From planning and sourcing to development and distribution, software-led digital creativity demonstrably moves markets, fosters resilience, and builds new audiences. To get there, Asia/Pacific (AP) leaders are carefully aligning operations, development, and business stakeholders to deliver optimum value to the customers, employees, and partners they serve.
IDC predicts by 2023, organizations that allocate 50+% of their software development projects to customer-facing initiatives will see revenue grow 15% faster compared to those that focus more on internal projects.
"The headline trend this year will be the unification of business strategy and software development. This year, we expect 30% of organizations’ tech teams to include permanent representation from the business side. The focus is on collaborative efforts among tech and business stakeholders, with a heavy emphasis on self-service apps that align with business needs," says Gina Smith, PhD, research manager for DevOps and digital innovation in the Asia/Pacific region.
She added that automation, cloud, and low-code platforms will continue to drive innovation, of course. AI is another big factor. In 2021, we saw about a quarter of AP organizations employing conversational chat technologies. That should more than double in 2022.
According to Smith, the big sea change in 2022 will be an overhaul of software development culture. Long a sticking point within AP organizations, siloed top-down organizations will necessarily have to pivot to collaborative, fail-forward methods just to stay competitive. This year and next, expect to see more and more enterprises in the region rely on multidisciplinary teams that include IT, development, security, business, and creative stakeholders.
“To avoid innovation exhaustion, AP IT leaders will have to keep their eye on the ball and continually refresh their innovation efforts. They don’t need to become software companies, of course, but they do need to operate with the agility and cleverness of digital natives to deliver value to customers, employees and partners,” she concluded.
Below are IDC's Future of Digital Innovation top 10 predictions
Prediction 1: Digital Drives Revenue: By 2025, enterprises that successfully generate digital innovation will derive over 25% of revenue from digital products, services and/or experiences.
Prediction 2: Customer-Facing First: By 2023, organizations that allocate 50+% of their software development projects to customer-facing initiatives will see revenue grow 15% faster compared to those that focus more on internal projects.
Prediction 3: Marketplaces and Acquisitions: To help alleviate the developer skills shortage, 55% of organizations will use cloud marketplaces and tech start-up acquisitions as their most important approaches to software sourcing by 2024.
Prediction 4: Developer Ecosystems: By 2025, companies that have already invested in building a developer ecosystem will expand their customer base by 25%.
Prediction 5: Supply Chain Security: Securing the software supply chain will be a core competency embraced by 75% of large digital innovators by 2023.
Prediction 6: Tech to Go Direct: By 2024 traditional distribution models crumble as 20% of businesses in some sectors use technology to go direct to customers, seeking to improve customer satisfaction and product development.
Prediction 7: Turning Products to Service: By 2026, 30% of software development teams will be focused on turning traditional products into outcomes as a service.
Prediction 8: Software Development Insourcing: Half the Asia 500 will have insourced software development significantly by 2026, exacerbating the software engineering skills shortage and fuelling interest in software development efficiencies.
Prediction 9: Heterogeneous Teams: By 2024, 55% of successful digitally innovative products will be built by teams that include people with creative, critical thinking, analysis, and automation skills, as well as software engineers.
Prediction 10: Machines as Programmers: By 2026, 60% of newly developed applications will include some automatically generated code, freeing up humans to focus on development tasks that are not easily automated.
