Singapore companies are ahead of their global peers in their approach to digitalising their customer experience and engagement, according to research conducted by DBS Bank.
The research surveyed 1,225 global executives from commercial and finance/treasury teams across 22 markets. The markets are located across the world, from Asia Pacific (APAC) to Europe and the US. According to DBS, the survey is one of the first to balance the perspectives of executives between APAC as well as Europe and the US.
Based on the findings, 70% of companies in Singapore are taking a “strategic, consistent or radical approach” to digitalising the experience and engagement for their companies, compared to 64% of businesses globally. That said, a further 33% of businesses worldwide have been pursuing ad-hoc updates in terms of carrying out a structured approach to customer-facing digital transformation.
However, only 17% of businesses globally said that activity in customer-facing digital transformation had been “very effective”. Another 39% of the global businesses polled said their transformation efforts had either “failed” or “were underwhelming”.
In Singapore, the top priorities for businesses were increasing efficiency (47%) and improving collaboration across functions and teams (37%). From a corporate culture perspective to supporting successful digital transformation, 41% of the companies polled in Singapore revealed that a shared adoption of a strategic vision was most important.
Meanwhile, 45% of Singapore companies polled said that unclear organisational strategy was one of the top barriers preventing organisations from achieving quicker progress in their digital transformation, while another 40% indicated that the gaps in talent was another barrier.
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The most frequent challenges faced by Singapore companies when their finance and commercial teams worked together were the different ways of measuring success (38%), as well as different approaches to calculating risk (37%).
In terms of digital transformation within treasury and finance, 61% of the respondents polled, cited the Cloud as an important digital and payments technology in Singapore. Advanced analytics (53%) and real-time payments (41%) rounded up the top three perceived digital and payments technology that were key to companies realising digital transformation within the treasury and finance department.
Within the treasury function, Singapore companies saw digitisation in investments as a top priority at 50%. Cash and liquidity management, procurement, financial reporting and corporate finance rounded up the top five priorities at 35%, 32%, 31% and 23% respectively.
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About 40% of Singapore companies preferred partnering with banks to develop banking and innovation and digital transformation, notes DBS. Another 23% preferred working with fintechs while 26% indicated that a combination of partnerships with banks, fintechs and consultants was preferred.
To help businesses achieve commercial goals, supply chain/procurement (34%) was the most urgent area that needed digital transformation, followed closely by sales & marketing (32%) with HR being the least. Some 47% of treasurers also found that acceptance of risk was the most needed among Singapore companies.
“With the acceleration of digital adoption in a post-Covid-19 world, treasury and commercial functions have to collaborate and adapt to a new way of working that encompasses the use of data analytics, AI and even blockchain-enabled platforms to function more effectively and efficiently,” says Tan Su Shan, DBS’s group head of institutional banking.
She adds: “This new way of way of working will necessitate a cultural mindset shift to one where business owners and treasurers are open to using machine-driven models to help make predictions, stress-test risk parameters or just to make more informed decisions.”
“Teams need to be aligned on a north star with a clear strategic vision. To be successful, they must also be open to learning by doing, accepting that there could be some failures, be quick to learn from them and continuously improve,” Tan continues.
