Business Leaders in Southeast Asia Believe that a New Data Culture is Needed for Successful Digital Transformation

Based on Microsoft Asia’s Study, less than half of business leaders said that they have a full digital strategy in place today

Microsoft Philippines unveiled findings from its first ever Asia Data Culture Study 2016, which showed that while 91% of business leaders polled in Southeast Asia agreed that it is important for their organization to have an agile business that is data-driven, only less than half of them (44%) said they have a full digital strategy in place.

The Study1 polled 940 business leaders from medium to large companies in 13 markets in Asia, including 269 senior business leaders in Southeast Asia, namely Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam. Respondents were surveyed on their organizations’ digital and data strategy, and readiness for the digital economy.

The confluence of cloud, mobility and data is changing the way companies do business with their customers. This is resulting in new demands for businesses that make it necessary for every business to transform to a digital business. In fact, IDC predicts that by end 2017, 60% of APAC 1000 (A1000) enterprises will have digital transformation at the center of their corporate strategy.

However, the study also revealed that business leaders in the Philippines are also facing barriers to driving digital transformation. The most common barriers include high costs, securing funding, insufficient infrastructure and systems, data security and fragmented IT and data investments.

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“In today’s mobile-first, cloud-first world, technology is interwoven into every aspect of our personal lives, forcing all businesses to be a digital business,” said Herns Hermida, Cloud and Enterprise Business Group Lead for Microsoft Philippines. “As data is the currency of the digital economy, businesses need to turn data into actionable insights and predict the future as a way to develop new revenue streams and a competitive advantage. Faced with economic uncertainties and disruptive competitors, it is critical for businesses need to have a data driven approach to survive. With the right tools, insights can come from anyone, anywhere, at any time. When that happens, organizations develop what we describe as a ‘data culture’” added Hermida.

The New Data Culture in Asia’s Organizations

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The New Data Culture involves three organisational traits:

  1. An Analytical Workforce: The ability to access and analyse data is held by a select few, for example, data scientists, statisticians. For a new data culture to happen, talents across the board need to have the ability to ask the right questions, analyse data and drive actionable insights
  2. Infrastructure for Data Agility: Data platforms need to be interoperable with multiple data sources to collect information from any device, share it and present it in a meaningful way. There is a left to right view of the business enabling better decision making real time. Intelligence is built in to develop predictions from data.
  3. Data Governance for Collaboration: There is C-Level ownership of the data strategy where access to data is democratized and governed by policies to protect information while empowering employees to collaborate seamlessly

In addition, business leaders in the Philippines are also keen to take the use of data to the next level. They see the top five benefits of driving a data culture within their organisations as enabling:


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Southeast Asia Businesses in Data Culture Catch Up Mode

Southeast Asian businesses need to address the following areas in order to realise their full potential as a data-driven organization:

  1. Creating an analytical workforce
    94% of Southeast Asia’s business leaders agreed that it is important to have a data-savvy workforce. However, there are skillsets and culture gaps that need to be addressed in order for organizations to fully embrace a data culture.

    1. Only 39% of business leaders in South East Asia polled felt that they have employees who have relevant skills to combine data to help identify business outcomes
    2. 41% of respondents also cited fear of change as a barrier to embarking on digital transformation
  2. Building infrastructure for data agility
    91% of respondents agreed that they need to drive an agile business that is data driven however, they perceive their capabilities in infrastructure to be lacking.

    1. Less than half (46%) of business leaders in Southeast Asia felt confident that their existing data infrastructure scales with business growth
    2. Only 39% of business leaders said that their data is accessible across mobile devices today – a definite barrier in democratizing data access in the Philippines where mobile devices penetration is expected to reach 39.2% by 20192
  3. Data governance for collaboration
    91% felt that data driven collaboration across the organisation needs to be enabled.

    1. However, a moderate 56% see the need for access to data to be provided to a broad spectrum of relevant roles within the organization. For the democratization of data to happen, there needs to be comprehensive data governance for security and privacy.
    2. 41% of business leaders in Southeast Asia expressed that data security is a barrier to their digital strategy today.
    3. Only half of the business leaders polled indicated that they have invested in tools for its workforce to help drive business insights across functions and departments.

A New Data Culture Needs to be Driven Right from the Top

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87% of business leaders in Southeast Asia feel that the data culture should be driven top down, and there should be a formalised role in the leadership team to drive a successful adoption of their data strategy. Most business leaders felt that the data strategy should be led by the CEO. Emerging roles like Chief Data Officer and Chief Digital Officer are also increasing in importance.

