SINGAPORE (Feb 28): Local family businesses are most confident in utilising data analytics to drive their business success, as they prepare to put aside their traditional business models to meet future challenges with next-generation technologies.
According to a new multi-country study which SAP commissioned from the The Economist Intelligence Unit (TEIU), family businesses in Singapore who said they were ready to utilise emerging technologies to drive business success were most bullish on adopting data analytics with a confidence score of 8.1 on a 10-point scale (10 being the most confident).
This was followed by automation, machine learning, and cloud computing with confidence scores of 7.6, 7.7 and 7.3, respectively.
With a majority 90% of local family enterprises saying they needed to change ‘at least somewhat’ in order to overcome challenges in the next three years, over half (53%) of Singapore respondents said they are likely to launch new products and services.
Another 31% cited access to new geographical markets as the chief benefit of partnerships with other organisations.
SAP also notes that almost all (95%) of Singapore family businesses believed they have well-defined succession plans in place.
Despite the overall bullish sentiment, the study also identified uncertainties among Singapore family business owners regarding challenges brought about by disruptors, digital start-ups and foreign competition.
In particular, respondents in Singapore were the region’s least confident of their employees' abilities to develop new skills (7.4 versus the regional country average of 8.1), which SAP deems to indicate a perceived gap in skills and talent development.
“With the increasingly globalised world and rapid pace of change in today’s digital economy, family businesses need to become fully intelligent enterprises, and experiment with new ways of operating and delivery value for their customers, in order to level the playing field and be future-ready”, comments Khor Chern Chuen, managing director of SAP Singapore.
“To this end, they need to digitalise the core with a next-generation intelligent enterprise resource planning (ERP) solution across all aspects of the company, and create value and revenue streams through leveraging data via automation and machine learning,” he adds.
