KUALA LUMPUR – As Malaysia adapts and builds business resilience in the face of uncertainties, 77% of business decision-makers in Malaysia say that innovation is now a ‘must’ for them to respond quickly to market challenges and opportunities, based on a new Microsoft and IDC research on 16 November.
Additionally, while significantly more organisations in Malaysia found innovation to be hard (76%) before COVID-19, they have since changed perceptions, with significantly less Malaysian organisations (35%) having this sentiment now.
These findings were released by Microsoft in its latest study with IDC Asia Pacific titled “Culture of Innovation: Foundation for business resilience and economic recovery in Asia Pacific”. The study surveyed 223 business decision-makers in Malaysia within a 6-month period, before and since COVID-19.
The Malaysian study was part of a broader survey among 3,312 business decision- makers and 3,495 workers across 15 markets in Asia Pacific conducted over the same period, to uncover how organisations can successfully fuel business resilience and performance through innovation.
“No organisation can maintain a competitive edge if innovation is not embedded in their business strategy. MDEC is a staunch advocate of innovation via our Corporate Partnership programme, which has enabled a myriad of organisations to spur innovation through the adoption of novel tech solutions,” said Gopi Ganesalingam, Vice President of Global Growth Acceleration Division at the Malaysia Digital Economy Corporation Berhad (MDEC).
The study also revealed that almost 8 in 10 Malaysian organisations (77%) are speeding up digitalisation in a variety of ways to adapt to the new reality. This includes launching digital products and introducing digital payments to embracing e-commerce and automation.
Further to this, close to 28% of Malaysian organisations believe that their current business model would be not competitive within the next 5 years.
One of the organisations which has been prioritising innovation includes Tenaga Nasional Berhad (TNB), Malaysia’s largest electricity utility company.
Moving forward, organisations in Malaysia revealed that they will prioritise rethinking their current business models within the next 12 months.
Meanwhile, organisations who are viewed as leading innovators within their industry, plan to focus on investing in technology infrastructure that is robust, scalable and flexible, as well as prioritise up-skilling and reskilling of their workforce for business resilience and recovery.
Datuk Azman Ismail, Managing Director of PLUS Malaysia Berhad, emphasised that the digital transformation (DT) that PLUS is undergoing is first and foremost about its people. “We progressively and diligently embarked on many such internal- facing DT initiatives for efficiency at work as well as external-facing DT initiatives to increase our customer experience and satisfaction.”
PLUS, Malaysia’s largest expressway service provider and Malaysia’s 2020 Digital Transformer winner at the IDC Digital Transformation Awards 2020, began its digital transformation journey with Microsoft since 2019 with the integration of Microsoft’s Azure cloud system into its highway toll network.
In 2020 alone, PLUS has also implemented and completed 58 digitisation initiatives via Office 365. PLUS was the first in Malaysia to leverage future-ready technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI), big data analytics and cloud computing to transform and modernize the Malaysian highway experience.
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