The Digital Cyprus Survey is the closest thing the country has to a yearly check-up on business digitalisation. Each wave asks 500 company representatives the same set of questions, so the movement between years means something. The 2023 and 2024 waves were run by IMR / University of Nicosia with IMH, and with CITEA and Capacitor Partners as scientific partners. Capacitor Partners designed the analytical frame, built the CITEA maturity index and prepared the comparative reading below.
01How the research was run
- Research organisation: IMR / University of Nicosia
- Publisher: IMH
- Scientific partners: CITEA and Capacitor Partners
- Sample: 500 business representatives per wave, June 2023 and June 2024
- Method: online panel combined with telephone interviews on a structured questionnaire
The samples are close enough in shape to compare. In 2024, 39% of respondents ran companies with 1 to 9 employees, 35% with 10 to 49, 20% with 50 to 250 and 6% with more than 250. In 2023 the split was 42%, 37%, 14% and 7%. Roughly half of respondents operate nationwide, and around a third trade outside Cyprus as well.
02The 2023 picture
2023 read like a year of catching up. Cloud computing was in use at 64% of companies, CRM at 61%, up from 47% the year before, and cybersecurity technology at 76%. Nearly everyone agreed that digital work pays off, but the follow-through was uneven: 66% said they had involved their people in the transformation and only 56% had actually run digital skills training.
Investment intent was high and mid-sized. Of those planning to spend, 46% put the figure at 11,000 to 100,000 euro and 24% at 1,000 to 10,000 euro. Companies were buying capability rather than running programmes.
03The 2024 picture
A year later the mood is broader but thinner. More companies intend to invest, but more of them intend to invest small: 43% in the 1,000 to 10,000 euro band, against 24% the year before. Artificial intelligence arrives as a mainstream answer rather than an experiment, with automation of routine work and data analysis named as the two leading uses. Customer experience moves up the agenda, and the biggest reported challenge stays exactly where it was, on people. 78% point to digital skills.
042023 against 2024, side by side
| Indicator | 2023 | 2024 | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Businesses hit by a cyber attack | 26% | 18% | −8 pts |
| Have taken measures against cyber attacks | 97% | 82% | −15 pts |
| Plan to invest in digital transformation | 85% | 92% | +7 pts |
| Planned investment of 1–10K euro | 24% | 43% | +19 pts |
| Planned investment of 11–100K euro | 46% | 42% | −4 pts |
| Prioritise staff digital skills | 97% | 89% | −8 pts |
| Name digital skills as the biggest challenge | 76% | 78% | +2 pts |
| Use AI tools | Not reported | 58% | New |
Two movements deserve care. The drop in reported attacks looks like good news, and partly it is, but it lands in the same year that the share of companies with protective measures in place falls by 15 points. Fewer measures usually means less monitoring, and less monitoring means fewer incidents noticed rather than fewer incidents happening. The second is the investment split. Intent went up while ticket size went down, which is what a market does when it wants results without committing to a programme.
05The CITEA index: maturity remains stable
The CITEA index turns 25 survey questions into a single maturity score. Each question is scored from 0 to 5 according to its weight in digital transformation, giving a maximum of 125 points, and the result places a company on a five-step scale from Beginner to Leader. It gives a business a read on its own strengths and gaps, and gives the country a macro view of where the economy is thin.
| CITEA level | What it means | 2023 | 2024 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Beginner (0–20%) | Just started the journey | 30.2% | 30.6% |
| Explorer (21–40%) | Experimenting with digital tools | 27.4% | 26.2% |
| Competent (41–60%) | Understands and uses digital well | 18.6% | 18.8% |
| Transformer (61–80%) | Actively innovating and optimising | 12.5% | 12.9% |
| Leader (81–100%) | Sets the pace for everyone else | 11.3% | 11.5% |
The advanced levels grow, but by fractions of a point. Meanwhile 56.8% of Cypriot businesses still sit in the bottom two bands. The shape of the economy has not changed between the two waves. What changed is the vocabulary companies use to describe it.
06Five findings that hold in any year
1. Skills are the constraint, not technology
Across both waves, staff capability is named as the single biggest obstacle, and it is the one variable that does not improve. Software can be bought in an afternoon. The ability to use it is built over quarters. Any transformation plan that spends more on licences than on the people who will run them is buying shelfware.
2. Intent is cheap, scale is the test
Nine in ten companies intend to invest. The number that matters is how much, and against what outcome. A budget in the low thousands buys a tool. It does not redesign a process, and process is where the return sits.
3. Falling incident numbers are not proof of safety
Self-reported attacks fall when protective measures fall. Read cybersecurity figures as a pair, exposure and control, and never one without the other.
4. Adoption curves compress, maturity curves do not
AI went from unmeasured to 58% adoption in twelve months, while the maturity distribution moved less than a point. New tools spread fast through organisations that have not changed how they work. Adoption is a purchase. Maturity is an operating model.
5. The customer decides what counts as digital
By 2024, 80% say the usability of the interface is the critical factor in digital customer experience. Internal efficiency is what companies buy. Experience is what customers judge. The two only meet if the front end is designed with the back office in the same room.
07What we would do with this
- 01Score yourself on the CITEA scale before setting a budget. A Beginner and a Transformer need opposite plans.
- 02Put a defined share of the digital budget into training and hold it there. It is the one line every wave says is short.
- 03Pick two processes end to end rather than ten tools. Depth beats breadth at every investment level in this data.
- 04Treat AI as a process question. The value in the survey sits in automation and data-supported decisions, not in experiments.
- 05Measure exposure and control together, and review both on a fixed cycle rather than after an incident.
