Big Data and Analytics readiness: APAC 'mature'

Organisations across the Asia Pacific (excluding Japan) region are fast progressing their Big Data and Analytics readiness, with analyst firm IDC reporting a five-fold increase of APAC organisations reaching more mature stages.

According to IDC, APAC organisations are fast maturing in their capabilities to leverage 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, organisations begun to realise the business value of their BDA investment, and some created new product and services to bring in new revenue streams,” explains Qiao Li, senior market analyst, Big Data and Analytics Research.

However, more than 65% of organisations in the region remain at the first two stages and take an ad hoc or opportunistic approach, says Li.

“This majority has just started their BDA journey, learning and experimenting BDA technologies to address business challenges.”

According to IDC, data-rich industries like financial services, communications and media, and services (including internet companies) are leading in cross-divisional adoption and capitalisation 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 organisations in five dimensions – vision, data, technology, people and process. Vision appears to be the most mature, IDC says.

Organisations are setting up BDA strategies, but many have yet to implement solutions and build up internal capabilities to operationalise data-driven processes. IDC recommends for organisations to take a balanced approach when investing in BDA dimensions.

According to IDC, organisations 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 centralised 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 organisations,” says Chwee Chua, AVP, Analytics, Big Data and Cognitive Systems research in IDC Asia/Pacific.

“Organisations 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," Chua says.