According to the 2021 Global Managed Services Report 89.7% of business and IT leaders in Asia-Pacific (APAC) agree that COVID-19 has caused significant changes in their operations, with 91.8% saying it has accelerated their digital transformation strategy.
Changes to operating processes, along with digital transformation acceleration have presented organisations with an opportunity to reimagine their technology strategies and how it aligns to the business.
The survey also noted that 51.2% from the same pool of participants in APAC that their technology strategy is aligned with the company’s business needs. However, 46.7% acknowledged that their organisation’s IT capabilities are only slightly effective when it comes to aligning with business objectives by exploring new technologies.
Among APAC participants in the survey, 40% agree that the more they partner with a service provider to consult upon, strategize, manage and innovate all aspects of their transformation journey, the more likely they are to be bold and brave, pivoting focus to take advantage of new market opportunities.
Priorities and gaps ahead
NTT says aligning priorities will help plug the gap across lines of business silos. In turn, this will facilitate enhanced employee engagement and potentially deeper customer satisfaction and more sustainable business.
However, in-house skills remain the issue as enterprises look to create new opportunities using emerging technologies while protecting the new borderless business environment.
"While not all organisations view disruption as an opportunity, one-third have adjusted course because they see a chance to do things better and take advantage; particularly in relation to enabling a more distributed workforce and innovative technologies," said Damian Skendrovic, executive vice president at NTT.
"Bold and brave businesses are approaching resilience in a new and innovative light, and trusted technology partners are helping them achieve this."
Persistent issues
The research also highlights how embracing emerging technologies and the ability to automate and deploy innovation at speed as key strategies underpinning the future of business success. In APAC, 93.9% of business and IT leaders agree emerging technology is crucial for their technology strategy. However, only 43.6% believe they have the technology available to meet the organization’s immediate objectives.
This brings to light the conundrum faced by many global organisations. The need to balance present needs, while also investing in technology and process modernization to capture opportunities to scale and evolve – in short, to be bold and brave.
"Rapid change has been forced onto IT teams. While business stakeholders expect to exercise a degree of agility in execution – IT is saddled with managing their own challenges. From managing vendor complexity, which further extends to integrating disparate systems, along with emerging technologies and legacy infrastructure; through to budget constraints and a lack of skills to keep pace with business demands,” said Skendrovic.
As speed to market becomes a primary competitive differentiator, optimising digital transformation efforts is critical. Organisations that showcase the characteristics of being bold and brave are 50% more likely to optimise their digital transformation efforts and partner with managed services providers for over half of their IT support.
Reducing the mounting infrastructure administration pressure on IT teams by embracing a DevOps culture and platform automation, allows IT to optimise transformation efforts by focusing on innovation, and ultimately results in better Mean Time to Repair (MTTR) and cost-optimization, as well as the delivery of continuous improvement across the business.
"While change isn’t always perceived as positive in the moment, it is important to remember that transformation presents new opportunities for agility, scale, and innovation," Skendrovic concluded.
