Forrester: Business predictions for Asia Pacific in 2022

By Kate Birch
From trust taking centre stage to cloud-native technologies dominating, discover Forrester’s 2022 business predictions for APAC

After nearly two years of reactively dealing with pandemic-related turbulence and uncertainty, firms in Asia-Pacific are ready to proactively address changing customer and employee expectations, reports Forrester.

“Too few, however, will fully pivot from the current health crisis to the looming climate crisis,” says Michael Barnes, VP, Research Director at Forrester. “Business leaders must adapt to this new reality, laying the groundwork for bold decisions. Creativity, resilience, and agility – fuelled by strong customer understanding and smart technology investments – will separate leaders and laggards, no matter the industry.”

According to Forrester, in 2022, APAC organisations set to implement future fit technology strategies such as cloud-native approaches to improve business agility and usher in a new era of regionally aligned hybrid-work strategies.

These are just a few of the predictions that Forrester has forecast in its Predictions for Asia Pacific 2022.

  • Work From Anywhere less likely to be permanent Region-specific pressures will allow just 40% of APAC firms to pivot to anywhere-work versus 70% globally. One of the reasons is due to the region’s large manufacturing and contact centre industries, which typically requires a stronger physical presence in their facilities. Also, across APAC, there is increased eagerness (65%) of information workers to return to the office mainly due to the region’s high-density, extended-family living situations, which made working home during the pandemic feel less productive.
     
  • Trust will become a key business imperative The world is in a major crisis of trust, driven by concerns over public health, cybersecurity, data privacy, and sustainability. Asia Pacific’s financial services industry will be the first to act upon the trust imperative. Companies that ignore the trust imperative will lose 10% to 40% of their customers, starting with those unwilling to forgive firms for breaching their trust. 
     
  • Fewer firms in APAC to appoint a dedicated sustainability lead In fact, likely to be less than half the global averageValues-based consumers have put the pressure on firms to elevate their sustainability efforts, but many such plans have remained performative. Only 30% of APAC purchase influencers say their firms are taking real action such as making their sustainability efforts more transparent and reducing their carbon footprint or e-waste. Also, just 26% of Fortune Global 200 firms in the region have appointed a sustainability lead at the senior level, as compared to 81% in EMEA and 92% in North America.
     
  • At least 1 billion people will access world-leading digital government services Governments in APAC lead the world in implementing the three pillars of a digital society: digital identity, digital currency, and data interoperability. Countries like Singapore, India, and Australia already have established digital identity solutions, and more than 20 million Chinese already use the digital yuan, with more trials in the works.
     
  • 30% of APAC firms with cloud-first strategies will shift to cloud-native Cloud-native technologies will transcend all major technology domains, including big data, AI, and the internet of things. By embracing a cloud-native approach, these firms will accelerate enterprise modernisation and implement future fit technology strategies. But this shift will be slow compared to North America and EMEA.
     
  • Smart infrastructure investments will gain remarkable growth To facilitate pandemic recovery, city planners will prioritise initiatives to provide citizens with internet connectivity, address public health, and manage critical resources using smart meters and predictive grid monitoring. Stakeholders will also use harness insight captured from edge devices and IoT-enabled infrastructure to modify traffic patterns to reduce congestion and evaluate multimedia data to deliver insight for security applications.

 

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