The survey, undertaken from December 2024 to January 2025 among over 2,200 business professionals across the region, revealed that despite challenges, Asia-Pacific organisations are not holding back on their digital transformation plans, with 49 percent of them expected to considerably raise spending on digitalization.
Another 41 percent of respondents said their spending would go up, albeit slightly, while 8 percent predicted no change.
Indonesia and Singapore top Asia-Pacific’s digital spend intention league.
The survey’s finding tallies with analyst forecasts for the region, with India-based Meticulous Research estimating the Asia-Pacific digital transformation market could see a compound annual growth rate of over 23 percent between 2025 and 2032, hitting almost $1.2 trillion in value within seven years.
The Digital Transformation in Asia-Pacific report found that only 53 percent of companies currently fully utilize their data, highlighting untapped potential. This gap is particularly pressing as the region’s economy is largely driven by small and medium enterprises (SMEs), which make up 98 percent of enterprises.
The Reuters Plus APAC Survey 2024 identified main barriers to the advancement of digital transformation in Asia-Pacific organizations, including lack of internal information technology (IT) personnel and knowledge resources, lack of budget, lack of reliable and cooperative vendors/consultants, and lack of compatibility with existing systems.
Asia-Pacific businesses are aware of the need for business transformation but still have some way to go in capturing the benefits of digitization, research shows.
“Asia-Pacific companies could use digital transformation, with or without AI (artificial intelligence), to unlock new sources of business value from information that is already present in paper documents and other media but is often hard to extract because of a lack of appropriate technological tools and processes,” the report said.
May 06, 2025
