IDC research shows Asia/Pacific organizations fast progressing in their big data and analytics readiness

15 Jun 2016

SINGAPORE, June 16^th, 2016 – IDC Asia/Pacific released today its 2016 IDC MaturityScape Benchmark Report for Big Data and Analytics in Asia/Pacific (excluding Japan). The report highlights that Asia/Pacific organizations are fast maturing in their capabilities to leverage Big Data and Analytics (BDA) technologies with 34% even progressing to more mature stages like repeatable and managed stage. This is close to a five-fold increase compared to only 7% in 2014.

“At the repeatable and managed stages, organizations begun to realize the business value of their BDA investment, and some created new product and services to bring in new revenue streams, says Qiao Li, Senior Market Analyst, Big Data and Analytics Research.

However, more than sixty-five percent of organizations in the region remain at the first two stages and take an ad hoc or opportunistic approach (see iChart). This majority has just started their BDA journey, learning and experimenting BDA technologies to address business challenges.

Data-rich industries like financial services, communications & media, and services (including Internet companies) are leading in cross-divisional adoption and capitalization of their data assets.

Countries differ in maturity progression. Korea is one of the fastest-growing countries in terms of BDA maturity, moving ahead of Singapore. On the other hand, Hong Kong has progressed the least in the past year. This year, Australia, New Zealand, Korea and Singapore are leading in BDA maturity in Asia Pacific (excluding Japan), followed by Hong Kong, China, Taiwan and India. Emerging ASEAN countries remain as the starters in the maturity curve.

Key Differentiators for Thrivers*

The MaturityScape Benchmark assesses organizations in five dimensions – vision, data, technology, people and process. Vision appears to be the most mature. Organizations are setting up BDA strategies, but many have yet to implement solutions and build up internal capabilities to operationalize data-driven processes. IDC recommends for organizations to take a balanced approach when investing in BDA dimensions.

According to IDC, organizations who achieved success with their big data and analytics initiatives displayed the following traits:

• Established a BDA strategy and data-driven culture across the enterprise

• Data quality governed by centralized processes, metrics and methods

• A central architecture board governed all BDA deployments

• Collaboration process in place among staff to share relevant data, metrics, and best practices

• Data management and analysis process are defined, measured, and managed based on clearly understood metrics

"Availability of skilled resources is a common roadblock to BDA initiatives among APEJ organizations. Organizations can consider looking to develop internally on BDA skills through sharing resources, training, and partnering with service providers. It will be crucial to establish a data-driven culture and encourage knowledge sharing to develop internal capabilities," comments Chwee Chua, AVP, Analytics, Big Data and Cognitive Systems research in IDC Asia/Pacific.

IDC MaturityScape Benchmark: Big Data and Analytics in Asia/Pacific (Excluding Japan) 2016 leverages IDC's Big Data and Analytics MaturityScape framework to assess organizations through a survey of 731 organizations across 10 countries in Asia/Pacific, conducted in October to December 2015. The survey was based on a structured questionnaire of 30 questions. These survey questions were focused on the five dimensions of IDC's Big Data and Analytics MaturityScape. For each dimension, we created a set of questions to assess the level of capability/maturity for the dimension.

About IDC MaturityScape Benchmark

IDC MaturityScape Benchmark reports aid in the discussion of IT strategy and technology investments by helping IT executives and their enterprise partners gauge where their enterprise is in relation to that of their peers and competitors, best achievers, and the least invested. By utilizing IDC benchmark data, IDC MaturityScape Benchmarks enable organizations to compare maturity against peers, pinpoint which dimensions of an initiative peer organizations are more mature in, and identify the benefits organizations achieve as they move to more mature stages. This benchmark study focused on organizations with 500 or more employees in Asia/Pacific (excluding Japan).