Domestic cos lead Asia in digital strategy: Survey

Domestic companies lead their Asian peers in digital strategy with 68 per cent of them saying that they have a full digital strategy in place now, against 57 per cent across the continent, according to a Microsoft study.

The Microsoft Asia survey — Asia Data Culture Study 2016 — says 68 per cent of domestic businesses already have a digital strategy in place as against 57 per cent elsewhere in Asia who still do not have a full digital strategy.

Also, as much as 74 per cent of domestic companies have invested in training to enhance their employees' data skills.

But 88 per cent of Asian business leaders agree that it is important for their businesses to be data-driven for agility, says the survey that polled 940 C-suite executives from medium-to-large companies across 13 Asian markets including India.

Respondents were surveyed on their organisations' digital and data strategy, and readiness for the digital economy.

A vast majority of Indian respondents, at 90 per cent feel that the data culture should be driven top-down with a formalised role in the leadership team to drive successful adoption of data strategy. Most business leaders feel that the data culture should be led by the CIO, chief digital officer, and chief data officer.

The study ranks data visualisation, Internet of Things, cloud data storage, predictive data analytics and real-time analytics as the top five data capabilities that businesses will require in the next 12-18 months.

On leveraging IoT, domestic business leaders are more focused on smart R&D, followed by security management, and safety monitoring as their top priorities, says the report.

Even though 89 per cent of domestic businesses agree that they need to drive an agile data-driven business, they think their infrastructure capabilities are inadequate. This is expressed by 88 per cent across the continent.

Close to two-thirds (62 per cent) say their data are accessible across mobile devices now, while 67 per cent are confident that their existing data infrastructure is scalable with business growth and 72 per cent use data to predict future trends.

As much as 89 per cent of domestic businesses feel data-driven collaboration across the organisation needs to be enabled, against 87 per cent in Asia. Also 70 per cent are confident they have a clear data security policy that would prevent unauthorised leakage and threats, and 71 per cent also claimed that that they have a clear data governance plan to guide ownership, storage and use of data.

But when it comes to creating an analytical workforce, the local firms with only 77 per cent lag their peers across the continent at 84 per cent who understand the importance of having a data-savvy workforce.