APAC CEOs need to change management styles

BANGALORE, INDIA: A new global survey by Amdocs found that senior service provider executives believe industry CEOs in Asia Pacific (APAC) will need to change their management style in order to remain successful five years from now.

Here are the key findings of the study:

CEO of 2020, the chief innovator: The majority of the APAC executives who took part in the survey (67 percent) believe APAC CEOs in 2020 should be driven by a passion for innovation, and would provide the most value to the organization through good corporate governance (1st) followed immediately by innovation (2nd). Innovation ties in second place with financial governance, implying CEOs are expected to focus on keeping the numbers right. This is further reinforced by the fact that risk taking is ranked very low (9th).

Biggest barrier to success is inability to execute change: Inability to support or execute change will be the main barrier to APAC CEOs’ success in 2020 according to the survey, ahead of lack of clear strategy (2nd) and competition (3rd), and with lack of ideas a distant 10th.

C-suite is changing to support innovation: The study found that many service providers were adding new C-level roles in response to changes in areas of focus and new lines of business.

The most commonly added new C-level roles hold responsibility for customer experience (1st), innovation and commercial activities (tied 2nd). Executives predicted that by 2020, new C-level roles would also include big data and digital (tied 1st).

Professional services to help bridge 2020 innovation gaps: According to the study, APAC CEOs in 2020 are more likely to invest in cloud services (1st), customer experience (2nd) and big data analytics (3rd). With respondents having expressed concerns about managing change as a barrier to future success, it is unsurprising that the survey indicates APAC executives are considering a blended approach of both outsourcing and insourcing to drive these changes by 2020. For example, more than half are expected to outsource at least some support for cloud services (67%), big data analytics (56%) and digital services (56%).