Asian Business Leaders Look to ICT to Enable Growth through 2011, According to Recent Multi-country Survey

IT is finally making the transition from cost centre to business enabler according to more than 300 Asian CXOs who participated in a seven country wide survey ‘CIO Asia Magazine State of the Asian CXO’ ‘State 2010 survey.

The fifth annual survey by CIO Asia Magazine, and released jointly by Fairfax Business Media and Telstra International, was conducted in July, August and September 2010. The survey sought to identify key IT priorities, business needs and intentions of senior business and IT executives from seven countries in Asia Pacific, including Singapore, Malaysia, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Thailand, Philippines and India.  A total of 301 executives participated this year with the majority representing the CXO function in their companies.

For many CXOs surveyed, the pressure to manage costs while delivering IT initiatives to support business objectives and capitalise on new growth opportunities continued from 2009 into 2010, and is expected to prevail through 2011. As a result, many are already applying IT demand management strategies for better control and prioritisation of work. Some of these strategies include chargebacks or cost allocation approaches or even service catalogues with project based portfolio management. These findings in particular pointed to a strong future for managed services, outsourcers and cloud computing service providers.

According to Tarek Robbiati, Group Managing Director, Telstra International the healthy trade volumes and strong growth forecasts to be expected in many Asian countries highlight how important it is for international businesses to have access to critical information about the Asian business environment. “Whether it is exporting into Asia, being present in Asia or working through Asian partners to drive demand for products or services, companies with global aspirations who understand what Asian CXOs need and value, stand to gain a competitive advantage,” Mr Robbiati said.

Key findings in the report include:

1. Asian CXOs articulated several roadblocks to achieving desired business innovation and growth outcomes. For example, these included spending too much time on systems and infrastructure maintenance, late involvement in the decision making process, a lack of opportunity to demonstrate innovation, and a corporate culture that did not favour IT innovation;
2. Most of the survey respondents had short tenures in their organisations – nearly half the respondents have been in their positions between one and five years only. This can help leaders have fresher perspectives on how ICT can be applied to the business, increasing the willingness to embrace newer technologies and deployment models;
3. The role of CXO in Asia is becoming much more aligned with business drivers and corporate imperatives. Over 50 per cent of respondents listed “strategising and big picture planning” as their top activity, followed by 49.2 per cent who listed “designing/optimising business process”;
4. All CXO respondents agreed strongly that the business environment is increasingly complex with 72.1 per cent finding it difficult to make clear IT decisions, perhaps impacting their ability to assess and understand the potential value of social media or cloud computing;
5. At the same time, 38.5 per cent of respondents listed cloud computing as the trend in their Top 5 priority list, indicating CXOs are preparing for cloud computing.

The full report can be found here: http://www.telstrainternational.asia/cxosurvey2010/