89% of SG businesses struggle with data proliferation: Dell Technologies

Businesses are gathering more data than they can analyse; and needs more data than their current capacity.

About nine in 10 or 89% of Singapore businesses are being overwhelmed by the proliferation of data and are facing challenges in capturing, analysing and acting on data despite increased spending on IT, according to a report by Dell Technologies.

This is 8% higher than the businesses in Asia-Pacific and Japan, it said. Dell Technologies said data has become a burden to businesses due to barriers in Singapore, instead of offering a competitive advantage.

These barriers include the constant needing for more data than their current capabilities provide, outdated IT infrastructure, insufficient in-house data science skills, resistance to change from internal teams, and cyberattacks and data loss.

Dell Technologies noted that 72% of businesses in Singapore say they are gathering data faster than they can analyse and use, but 74% said that they constantly need more data than their current capacities.

IT spending continued to grow rapidly by 116% in the last three years, but 49% of Singapore businesses “still have not come close to realising their digital transformations,” it said.

“This ‘Data Paradox’ is driven by the volume, velocity, and variety of data overwhelming businesses, technology, people, and processes,” said Andy Sim, vice president and managing director, Singapore, Dell Technologies.

Sim added that the pandemic has created a sense of urgency, with Singapore findings showing “an acute awareness of the need for better data leadership.” Singapore also reports higher gains over both the global and Asia-Pacific in a deeper understanding of existing customers and target audiences and improving employee experience.

Despite this, many businesses have plans to improve their data infrastructure with 77% intending to deploy machine learning to automate the detection of anomaly data and 60% are planning to improve their data lakes.

“These plans point to top organisational goals for deploying a data-as-a-service (aaS) management strategy,” said Sim. “53% of Singapore businesses believe that with an aaS model, businesses would no longer be held back by outdated IT infrastructure.”

With aaS, 69% of Singapore businesses are eyeing to monetise data and 74% believe that this would allow companies to be more agile. A total of 44% are also doing data modelling to predict changes in customer demands amidst the pandemic.

Singapore is also leading in terms of data readiness with 55% of Singapore respondents have appointed chief data officer to the Board which is 23% higher than the Asia-Pacific and Japan average.

Dell Technologies recommended businesses to turn their data burden into an advantage by modernising their IT infrastructure, optimising data pipeline, and developing software to deliver “personalised, integrated experiences customers crave.”

The Digital Transformation Index involved more than 4,000 decision-makers from 45 countries.