Hong Kong businesses lag behind Singapore for digital transformation

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Despite the majority of Hong Kong respondents (83.3%) indicating that their finance teams are currently involved in driving digital transformation, about a third of Hong Kong finance leaders said they are not prepared to embrace digital transformation, the highest across the APAC region including Singapore, Australia, and New Zealand.

The report conducted by Workday, titled Finance Disrupted: The Impact of New Technologies on the Future of Finance, shows that 67% of businesses in Hong Kong who adopted new technologies are seeing positive results, a quarter has seen no change and 7.3% said that the implementation has resulted in negative changes.

The greatest benefits from digital transformation witnessed by businesses so far are increased customer satisfaction (80%), enhanced availability of data and insights (76.4%) and strengthened competitiveness in the market (67.3%)

“It is concerning that one in three finance teams leading digital transformation initiatives in Hong Kong feel unprepared. Especially as we have seen such positive results by those who have embraced new technology, both in terms of jobs and business results,” said Lee Thong Tan, regional financials lead, ASEAN & North Asia at Workday.

Other key findings from the report include:

• About 84% of Hong Kong finance leaders believe that rising digital transformation and automation will increase the number of jobs available for finance professionals locally.
• Soft skill such as risk management (23%), communications skills (20%) and analytical skills (18%) were cited as the top skills for finance professionals to have in the future.
• Overall, about half (53.9%) of those surveyed say that their finance teams have been subjected to digital transformation initiatives in the past 12 months.

Workday commissioned the three-part survey of 337 CFOs and financial leaders from large enterprises in Australia, New Zealand, Hong Kong and Singapore.