AS countries worldwide slowly recover from the pandemic, growth is back on the radar agenda for businesses in the Asia Pacific (APAC) region, but they are faced with new challenges on their recovery journey.
A new study, “Ready, Reset, Grow”, commissioned by the SAP Concur on the impact of Covid -19 on APAC businesses revealed the three top challenges as slowing economic growth, employee safety/well-being and increased/new competition. It polled 250 senior business, finance and IT executives across various industries in Australia, China, India, Japan and Singapore.
Here’s a brief look at the study’s findings.
Investments in technologies
To prepare for the challenges ahead posed by the uncertainty of the pandemic, firms are allotting bigger spend on a range of technologies especially remote work tools, with 59% of the respondents citing this, and 56% for cloud services/solutions.
With remote working likely to stay for now, 78% of those surveyed expected their company to increase reliance on it to meet business goals.
Over the next six months the top three technologies executives see their companies harnessing are artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) (52%), cloud computing (49%), and 5G (38%). They believed these technologies, particularly AI/ML, would help their organisations make more informed business decisions and achieve growth faster.
Crucial for businesses to review their current strategies and priorities when resetting for growth, said Carl Jones.
The respondents said technology would improve operations in the travel, expense and invoicing side of their businesses, as 86% agreed that having good control over company spend is necessary for weathering economic uncertainty.
As for travel expense and invoicing capabilities needed for their company to negotiate the next six months, 73% of the executives taking part in the study identified cost-saving opportunities while 72% cited both access to real-time data and analytics, as well as accurate forecast and budget.
37% of the respondents expressed the hope that these investments would boost business process efficiencies, 36% for reduced operational costs and 35% for being to make smarter data-based decisions.
“With Covid-19 businesses need to build more resilience into their travel, expense and invoicing operations by reinventing the way they identify cost saving opportunities and manage spending,” said Carl Jones, vice president, head of strategy, Asia Pacific and Greater China at SAP Concur.
“Embedding flexible controls and intelligent technology throughout the entire spending process will help organisations stay on top of costs and compliance, while positioning their business for growth.”
Employee health and well-being
With the ongoing pandemic and worrying news of the emergence of new and more infectious strains of the coronavirus, employees’ health and well-being are uppermost on the minds of most employers.
“Emerging expectations around personal and community health and safety will mean a new era of decisions, processes, and innovations across the travel industry. As travel resumes in a new way, employee safety will be of the essence,” stated the report.
Companies thus need to adapt and harness technology that gives employees the ability to make safe travel choices while still keeping costs manageable for the company.
According to the report, technologies like artificial intelligence and machine learning can help to handle calamities impacting the company or the traveller through pulling travel information into reports from travel booking sites, emails, and corporate credit cards. On the finance side, they give greater visibility and control of travel spend before it’s booked, and provide the data to strengthen negotiating positions with vendors.
“The pace and timing of Covid-19 recovery is still uncertain, making it even more crucial for businesses to review their current strategies and priorities when resetting for growth,” said Jones. “While many organisations have made commendable headway in enhancing their processes with new technologies, business leaders must ensure that this effort is sustained as we collectively navigate this crisis.”
For other findings, download the “Ready, Reset, Grow” report here.
• Featured image credit: Kiwis/Getty Images
