Analyst firm Gartner has revealed top 10 digital disruptors in the Asia Pacific region saying CIOs should learn from these digital companies.
Tencent, Alibaba, Baidu, Ant Financial, JD.com, DiDi, Xiaomi, Yahoo Japan, Naver and Lufax are the top 10 digital companies. Indian digital companies are not part of the list prepared by Gartner.
Top digital companies in the Asia Pacific region represent both a threat and an opportunity to global enterprises, and CIOs ignore them at their own risk, according to Gartner.
Gartner said CIOs involved in building or expanding a digital business should identify and understand disruptors as early as possible and work with their strategic planning groups to decide to collaborate with or compete against these digital giants.
Gartner predicts that 80 percent of traditional companies will lose 10 percent in market share through 2021 due to disruptive competition and/or the inability to disrupt themselves.
CIOs and IT leaders are familiar with U.S.-based digital giants Google, Facebook, Amazon and Apple, but those in Asia are shrouded in regard to how they are disrupting the digital business landscape, according to CK Lu, research director at Gartner.
Prioritizing global IT investments will be incomplete without a thorough study of Asia/Pacific digital disruptors within clear categories of opportunities.
GDP growth in Asia Pacific is 1.6 times faster than the worldwide market. Adoption of technologies like mobile wallets is much higher, and you can reach 1.7 billion internet users in these markets.
How CIOs should respond
Leverage
Businesses with operations in Asia Pacific can be at a disadvantage using U.S. or European suppliers and partners, and should redesign IT infrastructures by leveraging Asian digital businesses if their revenue, customers or clients are weighted toward Asia.
CIOs should consider switching to China-based cloud services that can operate in China instead of using global services that may face limitations, either from regulation or localization.
Compete
Most Asia Pacific digital disruptors have sought to take over consumer areas, such as homes and transportation. However, digital giants are now moving beyond B2C to B2B, government and enterprise areas, such as the industrial and medical industries.
This gives enterprises a window of opportunity to build a digital platform or lead a digital ecosystem. If the enterprise has a very strong brand and relationships with customers and partners, it can re-evaluate old enemies and build an ecosystem to jointly compete against the digital disruptors.
Cooperate
Global enterprises have some advantages they can use to build a cooperative relationship with digital giants in Asia, such as their own valuable internal data, global expertise and business presence outside the Asia/Pacific region.
Enterprises should build a special task force to transform their businesses into digital to cooperate with digital giants in Asia. CIOs must recognize the cultural and working model differences because these companies are often more agile — and operate at a much smaller business scale.
