CIO Asia: Senior Director at Cognizant’s Center for the Future of Work Says Asia Pacific Represents the Most Significant Digital Opportunity of the Next Decade

“Progressive business leaders are already cutting through the noise and are unlocking huge amounts of value from digital,” writes Manish Bahl. “Nowhere is this playing out faster than in the Asia-Pacific region. While digitally-enabled consumers throughout the world are shaking up business models, value chains and ecosystems, nowhere is this more apparent than in this region.” Excerpts:

“Digital is the key to addressing the wants and needs of current and future online consumers, who will represent half of Asia’s population by 2020, up from one-third today.

Cognizant’s recent study, “Asia Rising: Digital Driving”, highlights that a sea change in value generation is under way in the region. In fact, 96% of the companies surveyed for the study are well on their way to digitally transforming their businesses in the region. However, the transformation agenda is also introducing some unforeseen challenges, in the form of new investments, organizational structures, internal skills, change management, and roles and responsibilities for companies.

As digital technologies become mainstream, organizations must continuously innovate to deploy these technologies to drive market differentiation and performance.

With growing customer and market expectations, businesses are expected to respond to fast-changing market, technology, competitive and customer dynamics, to run in a more prudent way. Hence, leaders need to continuously question the status quo in order to reappraise every underlying principle of their businesses and embrace digital ideas.

As the digital transformation phenomenon intensifies, enterprises must invest heavily in digitizing their processes to proactively address radically different market conditions. A digital-first mentality will make or break their future success. Here are some areas companies need to focus on in order to drive profitability through digitalization:

- Adopt a “digital-first” approach to simplifying the customer experience and driving growth.

- Relentlessly focus on reducing costs and improving efficiency.

- “Digital thinking” must be injected into a company’s core.

- Invest in emerging digital technologies to reap economic benefits.

Asia Pacific represents the most significant digital opportunity of the next decade. Digital is no longer a “bonus” or “nice-to-have” channel. In fact, it is fast becoming the most profitable future path. As the digital revolution unfolds, leaders must be willing to make significant organizational changes in line with a strategic digital vision, rather than take on an ad-hoc procurement approach.”

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