CXOInsights by CXOCIETY

Oxford Languages define identity as the fact of being a person or thing. According to the World Bank ID4D data , over a billion people around the world do not have an official proof of identity. In Asia-Pacific up to 20% of the population lacks an ID.  Even as governments race to implement national digital identities, private sector service providers like banks or insurance are not always able to...

Decades ago, while working for a Japanese company, I read about the idea of lifetime employment. At the time I was aware of career professionals in tech companies. For instance, I would meet with career IBMers – professionals who have worked for only one company, IBM, for majority of their career.  In the case of Japan, lifetime employment was the practice of hiring workers directly out of school...

In a Forrester study commissioned by CINNOX, only 16% of all surveyed customers recently experienced interactions that exceeded their expectations. It indicates that although organisations are committed to becoming more customer-focused, they have insufficient understanding of customers’ expectations and are failing to deliver quality experiences.  In more developed markets like Hong Kong and Sing...

Andrew Lerner, VP analyst for Gartner noted the ton of hype lately over “ NaaS ” (Network as a Service). Enterprises generally like the notion of a flexible, consumption-based networking model regardless of user or application location (very cloud-like).  He cautioned that not everything labelled NaaS is the real thing. “We’ve seen things marketed as NaaS that range from (basically) hardware leasi...

According to Forrester, 44% of purchase influencers in Asia Pacific consider improving customer experience (CX) as one of their top priorities over the next 12 months.  Even a minor improvement to a brand’s customer experience quality can add revenue by reducing customer churn and lowering the cost of customer acquisition. In my opinion, one of the 2022 Forrester predictions that stands out is the...

Environmental, social, and corporate governance is an approach to evaluating the extent to which a corporation works on behalf of social goals that go beyond the role of a corporation to maximize profits on behalf of the corporation's shareholders. In recent years, climate change has elevated the visibility of ESG initiatives. While the Board has traditionally had oversight over ESG, increasi...

At a recent FutureCISO Breakfast briefing, this one on the topic of “ Looming cyberthreats in 2022 – Tipping the scale in your favour ”, one of the areas covered was the different types of attacks used to get the target to click on a link.  During the panel discussion, it was acknowledged that cybercriminals are employing as many tactics as they can to get the intended target to fall prey to the a...

The value of the renewable energy market is set to grow from $880 billion to nearly $2 trillion by 2030. Artificial intelligence (AI) is having transformative effect across energy and utilities. It is used to forecast demand and manage the distribution of resources, to ensure that power is available at the time and place it's needed with a minimum of waste. This is particularly important in t...

Large companies typically have subsidiary businesses that sell to each other. The idea is to build capability to deliver a vertical stack of services and expertise, and essentially, keep the money in the group. The problem is that most subsidiary businesses have enough independence to decide on what tools and technologies they can use to support their business. Sister companies become just another...

The travel industry has been at the hard hit by the pandemic. But with markets around the region and globally beginning to re-open to travellers, perhaps we are nearing the light at the end of the tunnel for the industry. According to Deloitte’s 2022 travel outlook , corporate travel demand should improve significantly when workers return to offices in greater numbers, enabling more client visits....

CIOs have traditionally overseen the design, development, and management of IT systems for the internal use of the CIO’s company. But as businesses become more technology-led, the CIO is being brought into the development of solutions that can be sold and marketed to other companies. In a survey of CIOs by IDC, 58% says they proactively identify business needs and opportunities, up from 28% the ye...

Insurance is a competitive landscape, more so these days as regulation evolve, customers become demanding and picky with what products they need and how much they are willing to pay for. The entry of insurtech has also opened new avenues for insurers to market products, in some cases, create totally new offerings in new locations, not possible with the conventional model for marketing insurance. I...

Respondents to Deloitte’s fourth-quarter 2021 “CFO Signals” survey revealed the key challenges facing CFOs and finance leaders include attracting and retaining talent, and wage inflation, along with strategy execution and the pace of technology developments and innovation, as the internal risks that worry CFOs most.  Further, the survey listed inflation, supply chain challenges, potential policy a...

