KUALA LUMPUR, 11 May 2016 – Microsoft Malaysia today unveiled findings from its first Asia Data Culture study 2016, which showed that 85% of Business Decision Makers (BDMs) in Malaysia felt that it was important to drive an agile business that is data driven, yet only 44% are starting to embark or have a limited digital strategy in place.

“Digital transformation is beyond adding a layer of digitization to your business – it’s about bringing together social, mobile, analytics and cloud technologies together. And data is at the centre of this – knowing your customers, recognizing new opportunities, or streamlining processes will become a staple part of business strategy,” said Dzahar Mansor, National Technology Officer, Microsoft Malaysia. “As a case in point, IDC Asia/Pacific predicted that by the end of 2017, 60% of APAC 1000 (A1000) enterprises will have digital transformation at the centre of their corporate strategy.”

The study , which polled 940 business leaders from medium to large companies in 13 markets in Asia, including 269 senior business leaders in Southeast Asia (comprising Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam) also revealed that even though Malaysian business leaders felt there were clear benefits to having a data culture, there are gaps that needed to be addressed before doing so.

Some of the benefits that these Malaysian BDMs felt when driving a data culture includes:

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• Better business continuity
• Real-time decision making
• Efficiency in operations
• Improved processes
• Improved customer satisfaction and retention

 

Bridging the gaps

Despite the benefits of adopting a data culture, the study also notes that there are areas that need to be addressed for Southeast Asian businesses to realize their full potential as a data-driven organization.

 

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.

• Only 39% of business leaders in Southeast Asia polled felt that they have employees who have relevant skills to combine data to help identify business outcomes
• 42% of respondents also cited fear of change as a barrier to embarking on digital transformation

 

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.

• Less than half (46%) of business leaders in Southeast Asia felt confident that their existing data infrastructure scales with business growth
• Only 37% of business leaders in Malaysia said that their data is accessible across mobile devices today – a definite barrier in democratizing data access in Malaysia where mobile devices penetration is expected to reach 13.7% by 2019

 

Data governance for collaboration

91% felt that data driven collaboration across the organization needs to be enabled.

• 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.
• 41% of business leaders in Southeast Asia expressed that data security is a barrier to their digital strategy today.
• 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.

Next Page > A New Data Culture

 

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