In the Philippines:

  1. They believe that the CEO and CIO should share ownership of the Data Culture of a company.
  2. The Chief Data Officer came in third when asked who should champion the data culture within the organization

“Business leaders, especially the C-suite, have a key role in driving change within the organization. It is no surprise that the Asia Data Culture Study showed that business leaders feel that the CEO should champion the new data culture. However, speaking from our own experience at Microsoft, in order for this to stick, it is important that the values of a new data culture are driven and accepted across all levels of the organization. This starts with democratizing of data through technology so that more can access and are empowered to make decisions which create value for the organization,” said Hermida.

Journey to a New Data Culture

Business leaders in the Philippines seem to be open to harnessing information in new ways. The Study showed that they rated real-time analytics, big data analytics and data visualization as important data capabilities for them in the next 12 to 18 months. In comparison, in Southeast Asia, the top three priorities are real time analytics, predictive analytics and data visualization. When it comes to adoption of IoT business leaders are most keen to address security management and safety monitoring as their top priority.

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“Starting with a pilot and learning from that is key to a successful, longer term journey. Customers need to think about new scenarios which will provide new insights and new opportunities. They need to ask different questions about their business, not just based on hindsight but about the future. Technology has evolved so much that this is no longer science fiction but is achievable today,” said Hermida.

Organisations should also take advantage of how Microsoft has built an intelligent cloud platform that is open and flexible, enabling them to leverage the cloud as they see fit, whether that means launching brand new business models, evolving existing ones or transforming their organizations. With machine learning and advanced analytics built in, the Microsoft intelligent cloud automates the basics and delivers differentiated services. This includes the industry’s most comprehensive and advanced cloud data platform, IOT services, CRM, ERP and more. This enables our customers to combine software and data insights more easily to create smarter products and more intelligent touchpoints with their customers.

“At Microsoft, we continue to innovate and deliver solutions that empower our customers to be able to achieve more. With SQL Server 2016, Azure IoT Suite, the new AX and CRM Online, organizations are now able to embark on their digital transformation journey that brings their data from hindsight to foresight, and to empower business leaders to deliver enhanced value in this new economy,” said Hermida.

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Recent innovations include:

  1. SQL Server 2016 delivers a comprehensive and end-to-end platform to support organization’s needs to embrace new and expanded workloads brought about digital transformation. SQL Server 2016 is the first database that is born in the cloud. It empowers organizations to build mission-critical, intelligent apps with breakthrough scalability, performance and availability. For organizations looking to transform their data into actionable insights, SQL Server 2016 features end-to-end mobile BI on any device, as well as in-database Advanced Analytics using R, which reduces time to insight with direct query and offers rich visualization reports via Power BI. SQL Server is also the most secure database for six years running in the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) vulnerabilities database, even while being the most widely used database globally. This means that businesses can focus on the things that matter with our multi-layered approach to security.
  2. Organisations can also look to tap into the Internet of Things with the Azure IoT Suite, which connects devices, analyse previously unanalysed data and integrate business systems. With advanced analytics and machine learning capabilities, Azure IoT Suite empower organizations to capture insights from data to deliver predictive insights for the organizations. Organizations can simply leverage on pre-configured solutions and jumpstart their journey on IoT to automate and trigger potential alerts or to predict potential issues.
  3. The new Microsoft Dynamics AX and Dynamics CRM helps businesses to streamline their operations and deliver amazing customer experiences with real-time information and collaboration.
    1. The spring wave of Dynamics CRM 2016 will feature the integration of two recent acquisitions, FieldOne and Adxstudio, providing customers with market leading capabilities for field service and portal solutions for community engagement.
    2. The next generation, enterprise-class cloud ERP solution, Dynamics AX, to run business processes in the cloud, and moves beyond traditional business solutions and brings ERP, business intelligence, infrastructure and database services together in a single offering,

[1] The Microsoft Asia Data Culture Study 2016 was conducted in March 2016 with 940 CxOs and business leaders from medium to large companies in 13 markets including Australia, China, Hong Kong, Indonesia, India, Japan, South Korea, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, Taiwan, Thailand and Vietnam. The Study was conducted by independent research consultancy Asia Insight through a series of online and face-to-face interviews.

[2] Smartphone user penetration in the Philippines as share of mobile phone users from 2014 to 2019*, Statista,
http://www.statista.com/statistics/467186/forecast-of-smartphone-users-in-the-philippines/