NZ lagging in digital sphere
If your company is in an industry which is at risk of digital disruption, you better get moving.
That was the key takeaway from Microsoft’s Asia Digital Transformation study, although there was no cause for alarm just yet.
Nearly 1500 business leaders in 13 Asia Pacific markets including New Zealand, China and Australia were surveyed last year, all from firms with more than 250 employees.
Of the 100 New Zealand businesses surveyed, 75 per cent believed they needed to transform to become a digital business.
But only a third had a digital transformation strategy in place, and fewer than half had made any progress with digital initiatives in their business.
Microsoft New Zealand cloud and enterprise lead Dirk Develter said this put New Zealand about ‘‘mid-table’’ in the Asia Pacific.
But the country was not where it should be given its history of innovation, he said.
According to the study, the top five barriers to digital transformation were said to be the lack of a digitally-skilled workforce, governmental policies and infrastructure, business-savvy technology leaders, and tight regulations.
Develter said he was particularly surprised by the perceived lack of businesssavvy technology leaders, as many chief information officer type roles had morphed into chief digital information officer and chief technology officer roles.
Some industries were doing better than others in what was a complex area.
Transforming a company’s product to digital was often the hardest transition to make, he said.
For instance, one area he had been monitoring closely was the digital transformation of petrol stations.
BP last year introduced an app which allowed customers to pay for their petrol from their car.
Develter has been at Microsoft for nearly a decade, but admitted even he had trouble keeping up with digital change over the past two years.
Wearable technologies, artificial intelligence, and the Internet of Things were all identified as emerging technologies relevant to New Zealand business leaders.
Develter said he was not concerned by the study’s findings, which provided a decent pulse check.
His main piece of advice was for companies to sit down and come up with a digital strategy, or at least a vision for what it might do with digital changes.
‘‘The major takeaway is that if you’re in an industry at risk of digital disruption you better get moving. This will maybe give some people a little bit of a wake-up call.’’