According to a recent report, a survey found that Malaysian firms are highly optimistic about their ability to adapt to Artificial Intelligence (AI) by 2035.
The New Economy Forum survey by a leading America financial, software, data, and media company covered 100 Malaysia-based business professionals. It found that 76 per cent of the respondents in the country agree or strongly agree that lifelong learning will be able to mitigate the threat that AI poses to manual jobs.
This is significantly higher than the global average of 64 per cent and slightly above the average of 70 per cent across the ASEAN region, the information and technology group said in a statement.
Conducted in April, the global survey gathered the views of 2,000 business professionals across 20 emerging and developed markets on what the future (specifically, 2035) will likely hold. This involved discovering their level of agreement or disagreement to a range of predictions about the world in 2035.
The survey also found that 61 per cent of Malaysians agree or strongly agree that by 2035, China and India would have surpassed the United States as the world’s centres of tech innovation.
It was noted that this is higher than the global average of 54 per cent. A substantial percentage — 49 per cent — of respondents in developed markets, including US respondents, agree or strongly agree that the two most-populous countries will eclipse the US in technology.
Malaysian firms rapidly adopting tech
A recent report by OpenGov Asia noted that another study conducted by a global leader in enterprise technology for finance and human resources found that Malaysian companies are leading in the Asia Pacific in terms of quantifying the return from their digital transformation initiatives.
The numbers show that 58% of C-Level executives are seeing measurable returns. Comparatively, only 47% of companies in Singapore and 34% in Japan have seen returns.
The study looked at the barriers to digital transformation from the perspectives of 1,000 C-level Executives and business leaders in Human Resources (HR), Finance and IT.
The findings came the Malaysian government has announced commitments to digitalisation this year and driving the Malaysian digital economy forwards. Malaysia’s digital economy is projected to contribute 21% of its GDP by 2022.
When looking at the key challenges to digital transformation, almost half (49%) of C-level executives in Malaysia see organisational silos as a key challenge – an environment where a company’s departments do not share operational information with one another.
Frustration with organisational silos was also felt by the other business leaders surveyed, with 73% of HR leaders and 54% of IT leaders in Malaysia highlighting this as a key barrier to transformation.
It was noted that as Malaysia’s digital economy rapidly expands, it is great to see that local companies are keeping pace and leading the region in their efforts to digitally transform. Despite this success, there still remains work to do to break down company silos to effect change at an enterprise level.
The key theme that comes through in this research is the lack of collaboration and integration among different functions across the region. Digital transformation is a team sport and requires strong support from the top and close collaboration among team members, from HR and Finance to IT and digital teams.
Key investment in the right technologies will help both increase employee and finance visibility and drive cross-departmental collaboration, accelerating digital transformation success.