Forrester Predicts That Organizations' Success Will Depend On Their Capability To Harness Technology

Team Industry Outlook | Thursday, 15 October 2020

According to Forrester Asia Pacific 2021 Predictions released today, the coming year (2021) will be the year that every company will not only double down on technology-fueled experiences, but they will also double down on operations, products and ecosystems.

Forrester predicts that the organizations’ success will mostly depend on how quickly and how well they make use of technology, with regards to enabling their workforce in the new normal and also develop and build platforms that make them stand out.

The reports examine the dynamics that creates an impact for different industries and disciplines. This includes the changing consumer behaviors, customer experience, employee experience, marketing and technology. Some of the important predictions for 2021 particularly for Asia Pacific

from Forrester include the following:

• CMOs will assert control over the complete customer lifecycle, as customers will be placed in the central position of everything the Chief marketing officers do. This includes leadership, strategy and operations. This will ultimately result in, increase in retention marketing by 30 percent and spend on loyalty.

• CIOs will adopt cloud-first and platform strategies for speed and adaptiveness and in the next year, 30 percent of organizations will continue to promote their spend on cloud, security and risk, networks and mobility. This will also include the struggling firms that are looking to move forward and gain advantage coming out of the pandemic.

• Asia Pacific finally catches up on Zero Trust adoption. Zero Trust adoption in Asia Pacific has dawdled its global peers, however, the acceleration of cloud adoption and an explosion in remote work, as well as changing regulations and consumer behaviors, makes it fully ready for change. At least one of the governments in Asia Pacific will adopt a Zero Trust cybersecurity framework in 2021.

“The pandemic accelerated the need for digital transformation,” said Ashutosh Sharma, VP and Research Director at Forrester. “The current economic climate has increased the urgency for every enterprise to embrace technology as a strategic asset. Asia Pacific is finally entering a decade of a digitally levelled playing field. Firms in the region will be at par with or even exceed the rest of the world in terms of technology-driven business model innovation. COVID-19 affected Asia-Pacific first, and we expect it will also be the first to emerge from the crisis.”