GEC NEWS WIREAsia/Pacific CEOs expect productivity in their organizations to increase by 24 percent by the end of 2018, with revenue (cited by 26 percent of respondents) and profitability (15 percent) as the top two metrics of success, according to Gartner 2017 CEO survey. However, the survey uncovers a gap between what they want to achieve and where technology investments are being made.
To achieve such aggressive productivity gains, Asia/Pacific CEOs believe that conventional technologies (cloud, ERP, analytics and CRM) will help them, rather than technologies that support digital transformation (digital environments, blockchain, IoT, robotics, AI and 3D printing). This is despite their awareness and understanding of the major impact that these key digital business technologies will have on their industry.
“Asia/Pacific CEOs want to increase profit margins while maintaining sales growth, and they expect IT to play a strong role in this,” said Partha Iyengar, vice president and Gartner Fellow. “The problem is that Asia/Pacific firms aren’t moving fast enough to capitalize on this potential. Their focus on conventional technologies will likely have less of a transformative effect than more innovative technologies.”
CEOs expect IT to play a strong role in fueling this profitable growth. “IT-related” appears as the second business priority after growth, reflecting the importance CEOs give IT. This continues a trend that first appeared in our 2015 survey, when IT reached the top five business priorities of CEOs. This year’s ranking of No. 2 is the highest ranking IT has achieved in the last three years.
