Technology investment to fast track global growth

New research of global CIOs launched by Expereo reveals that large global enterprises are moving ‘Faster to the Future’ with an increased focus on technology investment to fuel growth through global expansion.

The research of over 650 CIOs in global enterprises across Europe, US and APAC shows that half of global CIOs (51%) have secured increased technology budgets specifically to deliver growth and overcome existing challenges. Positive news for over a third (35%) who claim that their global business ambitions are constrained by legacy connectivity and management systems. It also identifies that organisations may be missing growth opportunities by failing to prioritise regions with some of the world’s fastest growing economies, due to perceived complexity and challenges to market entry.

Ben Elms, Chief Revenue Officer at Expereo comments; “As organisations focus on driving growth through global expansion, there are clearly complexities and challenges to overcome. The business-critical nature of connectivity in today’s world combined with an increasingly complex landscape – from security, regulation, skills and often challenging physical and geo-political infrastructure - mean it’s no easy task. However, it is achievable. Those that find a way to simplify, automate and scale their operations will be in the best position to reap the rewards and growth that this can deliver.”

The future is bright

According to the research, global CIOs describe their organisations’ attitudes to growth as optimistic (34%) and nearly a third (30%) as ambitious for the next 12 months. Over half (51%) of respondents claim global boards have already increased technology budgets to help drive this.

Security (61%), automation and analytics (59%), and 5G (58%) were identified as the top three areas set for increased tech investments globally in the next four months, closely followed by public/hybrid cloud (55%), Edge computing and IoT (both 54%), SD-WAN (45%) and SASE (51%).  CIOs claim that this investment will drive global growth by ensuring prioritisation of increased innovation (50%), increased automation (47%) and expansion into new markets (45%).

More markets, more problems…

Almost half (46%) of CIOs claimed that establishing and managing connectivity in new markets is the single most critical factor in ensuring successful global expansion, and 42% said that their board views global connectivity as a business asset critical to growth, but there are challenges that need to be overcome.

In fact, when asked specifically about the biggest challenge to delivering global growth in new regions, 37% said that effectively establishing connectivity in new regions is one of the major challenges in their role, 37% a major challenge for their organisation and 35% that their organisations’ business ambitions are constrained by legacy connectivity. Additional challenges identified were security environments (35%), skills and resource retention (35%), complicated physical and geopolitical infrastructure (33%), regulation and compliance (32%), and legacy systems and local knowledge (both 31%).

Perceived complexity an obstacle to global growth

Responses indicated that global enterprises may be failing to prioritise the fastest growing economies due to perceived complexities.

When asked about where their organisation saw the biggest opportunity for growth, North America and Europe dominated the top five. North America (37%) took the throne, followed by Western Europe (32%), Eastern Europe (26%), Northern Europe (25%) and South America (25%). Although South America appears in the top five, it also ranks as the most technologically challenging region to do business in regarding the local knowledge of providers (29%), agility (28%), robust connectivity (28%), scalability (27%), and performance visibility (28%). Interestingly it is also seen as a more challenging security environment than China - 27% compared to China’s 26%.

Given that the IMF’s most recent World Economic Outlook Report showed that growth projections in advanced economies was 1.4% for 2024, while emerging and developing markets was 4.2%, it is surprising that neither the Greater China Area or Central & South Asia appear in the top five priority regions for growth.  Each includes two of the fastest growing economies in the world - China and India. Perhaps this is due to both appearing consistently in the top five most challenging regions in terms of local technology provider knowledge (25% and 22% respectively), agility (26% and 24%), robust connectivity (25% and 23%), security (26% and 25%) and performance visibility (both 25%).

Ben Elms continues; “Realising the growth opportunities that global expansion can deliver will be critical to the world economy in these challenging times. CIOs need to completely focus on supercharging this strategic growth wherever they are doing business in the world; not grappling with unnecessary logistical and connectivity challenges. That’s what Expereo is here for. We simplify and automate this, allowing our customers to get on with business.”