Most big Thai businesses give digital a big embrace, survey finds

That is among the findings of the Digital Transformation Index survey of 100 executives. Meanwhile, around 7 per cent of businesses act as digital leaders that utilise digital technology and digital transformation to support their business.
Noppadol Punyatipat, country manager of Dell EMC Thailand said that the firm and Intel conducted the Digital Transformation Index survey of 100 executives from mid-to large-sized companies and enterprises. The survey also categorised business in five steps including digital laggards, digital followers, digital evaluators, digital adopters and digital leaders.
“The survey also reported that 90 per cent of Thailand business leaders believed that digital transformation should be more widespread throughout the organisation. And 61 per cent strongly agree they will be disrupters, rather than being disrupted, within five years,” said Noppadol.
The survey categorised 40 per cent of respondents as digital adopters, which are businesses with a mature digital plan, and with investments and innovations in place. Another 25 per cent were digital evaluators. The next 23 per cent were digital followers, which are business with few digital investments and are tentatively starting to plan for the future.
Around 7 per cent of participating businesses were digital leaders that apply digital technology designed for digital transformation in its various forms and have integrated digital approaches into the DNA of their business.
 The last 5 per cent of business were digital laggards, which lack a digital plan and have only a limited number of initiatives and investments in digital technology. 
He also said that the top five barriers to digital transformation are data privacy and cybersecurity concerns, immature digital culture including a lack of alignment and collaboration across the country, lack of a coherent digital strategy and vision, lack of the right technologies to work at the speed of business and lack of the right in-house skill sets and expertise. 
“The emerging technologies are reshaping how we live, work and conduct business,” concluded Noppadol. “It creates boundless opportunities and companies need to keep up to support their business efficiency. However, around 45 per cent worry their business will become obsolete in five years.” 
Noppadol said that the top five digital technologies that businesses are investing in and adopting to support their business in the digital era are cybersecurity, followed by the multi-cloud environment, data centres, artificial intelligence (AI) and Internet of things (IoTs).