CXOInsights by CXOCIETY

Activities like video conferencing, mobile work, cloud computing – all of these have been around well before the pandemic. Before anyone ever coined businesses have been undergoing transformation to reflect opportunities presented at the time. If what we mean by digital is the use of information technology, that too has been around for decades.  What is different though is that in recent years, di...

Enterprises continue to mature in the art of acquiring data whether this is structured or unstructured. But having data alone has proven to be no predictor of whether a business is successful at drawing insights from the data.  Gartner says data-driven organizations struggle with increasing data diversity; its producers, consumers and distributed nature; and automation demands to relieve strained...

The face of retail has been changing since the start of digital transformation. Many traditional retailers have witnessed the rice of Amazon to dominate retailing – change how consumers engage and make purchases. Alibaba took it to celebrity affair with their annual Singles Day event. But it took the pandemic with its mobile and social restrictions to get more retailers to finally start to changes...

Financial Planning and Analysis (FP&A) teams play a crucial role in companies by performing budgeting, forecasting, and analysis that support major corporate decisions of the CFO, CEO, and the Board of Directors. According to the Corporate Finance Institute , FP&A professionals oversee a broad array of financial affairs, including income, expenses, taxes, capital expenditures, investments,...

During the 2022 FutureCFO vSummit series held across Hong Kong, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, and the Philippines, one topic that stood out as a point of interest for many of the participating senior finance leaders was around the organisations’ commitment to sustainability goals. But what about the head of technology? According to Gartner there is an opportunity for the CIO to take a lead role...

For most of our online lives, our accounts are protected by a username and password. These protect the data stored in our accounts, including financial, personal and pretty much anything we value both digitally and physically. As there are many ways to achieve a goal, so too we’ve discovered over the years that cybercriminals are more than happy to expend the effort to hack into our accounts – eve...

First came automation – the realisation that some aspects of workflow can be done by machines. Next came the integration of artificial intelligence into IT operations (AIOps), robotic process automation (RPA), decision management, and business automation, resulting in cost reductions and doing more with less, maybe even more accurately.  Coincidentally, automation is helping seen alleviate the ski...

Central to the success of any environmental, social and governance (ESG) commitment is data. Any organisation that chooses to commit itself to an ESG initiative must be able to measure change and accelerate transformation in areas such as emissions, governance and diversity, equity and inclusion, organisations need access to data from outside the organisation.  Gartner says chief information offic...

By 2025, it is expected that IoT devices will generate roughly 73.1 Zettabtyes of data. Around that time, 30% of all data will be real-time, with IoT accounting for nearly 95% of it, 20% of all data will be critical and 10% of all data will be hypercritical. The real-time nature of IoT data presents an opportunity, challenges and threats to organisations. Analytics will have to happen in real time...

According to IoT analytics, the current business sentiment for companies in digital and IoT remains predominantly positive. There is widespread acknowledgement that Covid-19 had an overall positive effect on the accelerated adoption of IoT technologies.  IoT Analytics also reports record levels of VC investments for IoT firms, including acquisitions in the areas of AI and analytics. It is anticipa...

While manufacturing has traditionally depended on software technologies like manufacturing execution systems and enterprise resource planning to keep materials inventory in lockstep with customer orders, innovations around the Internet of Things, analytics and machine learning, and cloud and ubiquitous connectivity are maturing to the stage where we may be seeing the emergence of the long-heralded...

If disruption was the word of the times for much of 2020 to 2021, modernisation was the strategy that underpinned many digital initiatives during 2021, on top of goals like resilience and sustainability.  But as organisations allocate resources to pursue modernisation, Boards and the C-suite leadership are calling for greater scrutiny on the return on investment (ROI) given that economies may be t...

“In most enterprises, there are hundreds, if not thousands, of potential sustainability ideas and projects that IT could support. The CIO must make sure the IT organization focuses on those that will drive the enterprise’s sustainability ambitions,” says Simon Mingay, VP Analyst at Gartner.  With ESG scores rising in importance, orchestrating the right technologies and practices will be key to mee...