Finance leaders are increasingly focused on digital transformation initiatives despite having to deal with other pressing issues like revenue, profitability, skills shortage during these periods of continuing uncertainty. Granted we’ve had two years to adjust to the new ways of doing business and working, uncertainties are always more pronounced during times of heightened crisis – as when there is...

According to John F. Kennedy, the 35th U.S. president, crisis when written Chinese comprises two brush strokes: one representing danger and the other opportunity. The past two years have proven that humans will adapt to the changes to survive, and in many cases thrive. Businesses that refuse to adapt will naturally suffer the most and longest during the crisis. Those able to pivot quickly will rea...

For years, information security has been floating in the Top 10 IT strategies of many organisations. In the last 3-5 years, the frequency, tenacity and boldness of cyber attacks have moved cybsercurity not only to the top of the CIO’s priority list, but to the C-suite and Board as well – becoming in many cases, part of the business agenda. In the US, for example, the cybersecurity community are pu...

Death and taxes are said to be life’s only two certainties. As organisations continue their digital transformation journey, you can add the certainty of an expanding cyber threat landscape and the unrelenting barrage of attacks that come with it.  Peter Firstbrook, Gartner research vice president, says “The pandemic accelerated hybrid work and the shift to the cloud, challenging CISOs to secure an...

In peace times or periods of crisis, people need to eat. The unfortunate reality is that left to its own devices, nature cannot support the world’s demand for food. The challenge today is how to combine people, process, and technology to help create sustainable practices that are also friendly to the environment. Aquaculture or fish farming involves interventions in the rearing process to enhance...

Incident response is an organized approach to addressing and managing the aftermath of a security breach or cyberattack. It is sometimes referred to as an IT incident, computer incident or security incident. The goal is to handle the situation in a way that limits damage and reduces recovery time and costs. It can be argued that the dramatic increase in cyberattacks in recent years, the variety, n...

Infrastructure is changing as enterprises accelerate digital transformation. In a cloud-first and increasingly automated world, infrastructure, and operations (I&O) leaders must rethink how infrastructures are utilized and managed.  “As cloud computing continues to grow, application portfolios are becoming more diverse and more hybrid,” says Thomas Bittman, Distinguished VP Analyst at Gartner....

Organisations pursuing a digital strategy will, at some point in the journey, need to address the issue of whether current, aka legacy systems and processes, are getting in the way of transformation journeys.  Arguably one of the more important considerations of any modernisation, be it infrastructure, applications, or processes is ensuring data remains protected and secured regardless of the stra...

One of the outcomes of the pandemic is accelerated adoption of cloud. But whereas cloud was first thought of as a mid to long-term strategy that will take organisations time to adopt – because organisations in Asia have a lot of legacy systems that are simply too complicated to move – statewide restrictions on mobility have forced companies to move up a notch their cloud strategies. And as the dus...

The pandemic has catapulted security once more to the top of IT and executive leadership priorities, even the Board. However, at issue for the CIO and CISO is getting management buy-in when it comes to what technologies to acquire, how to integrate these into existing security strategies, the challenges in the journey to integration, and how to ensure that disruptions are kept to a minimum. Becaus...

A McKinsey study prior to the COVID-19 pandemic suggested that while the idea of automating processes has been in the minds of leadership even before 2020, for the most part those that had serious inclinations went so far as to do pilot trials of one or more business functions.  The mobility restrictions induced by the pandemic and the imperative to move on may be just the impetus to trigger a mor...

Milind Govekar , distinguished vice president at Gartner, says the technological and organisational silos of application development, automation, integration, and governance will become obsolete. Application development instead will shift to assembly and integration. Gartner predicts that by 2025, 70% of new applications developed by organizations will use low-code or no-code technologies, up from...