Business World
New story by Kshitiz Mohan, Brij Pahwa
17-Jul-2017

Adopting policies like demonetisation, GST are proving good for the government, at least in terms of perception. Latest report by KPMG suggests that 88 percent of Indian CEOs are confident about the economy. While the effect of demonetisation and GST can still not be calculated in numbers, perception wise, both the major policies are proving to be a hit among the Indian CEO community.

The report also gives leads in the favour of automation. According to the report, 80 percent CEOs see technological disruption as an opportunity for growth. While the numbers innocently favour advanced technology, the hidden fact is that advanced technology has a huge chunk of automation involved. Well then, will it be too far-fetched to say that today’s CEOs are favouring automation? It is hereby also important to point out that experts believe that automation is one of the primary reasons for layoffs. We leave that statement open for interpretation.

Well, automation and data analytics are selling. Indian CEOs are planning high investments towards data analytics tools over the next few years. Here is what the SBI chief, Arundhati Bhattacharya had to say, ‘Data and monetisation of analytics and insights will be the future currency of the business world and is likely to be more impactful than cryptocurrency’.

The report also put out more numbers to show that CEOs are all for disruption in various sectors/capabilities and to turn their organisations into future success cases.

‘It is clear that disruption has become a way of life for CEOs. Similar to last year, more than half the CEOs expect their organization to be transformed into a significantly different entity over the next three years’, Arun Kumar, Chairman and CEO, KPMG in India.

Here are the key findings of the KPMG survey:

•80 per cent of the CEOs plan to invest in cognitive technologies, including artificial intelligence and machine learning.

•75 per cent of the CEOs say that building greater trust among external stakeholders and customers is one of the top three priorities for their organizations.

•63 per cent of the CEOs plan to make substantial investments towards emerging technologies.

•57 per cent of the CEOs are pursuing customer focused transformation in their organizations.

•88 per cent of the CEOs are confident about the growth prospects of India over the next 3 years.

•56 per cent of the CEOs are pursuing innovation led transformation in their organizations.

•85 per cent of the CEOs plan to invest in Internet of Things over the next three years.

•61 per cent of the CEOs agree customer insights are hindered by lack of quality data.

BW take-

It cannot be proved if the CEOs really think that positively about the economy. These numbers might totally be based on their own hopes for doing better in future or due to political inclinations. Whichever reason one might apply, the numbers show us clearly (at least in the KPMG report) that the perception of the domestic economy is good.

(Source)