Thailand has been ranked at the bottom of nine Asia-Pacific markets for digital agility, based on a study commissioned by Workday, a provider of enterprise cloud applications.
The ranking was based on the IDC-Workday Digital Agility Index Asia-Pacific 2022 report, which was conducted in association with global market research firm IDC.
The study determines the state of digital agility among Asia-Pacific organisations by assessing four dimensions: organisation and culture, people, processes and technology.
More than 800 senior human resources (HR), IT and finance leaders were surveyed across nine markets in the region from December 2021 to February this year.
Thailand slipped one position from its 2020 ranking to ninth, overtaken by Indonesia, which climbed to eighth.
The report shows only 9% of organisations in Thailand are at the advanced stages of digital agility.
It indicated that 91% of organisations surveyed in Thailand are still ageing in terms of digital agility, falling into the slow or tactical stages of digital agility maturity.
The survey found that a lack of suitable and skilled talent in talent acquisition and actively retaining them were the top two challenges cited by Thai organisations in pursuing digital transformation.
According to the report, the lack of skilled talent to carry out digital transformation initiatives is a key challenge to be addressed in Thailand.
Some 80% of Thai HR leaders said they have challenges in identifying the right skills needed to support evolving business requirements.
Only 7% of organisations have a holistic talent management strategy in place with employee engagement and data analytics to identify training needs and growth areas, which highlights the importance of closing the talent gaps within their workforce.
Challenges cited by IT leaders include a lack of consistent integration across systems which impacts decision making (40%) and difficulty in choosing the right technology solutions that can help drive business agility (70%).
Only 3% said they manage costs by using data-driven cost optimisation that leverages enterprise-wide and ecosystem data.
In Asia Pacific, Australia climbed two positions to first place, followed by Singapore and New Zealand. The report said organisations in Australia had achieved the greatest progress in terms of digital transformation efforts.
From a regional perspective, only 38% of organisations surveyed are in the advanced stages of digital agility. But progress is being made overall, as this figure reflects an 18-percentage-point increase when compared to 2020.
"While there is considerable progress with more organisations making the leap to become agility leaders, the fact that the majority of organisations within Asia Pacific are still lagging creates an opportunity to help organisations digitally accelerate," said Sandeep Sharma, president for Asia at Workday.
