Singapore – The digital disruption during the offset of the global pandemic has made businesses in the Asia Pacific prioritize investment in improving insight and analytics capabilities, a new report from computer software company Adobe shows.
The APAC-centric report shows around 49% of businesses willing to invest in insight and analytic solutions for their business to achieve their top marketing goals this year. In addition, one third (35%) of ANZ leaders believe their organization has strong capabilities in accuracy, actionability, speed, and access of insights, while Asian leaders are far more pessimistic at around 9%.
With that in mind, leaders in ANZ think their interest in investing to analytic support is a focus on personalized customer experience as 33% of respondents agree to this reasoning, while Asian leaders are committed to enabling digital customer acquisition (35%).
Duncan Egan, vice president of DX Marketing, APAC, and Japan at Adobe commented that organizations with better access to insights are more likely to say their customers are positive about their digital experience compared to their peers with lower levels of insight.
“For brands across every sector, 2020 brought a loss of predictability. Organizations of all kinds were driven online at an accelerated rate, creating a wave of new digital customers with increasing expectations. Customers now have the upper hand in the ‘digital relationship’, with more than half of marketing respondents across APAC reporting unusual changes in customer behaviors and journeys in 2020,” Egan said.
He added, “A company with a strong customer experience (CX) strategy is more likely to achieve long-term growth than its competitors, as they are better positioned to adapt to changeable customer behaviors and markets. This report highlights that organizations need to accelerate their insight and action capabilities by moving to more flexible technologies and cloud-based platforms, as well as a unified and real-time view of the customer journey.”
The report also showed that respondents who are confident about their company’s customer experience feel optimistic about their corporate strategy (63% in ANZ vs. 73% in India vs. 56% in Asia) and their own prospects for career growth (61% in ANZ vs. 70% in India vs. 57% in Asia). In addition, organizations across APAC report three significant barriers that are hampering marketing and experience: legacy technology and systems (51% in ANZ, 37% in India and Asia), workflow issues (38% in ANZ, 33% in India, and 48% in Asia), and a lack of digital skills and capabilities (34% in ANZ, 24% in India and 43% in Asia).
Egan explained that the manifested data has been a result of the current shift to remote work, which in turn has a significant and enduring impact on businesses moving forward, requiring new marketing strategies for reaching and keeping customers.
“Companies have never been more interested in being agile and adding new capabilities for seamless digital execution, with one third (34%) saying they’ve been unusually agile and able to make quick decisions,”said Egan.
“A hybrid approach to technology – comprising cloud and other data management systems – allows organizations to be flexible and collaborative, letting them work better with existing solutions and quickly integrate new ones. The effects of such an approach within these organizations can be seen in the improved capability in key areas of analytics and insights, added Egan
Furthermore, the report also found that transparency is still lacking with only a small number of leaders (13% in ANZ and 12% in Asia) claiming their organization is effective at communicating how data is collected and used. Also, only 10% in ANZ and 13% in Asia believe they are highly effective at communicating the value offered in exchange for customers’ consent when they first encounter the brand.
Lastly, Adobe reported that most organizations are still a long way from authentically displaying digital empathy. Just over a third (37%) of Indian executives have significant insights into customer mindset, followed by 27% in ANZ and 19% in Asia. Drivers of purchase, friction points, and attribution of how marketing actions relate to customer behavior fare only marginally better.
