Report: ANZ businesses ranked #1 for tech response to COVID

One year after the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, organisations globally have undergone transformations to strengthen resilience, increase agility and deliver greater efficiencies. In Australia and New Zealand, 86.2% of businesses and IT leaders believe that COVID-19 has caused significant changes to their operating processes, while 79.2% say it has accelerated their digital transformation strategy.

Findings from a report by NTT Ltd, a global technology services provider, have also revealed that 66.9% of business and IT leaders in Australia and New Zealand will prioritise cybersecurity in the coming 12–18 months, placing the region’s focus among the highest globally.

The research also highlights how embracing emerging technologies and the ability to automate and deploy innovation at speed will become key strategies that underpin the future of business success. While 90.0% of business and IT leaders in Australia and New Zealand agree that emerging technology is crucial for their technology strategy, less than two-fifths (38.5%) believe they have the technology available to meet the organisation’s immediate objectives.

This highlights the conundrum faced by many global organisations: the need to balance present needs, while also investing in technology and process modernisation to capture opportunities to scale and evolve.

Damian Skendrovic, Executive Vice President at NTT Ltd, notes that rapid change has been forced onto IT teams, and while business stakeholders expect to exercise a degree of agility in execution, IT teams struggle to manage their own challenges.

“From managing vendor complexity, which further extends to integrating disparate systems, along with emerging technologies and legacy infrastructure; through to budget constraints and a lack of skills to keep pace with business demands,” Skendrovic said.

As speed to market becomes a primary competitive differentiator, optimising digital transformation efforts is critical. Organisations that showcase the characteristics of being bold and brave are 50% more likely to optimise their digital transformation efforts and partner with managed services providers for over half of their IT support.

Reducing the infrastructure administration pressure on IT teams by implementing a DevOps culture and platform automation allows IT to optimise transformation efforts by focusing on innovation, and ultimately results in better mean time to repair (MTTR) and cost-optimisation.

Skendrovic notes that although change isn’t always perceived as positive in the moment, it is important to remember that transformation presents new opportunities for agility, scale and innovation.

Australian and New Zealand strategies were ranked #1 in terms of being most agile in responding to the challenges of COVID-19, with organisations requiring less significant change to the working and operating processes of any region.

As global organisations seek to strengthen resilience, the research highlights significant differences in approach. While some consider cost optimisation as a way of creating greater resilience, others are focused on being bold and brave, viewing the pandemic as a chance to take advantage of market opportunities and to scale, with 33.8% globally pivoting technology focus to achieve this.

This figure rises to 41.7% if an organisation currently has at least three-quarters of its IT managed by third parties. However, if an organisation has little to none of their IT managed by a third party, the percentage drops to 25.7% prepared to pivot focus.

“While not all organisations view disruption as an opportunity, one-third have adjusted course because they see a chance to do things better and take advantage; particularly in relation to enabling a more distributed workforce and innovative technologies. Bold and brave businesses are approaching resilience in a new and innovative light, and trusted technology partners are helping them achieve this,” Skendrovic said.

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