the pandemic started also points to expanding activity, not universal adoption or proven results.
“Top initiative” should not be read as “largest budget,” “most staff,” or “greatest measured business impact.” The accessible survey reporting does not establish how much respondents spent, whether projects met goals, or how they ranked against spending on cybersecurity, infrastructure, compliance, or continuity.
How service management fits into transformation
Digital transformation moving ahead of service management in a priority ranking does not mean service management became obsolete. Service management provides processes for delivering, supporting, and improving services. Enterprise service management extends those practices beyond IT to functions such as human resources and customer support.
Those capabilities can support broader transformation through workflow automation, self-service, integrations, asset and service data, employee services, and operational visibility. Independent 2021 service-management material also described organizations extending IT service-management practices into other departments and cross-functional workflows. See the ITSM.tools overview and the SysAid 2021 report. Service management is therefore better understood as one possible enabling layer than as a competing destination.
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Acorio specialized in ServiceNow consulting, implementation, integration, and optimization. That perspective explains why the survey emphasized ServiceNow usage as organizations expanded their programs; it also means the report came from a vendor-adjacent viewpoint. ServiceNow can support IT service management, IT operations, HR service delivery, customer service, employee experience, and workflow automation, among other uses. It is one platform option, not a requirement or definition of digital transformation.
For leaders assessing a transformation effort, the useful questions are about the business problem and the change required—not simply which platform to buy:
- Define the business outcome and how it will be measured.
- Map the processes and teams that must change, and assign accountable owners.
- Assess data quality, integration needs, governance, and security before choosing technology.
- Plan for adoption and ongoing operations, not just deployment.
- Track whether service levels, employee or customer experience, or other intended outcomes improve.
How to read the claim today
Acorio’s finding is a historical snapshot of 2021 executive and technology attention during a period of intense disruption. It does not establish the leading business initiative in 2026, nor does it show that the same priorities persisted after the survey. A current ranking would require newer evidence with a clearly defined population, question, and measure.
The narrow, defensible conclusion is that Acorio’s ServiceNow-focused survey reported digital transformation ahead of service management among its respondents. Its sample and unclear denominator limit broader generalization, while the maturity figures show that being a priority was far from being finished.
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