DOHA: In the rapidly changing economic environment, businesses all around the world, including Qatar, need leaders who understand the significance of innovation and technology, noted a latest study by leading global audit and advisory firm KPMG International.
The ‘2016 Global Transformation Study’ said, while most business leaders understand the importance of investing in continual business transformation. Business leaders may feel the same way in Qatar.
The study, which surveyed more than 1,600 executives from multinational companies in 16 countries, found that 96 percent of organisations are in the midst of business transformation planning or execution, with 66 percent of them having started or completed a transformation program in the past two years. At the same time, less than half (47 percent) of business leaders say they can realise sustainable value from transformation.
“The level of transformation activity happening globally appears to be similar in Qatar,” said Duncan Mackay (pictured), Partner and Transformation Leader, at KPMG in Qatar. “Our experience with business leaders in the country highlights that there are many business improvement and change programmes in progress or being planned. The need to focus on transformation in Qatar has been brought into sharp focus because of the budget dependency on the oil price across many sectors. However, while executives often realise the need to transform, they can struggle to harness the capability of their diverse workforce, to transform quickly and to effectively use leading technology to create business value.” Mackay added: “Qatar can learn lessons from other countries where success is being driven from a deep understanding of customer behavior, and harnessing of disruptive technologies to reshape the business model.”
Many of these concerns are rooted in organisations’ failure to deeply understand customers or convert those insights into differentiating innovation in a timely manner. “Around the world, many companies are still not truly oriented around their customers’ expectations,” said Mackay.
“However, in Qatar, there is an exceptionally diverse customer base, making it difficult for businesses to fully understand their target market. Capturing the right ‘digital data’ helps businesses to truly understand their customers’ needs when planning and executing business transformation activity.”
The Peninsula
