Digital Effectiveness Index 2015: These are the world’s most digitally effective countries
The UK has come fifth in a ranking that looks at how well companies are using digital technologies.
The Digital Effectiveness Index (DEI) measures the success of companies at implementing digital initiatives, and how much this boosts their revenue and profit growth.
In first and second place, with scores of 6.8 and 6.6 respectively, were the US and Canada. Germany and France came in joint third place, followed by Brazil in fourth.
Alongside Spain and Singapore, the UK came joint fifth in the study conducted by Freeform Dynamics and CA Technologies.
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"UK organisations are making good progress when it comes to adopting digital transformation initiatives, but they must up their game if they want to compete more effectively in the application economy," Ritu Mahandru, vice president of application delivery at CA Technologies, said.
The study also highlighted an elite group of so-called "digital disrupters" whose revenue growth is twice as high as mainstream firms. They represent 14 per cent of respondents in the UK, more than in Germany, France and Italy, but less than in the US and India.
"Digital disrupters gain advantage by adopting some of the same behavior that we see in successful digital start-ups and digital pure-play businesses. Significantly, however, it is also clear that digital disrupters bring their operational scale, IT capability and other substantial resources to bear," the report said.
The global study surveyed 1,442 senior IT and business executives from countries including France, Germany, Italy, Switzerland, Spain and the UK.