Milestones and updates.
Digital business transformation among organizations in Asia has been ongoing for years to survive and thrive in this changing environment. Amid the economic uncertainty and ongoing global pandemic, one would assume that businesses may have scaled down or temporarily halted investments in technology. However, according to the 2020 TechTarget/ Computer Weekly IT Priorities survey, findings showed that despite budget cuts and a slower growth in IT spending, the Asia-Pacific (APAC) region remains a hotbed for digital transformation initiatives.
Moreover, Southeast Asia’s digital economy is still expected to increase to US$300 billion by 2025 from US$100 billion in 2019, according to a report by Google, Temasek and Bain & Company. The burgeoning digital economy is also set to add US$10 billion to Singapore’s gross domestic product (GDP) by 2021.
“Mobile streaming in Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines and Singapore grew by 60%, or 21.6 billion minutes a week between January to April 2020.”
The Covid-19 crisis has accelerated the growth of the digital economy, fueling a spike in ‘live’ streaming for entertainment, cloud-based collaboration, conferencing for business, social media messaging and video call apps for communicating. Mobile streaming in Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines and Singapore grew by 60%, or 21.6 billion minutes a week between January to April 2020.
In addition, byproducts of Covid-19 such as city lockdowns, quarantines, work from home stipulations and coronaphobia have taken virtual events, online shopping, food delivery services, and digital banking to another level.
With that in mind, let’s look at how different types of organizations are performing or coping with the ‘new’ normal:
Data-driven enterprises
This category of businesses will see their transformation strategies and efforts come to fruition
These organizations are ahead in the transformation journey. Also known as data-driven, digital native or smart enterprises, leaders in this category include banks and financial institutions that provide digital banking and financial services and ‘smart’ manufacturers with fully integrated automation across the supply chain. For such organizations, business operations are as usual and to improve customer and employee experience, they are enhancing their digital infrastructure, scale in the cloud and deploying more cutting-edge technologies for innovation and focus on differentiation.
Digitally transforming enterprises
Enterprises in this phase will likely scramble to deploy the innovations and technologies they’ve been exploring
These are businesses in the middle of their transformation journey, with strategies implemented to leverage digital and data technologies. Enterprises in this category include food and beverage businesses automating their central kitchens and coping with surges in online orders and making contactless deliveries, and offices across all sectors with some semblance of cloud collaboration, due to remote or hybrid working arrangements. These organizations are struggling for business continuity, accelerating the digital transformation to cope with the needs and demands of customer and employee experience to make their business relevant in a growing digital economy.
Digital newbies
Newcomers will struggle to meet the challenges of customer and employee experiences
These organizations are still figuring out the works of digital transformation. Many are small enterprises without a comprehensive strategy for transformation or traditional businesses. They tend to struggle to survive in the digital economy, looking for help to digitally transform for business continuity.
Which category does your business fall into?
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