9 December 2020 (MY) – According to new global research by VMware, Inc., clear alignment between the business, IT and app development teams delivers innovation and helps high growth companies meet their business objectives.
With the COVID-19 pandemic impacts affecting global economies, the VMware Research found that companies who were further along the path of digital transformation (DX) were better placed to weather the impact of business downturns due to their improved delivery of modern applications.
According to Devan Parinpanayagam, Country Manager, VMware Malaysia: “The research showed that while Asia Pacific (APAC) businesses’ priorities align with their global counterparts, a notably lower proportion of businesses in APAC prioritize the customer experience. The focus is instead on employee-related priorities, such as improving collaboration and attracting or retaining talent which will place them in a strong position to move forward in their digitalization journey.”
The organizational traits of these successful APAC companies revealed that technology was only one component that determined success and that talent, leadership that understands software and organizational alignment were prime determinants for success:
- Talent Matters – 94% of respondents say it is imperative for people with varied technical skills to be heavily involved with DX initiatives if they are to succeed.
- Leaders Matter – 89% of respondents say organizations with software-minded leaders are more successful.
- Team Alignment – 88% of respondents believe that greater alignment between different stakeholders involved in the app development process would lead to much higher levels of success with digital transformation.
Almost all companies, however, found obstacles in their DX path no matter their size:
- 97% of APAC respondents have seen some success, big or small, from their digital transformation efforts. However, nearly just as many respondents (90%) have had elements of their digital transformation efforts hindered. The top three digital transformation challenges for organizations in APAC are:
- Too many security and regulatory requirement hurdles or obstacles (32% – 5 percentage points above the global average)
- Apps / software did not integrate well with existing/ legacy systems (27%)
- Too many platforms that over complicated the delivery of the change (27%)
When it comes to the application and software development process, APAC organizations that reported achieving a growth rate of 5+% were seeing almost 14% more of their net-new software/app efforts making it into production, on average, compared to those organizations achieving a lower growth rate of 5% or less. When digging deeper into the software/app development process, IT decision makers and app developer respondents from both higher and lower growth organizations report that the same proportion of their team’s time is spent on maintenance (39%). But higher growth companies are spending more time on innovation than their lower performing counterparts (49% vs. 44%) and similarly, they also report a greater proportion of agile steps in the app development process (58% vs 46%).
