Forrester Unveils 2016 Predictions For Business Leaders In Asia Pacific

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CIOs, CMOs, and customer experience leaders will rally to achieve customer-obsessed growth by adopting human-centered design and data analytics to deliver exceptional experiences, according to Forrester Research, Inc., which today unveiled its 2016 predictions for Asia Pacific business leaders.

“2016 will be a pivotal year for companies adapting to digitally savvy and empowered customers. Companies moving along the age of the customer path will begin to thrive, while laggards will begin the slow descent to failure,” said Dane Anderson, Vice President, Research Director and Region Manager for Asia Pacific, Forrester Research. “Strong leadership is essential, and collaboration is necessary between CMOs, who must step up and lead customer experience efforts, and CIOs, who must accelerate the business technology agenda.”

For 2016, Forrester’s top predictions and their implications for Asia Pacific are:

For Marketing & Strategy (CMOs)

• Digital marketers will embrace eCommerce initiatives as core responsibilities. Marketing professionals will be pressured to deliver measurable business outcomes, driving the need to formalize the customer's path from digital marketing engagement to purchase. This is especially apparent in China where the link between social media and eCommerce is much stronger.
• Mobile innovations will fuel opportunities for improved customer experiences. Mobile services are expanding into office service delivery — online to offline (O2O) — and this will continue into 2016 as customers demand a more seamless mobile-first and fully digital experience. This is also evident in the mobile payments space as digital wallets gain traction across the region, with players like Alipay and WeChat in China, as well as tech giants Samsung and Apple, fighting for a larger share of the consumer’s wallet and expanding their ecosystem of brick-and-mortar merchants.

For Business Technology (CIOs)

• CIOs will embrace design thinking. Facing pressure to ensure that they are adopting a business technology (BT) agenda to win, serve, and retain customers, CIOs will need to show empathy for customers and understand how BT will create effective and compelling customer experiences.
• New platforms and services will flourish. Technology leaders like China’s Baidu, Alibaba, and Tencent (BAT), as well as digital software-as-a-service startups, will roll out new platforms, mostly cloud-based, that create opportunities for CIOs and the BT agenda.

For CX Leaders

• Asia Pacific firms will exploit MNCs’ localization failures to gain market share. International companies that do not seek to localize their CX initiatives will face increased competitive pressure from Asia Pacific-based companies, who will recognize the need to improve their customer experience across all customer touchpoints.
• Human-centered design methods will fuel CX excellence. More companies in Asia Pacific are realizing the need to place the customer at the center of their businesses and organize their service design around them.

About Forrester Research

Forrester Research (Nasdaq: FORR) is one of the most influential research and advisory firms in the world. We work with business and technology leaders to develop customer-obsessed strategies that drive growth. Forrester’s unique insights are grounded in annual surveys of more than 500,000 consumers and business leaders worldwide, rigorous and objective methodologies, and the shared wisdom of our most innovative clients. Through proprietary research, data, custom consulting, exclusive executive peer groups, and events, the Forrester experience is about a singular and powerful purpose: to challenge the thinking of our clients to help them lead change in their organizations.