Hybrid and remote work have amplified the impact of distributed and complex IT environments. Running workloads and applications across both cloud and on-premises infrastructure presents challenges when viewed against a backdrop of evolving priorities driven by local market regulatory and maturity, and an IT team that must ensure business continuity without straining available resources. IDC says a...

The Forrester State of Application Security 2022 report noted that applications are the top cause of external breaches. Software supply chain concerns added complexity. Forrester says security professionals need to find a way to move beyond a tactical and reactive mindset to rebuild an application security that integrates tightly with development and focuses on strategic concerns. In this PodChats...

Cyber risk quantification involves the application of risk quantification techniques to an organization's cybersecurity risk. It is the process of evaluating the cyber risks that have been identified and then validating, measuring and analyzing the available cyber data using mathematical modelling techniques to accurately represent the organization's cybersecurity environment in a manner...

Gina Smith , a research manager for DevOps in Asia/Pacific with IDC explains that with the COVID-19 pandemic going into its third year, Asia/Pacific organizations are looking to DevOps processes and practices now more than ever.  "The need to deliver evocative and secure applications and services is unrelenting. Mature DevOps efforts will combine IT, development, and business resources to hel...

The InfoSec Institute estimates there is a worldwide staffing shortage of nearly three million in the ranks of cybersecurity professionals, with the number rising to 3.5 million by 2021. Expectations are that the shortage will only get worse driven by rising demand for infosec resources for the foreseeable future.  A 2013 Frost & Sullivan study estimated that women accounted for 10-12% of the...

The fans of inflation are diverting focus for many CFOs from pursuing innovation and growth strategies to curtailing possible runaway costs as organisations push forward their digital strategies. In 2021, 60% of organizations were experiencing wage inflation. Since then, mentions of inflation on earnings calls have increased eightfold. There’s little question that inflation will be a big theme in...

Cybersecurity is turning into a social phenomenon. Investor interest, public pressure, employee demands, and governmental regulations are strengthening the incentives for organizations to track and report cybersecurity goals and metrics within their environmental, social and governance (ESG) efforts as a business requirement. Gartner says traditional culture improvement efforts focusing exclusivel...

One of the outcomes of digital transformation is the realisation of the value of data, and the subsequent growing dependence on it. But more than access to data, the other attribute of the digital economy is the democratisation of data. In this PodChats for FutureCFO, we are joined by Bhavik Vashi, Area Vice President – Asia for Anaplan, to talk about the potential of democratised planning to achi...

According to S&P Global , APAC M&A activity in Q1 2022 retreated from 2021’s highs, with deal value for the quarter ending at $73.8B, a decline of 44% QoQ, or 18% YoY. In Q1 2022, Australia (US$15 billion) led the region by transaction value, followed by China (US$12.5 bn) and Hong Kong (US$11.4 bn). The financial services sector topped M&A activities in Q1 2022 with 14.6 billion follo...

Mordor Intelligence forecasts data centre transformation to reach US$15.45 billion by 2026, growing at a CAGR of 12.88% during the forecast period of 2021-2026.  Ciena claims that as much as 40% of the total operational costs for a data centre come from the energy needed to power and cool the massive amounts of equipment data centres house. No wonder, Mordor says data centre operators are being dr...

Back in February 2012 , Mark Zuckerberg , co-founder of Facebook (now Meta), stated “there is a huge need and a huge opportunity to get everyone in the world connected, to give everyone a voice and to help transform society for the future. The scale of the technology and infrastructure that must be built is unprecedented, and we believe this is the most important problem we can focus on.” Of cours...

Environmental, social and governance (ESG) programs can pose unique challenges to finance chiefs charged with maximizing returns. Reason? Big price tags and longer timelines. The push from regulators and many stakeholders to transform and align companies with new sustainability goals is an “enduring change,” which carries unique challenges, said Kristin Moyer, distinguished VP and analyst with Gar...