SINGAPORE – The rapid migration to digital technologies driven by the pandemic has done little for digital experience (DX) maturity in the ASEAN region, according to a new report, developed by Sitecore, Ecosystm and AKQA.
To understand the digital experience maturity levels of businesses in the region, Ecosystm conducted a study across Asia Pacific with 600 businesses, including the 400 businesses in ASEAN (Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia and Thailand) using Sitecore’s Digital Experience Maturity Model (DXMM) assessment. The DXMM assessed organisations’ current capabilities on a five-stage digital index – ranging from organisations that are at the beginning of their digital experience journeys to those that set the benchmark that other businesses aim to achieve.
The findings illustrate digital adoption efforts in the region with many bright spots, including more investments in building experiences that are not only easy and effective but also memorable to earn the loyalty of customers. Businesses also show a greater propensity to invest in data driven decision-making, optimisation, and marketing technology (martech) to improve their DX maturity levels.
Of the factors contributing to digital maturity, businesses in the region are strongest in driving robust executive vision and organisational strategy; and in their people and process strategies. However, these efforts are often slowed down by gaps in their marketing technology stack. With only 56% of businesses having integrated their marketing technology stack, and just 50% supporting their martech stack with sophisticated optimisation—there is an opportunity to do more.
“Southeast Asia will be home to 310 million digital consumers by the end of this year, and their readiness to use technology presents tremendous opportunities for businesses. We created the DXMM assessment for organisations to not only understand their own digital maturity levels but also to benchmark themselves against their competitors and adequately prepare for emerging trends and potential disruptions,” said Nick Boyle, Vice President, Asia, Sitecore.
“Organisations in the region are at different stages of digital maturity and it’s crucial to provide them with a benchmark industry standard as well as best practices. We hope that by sharing the right data and actionable insights, businesses are able to carve out a roadmap to increase their own digital experience maturity,” said Tim Sheedy, Principal Advisor, Ecosystm.
“As the report identifies, companies need to align their digital experiences around their customer needs. Companies who do this well are going further to recognise that customers don’t segment their view of the business by channel, so when considering customer journeys, it’s important to look at the full picture of how your customers are engaging with your business beyond just digital touchpoints. It’s also not a once and done exercise. Strong experience-focused businesses continue to learn and evolve their views of the customer journey as they strive to remove pain points across touchpoints and better engage their customers,” said Eric Orton, Executive Technology Director AKQA, ANZ.
