SAP SE announced the results of its poll of 4,500 Southeast Asian business leaders, revealing the extent of COVID-19’s impact on businesses across the region, and concerns about long-term prospects.
Unveiled at the inaugural SAP Forward Together virtual event on the new reality of businesses, the survey revealed that 40% of the businesses polled are still adopting a “wait and see” approach in response to the pandemic.
SAP reaffirms its goal to help Southeast Asian businesses “innovate and transform” to elevate their competitiveness in a post-COVID-19 world.
In a wider context, this will help ASEAN maintain its status as one of the world’s fastest-growing markets supporting consumers and businesses. The digital era is evolving into an ‘intelligent’ one whereby businesses are facing mounting new challenges amidst digital disruption and new rules to the game. Winning companies are those that transform through innovation, more so in today’s ‘digitally disruptive’ world compounded by the Covid-19 pandemic.
Implications of COVID-19 on SEA businesses
- Majority of regional business leaders (63%) surveyed have already seen changes in customers’ purchasing behaviour and motivations since the start of 2020, although 21% of businesses are unsure or lack insight on changes in their customer’s needs.
- Around 20% of businesses foresee a need to adapt their customer experience strategies to meet evolving expectations and needs of customers across platforms.
- Supply chain and operations are also other aspects that businesses are keeping a close watch on, with 22% of businesses expecting significant change in the future. Alongside changing customer consumption patterns, supply chains have shifted in the wake of safe-distancing measures of lockdowns, leading to a stop-go pattern in business-to-business operations.
- Over 80% of regional businesses leaders surveyed expect significant/massive impact to change their business model or operations, with just 1% expecting “business-as-usual” in the long run.
- With business-as-usual no longer an option, regional business leaders are adjusting organizational priorities with a focus on business transformation (21%), enhancing customer engagement (15%), making business processes more efficient (14%), ensuring business continuity (12%), and supply chain resilience and redefinition (9%).
SAP’s efforts to lend a helping hand
To support business continuity through these challenging times, SAP has opened up access to selected technology solutions.
As a result, SAP is providing free access to SAP Ariba Discovery, the world’s largest business network until December 31, 2020, so any buyer can post their immediate sourcing needs and any supplier can respond to show they can deliver. Free access to Qualtrics Remote Work Pulse has also helped organizations understand how their employees are doing and what support they need as they adapt to new work environments.
Additionally, businesses can also access the SAP Value Lifecycle Manager, an industry benchmark tool that supports businesses to measure, monitor and optimize value across their enterprise. To help businesses go digital and transform into intelligent enterprises, the SAP Experience Center Singapore provides an innovative space for businesses to deep dive into the latest technologies like AI, Big Data and data intelligence on the cloud to develop solutions tailored to the organization’s unique challenges.
With the help of SAP digital solutions, PLDT initiated the Day Zero Program, a framework to reimagine, reshape and redefine the new normal for customers. Its key components enable companies to empower their employees by affording them with the means to remain productive and access office systems remotely.
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