As COVID-19 accelerates the transformation of business models for an increasingly digitalized future, 64 per cent of CIOs across the Middle East, Turkey, and Africa (META) are now prioritizing new apps to facilitate digital experiences for their customers and employees.
That’s according to a recent survey conducted by International Data Corporation (IDC) that questioned the region’s ICT leaders on their immediate priorities for dealing with the fallout from the pandemic.
The same survey also found that a sizeable majority of CIOs are working to increase tech-enabled collaboration and engagement across their organizations as they gear up for fundamental, longer-term changes to the way work is conducted.
“As digital transformation and its associated digital technologies become the norm, organizations are increasingly turning their attention to workplace transformation in a bid to futureproof their operations for the digital era,” says Jyoti Lalchandani, IDC’s group vice president and regional managing director for the META region.
“Organizations looking to gain a head start in the race towards the ‘Future of Work’ (FoW) must focus on three key components: talent management, the digital workspace, and the culture that brings digital transformation together.
“The main areas of FoW investment in META over the next 12-18 months will be team collaboration applications, unified communications, and digital workspaces,” continues Lalchandani.
“But talent management must not be overlooked. Indeed, for any organization looking to survive and thrive in these uncertain times, talent should be viewed as a source of competitive advantage. To this end, IDC expects that by 2022, 33 per cent of the world’s top 1,000 public companies will be utilizing AI-driven learning pathways as their primary approach to career development and succession planning.”
Strategies for facilitating the Future of Work will feature prominently during discussions at the upcoming digital IDC CIO Summit Series, which is set to run from August to September.
The annual event has served as a beacon of ICT thought leadership across META since 2008, and this year’s digital edition will traverse the region with a series of online events hosted under the theme ‘The Race to Reinvent: Connecting to Leaders to Empower Digital Transformation’.