It's a Journey: The State of IT Transformation in APJ

Frederic Dussart, Senior Vice President and General Manager of Consulting Services, APJC and EMEA, Dell EMC

Frederic Dussart, Senior Vice President and General Manager of Consulting Services, APJC and EMEA, Dell EMC

CIOs in Asia Pacific & Japan (APJ) are in for some good news: they no longer have to hard-sell the benefits of IT transformation projects to their C-level peers. According to a 2018 study on IT transformation maturity in APJ, leaders across the region are fully on-board when it comes to leveraging IT to build competitive advantage and quicken the pace of growth. This pro-transformation wave has created promising beginnings, and in many respects APJ companies are en route to the forefront of global IT transformation. And yet, inconsistent progress across the region is getting in the way of that ultimate goal, with ongoing challenges continuing to hinder progress for those who have yet to achieve IT maturity.

How are APJ organisations getting ahead in the race to become future-ready; what have they done right; and what more can they do to move further ahead of their global counterparts?

Transformation is a business imperative

According to the study, almost four out of five APJ business leaders agree that their company’s competitiveness hinges on IT transformation, signalling the region’s transition into a world of Intelligence powered by the Internet of Things, artificial intelligence and machine learning—a world that the current IT infrastructure is unable to support at scale.

For companies that moved quickly to embrace innovation and transformation, the outcomes have proved rewarding. The study found that organisations that score the highest against a transformation checklist consistently outstrip their lower-scoring counterparts when it comes to business agility and competitive differentiation. Most notably, ‘transformed’ companies are 37.5 times more likely to be significantly ahead of the competition on time to market and 2.5 times more likely to have exceeded their revenue targets in the past year, compared to those on the other end of the IT transformation maturity curve. With the common goal of cutting costs and achieving agility at the same time, APJ leaders stand a real chance of establishing their organisation’s lead in the market by embracing transformation in a similar way.

Across the region, companies in all industries are making tremendous strides in modernizing their IT infrastructure to deliver desired business outcomes. For example, fast food giant KFC Singapore successfully deployed hyper-converged infrastructure to enable the extraction of critical business data 58 percent faster from its modern data centre—enabling a quicker decision-making process.

Where is the region today in the transformation race?

KFC Singapore is just one example of the region’s strong focus on business agility, sustainability and innovation.

With unwavering commitment to reaping the significant benefits of it transformation, companies in this region can position themselves ahead of the curve and thrive in the digital economy

APJ organisations are outstripping their global counterparts in terms of the adoption of modern technology: companies are investing in and adopting key technologies such as flash, scale-out storage, and software-defined networking and storage at a faster rate than elsewhere. And, overall, the region boasts a higher percentage of ‘transformed’ organisations compared to the rest of the world (8 percent versus 5 percent).

However, such promising statistics do not tell the full story of the region’s overall progress. IT departments in APJ are yet to firmly establish a recognised role in driving business strategy—nor have they yet fully capitalised on emerging technologies to proactively spot opportunities for growth, efficiency, and differentiation. At the moment, nine out of 10 organisations still face challenges in transforming and harnessing the full business value of their IT resources. There are more organisations categorized as ‘legacy’ (i.e. those who scored the lowest in the IT transformation maturity test) in APJ than elsewhere in the world (10 percent in this region versus 4 percent globally), and these business are now faced with having to urgently play catch-up by setting the stage for transformation, promoting innovation and driving real change.

Unlocking business value and getting ready for the digital era

There is one overarching urgency for APJ organisations, however: the need to zero-in on those areas in their business in which intelligent automation and process improvements can eliminate complexity, unlock new operational efficiencies and create genuine competitive differentiation. Regardless of their unique business needs, all companies can reap the benefits of transformation by focusing on three areas:

Firstly, APJ organisations need to invest in technologies that power agility. As companies look to expand their operations, the potential complexity in technology deployments increases exponentially. A rule of thumb is to prioritise solutions that support future business needs and allow the organisation to be nimble at the same time. To successfully leverage technologies like multi-cloud, artificial intelligence, and data analytics, IT leaders must first ensure that their data centre can process large amounts of data; that their servers can handle all critical workloads; and that applications can run on multiple clouds. Agility is key to the transformational journey.

Secondly, companies have to ensure that their business procedures and workflows reflect and facilitate the technological upgrades mentioned above. Transformation projects are sophisticated—their success not only hinges on swapping old technologies with new ones but also on how services are delivered, how infrastructure is deployed and managed, and how the IT organisation is structured to unlock maximum value. This means creating service-focused IT processes that are aligned with business goals and easy to implement, whilst having clear policies and metrics in place to ensure full compliance and optimal performance.

And finally, it is crucial to prepare one’s employees for new ways of working. Any IT transformation project, no matter how advanced and heavily funded, can be handicapped if the right people, the right skills and the right mind-sets are not in place. Management has a critical role to play in setting out the future direction to all team members, communicating clearly and early a complete vision of the end-goal and future state, so that all lines of business get behind the coming changes and are motivated to see them succeed. And, those in charge of skills-development should be proactive in deploying a comprehensive training program that will prepare employees to navigate and maximise a transformed workplace environment.

APJ organisations have work to do, but truly hold the keys to unlocking their full business potential and securing their future growth. With unwavering commitment to reaping the significant benefits of IT transformation, companies in this region can position themselves ahead of the curve and thrive in the digital economy.