As the world adopts digital transformation, more and more data are generated in every transaction. This amount of data now overwhelms organizations in the Asia Pacific (APAC) region including Japan, according to the latest research by Forrester Consulting commissioned by Dell Technologies.

Data is supposed to be the new currency, which is leveraged to drive business growth and used for decision-making processes. But the study points to a data skills gap, data silos, manual processes, business silos, and data privacy and security weaknesses, as reasons organizations consider data as a burden.

Two-thirds of respondents (Global: 66%, APJ: 67%) say their business is data-driven and state “data is the lifeblood of their organization.” But only a little over a fifth (Global: 21%, APJ: 21%) testify to treating data as capital and prioritizing its use across the business.

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“At a time when businesses are under immense pressure to embrace digital transformation to accelerate customer service, they need to juggle getting more data in, as well as better mining the data that they have,” said Amit Midha, president, Asia Pacific & Japan and Global Digital Cities, Dell Technologies. “Particularly now, with 44% globally and in APJ saying the pandemic significantly increased the amount of data they need to collect, store, and analyze. Becoming a data-driven business is a journey, and they’ll need guides to help them along the way.”

Data as currency to decision-making

Forrester Consulting conducted a survey of more than 4,000 decision-makers from 45 countries globally including 1000 respondents from nine countries across APJ (Australia, India, Indonesia, Japan, New Zealand, Singapore, South Korea, Thailand, and Vietnam), on behalf of Dell Technologies.

The study builds on the Dell Technologies Digital Transformation Index research, which assesses the digital maturity of businesses around the globe. The new Digital Transformation Index revealed that “data overload/unable to extract insights from data” was the third-highest global ranking barrier to transformation. The APJ region comes in third place up from 11th place in 2016 where it was in 12th place.

The research also found that it was a case of wanting more what they can handle. As data provide insights that help in making business decisions, 73% of respondents in APJ (slightly higher than the global figure of 70%) said they are gathering data faster than they can analyze and use. And yet, the study found 69% in the region (also slightly higher than the global future of 67%) say they constantly need more data than their current capabilities provide.

Optimizing data

Based on the research, this data overload could be just birth pains on what organizations meant to do with the new currency. The study found that 67% of respondents in APJ (slightly higher in the global figure of 66%) plan to leverage technologies such as machine learning to automate how they detect anomaly data. About 57% globally and in APJ are looking to move to a data-as-a-service model and Global: 52%, APJ: 47% are planning to look deeper into the performance stack to rearchitect how they process and use data in the next 1-3 years.

Dell Technologies suggests that organizations modernize their IT infrastructure “so it meets data where it lives, at the edge.” This incorporates bringing businesses’ infrastructure and applications closer to where data needs to be captured, analyzed, and acted on — while avoiding data sprawl, by maintaining a consistent multi-cloud operating model. The technology giant also recommends that companies optimize data pipelines, “so data can flow freely and securely while being augmented by AI/ML.” Lastly, companies must develop software to deliver the personalized, integrated experiences customers crave.