Using automation to hasten Malaysia’s economic recovery

Only 19 percent of Malaysian respondents believe they have appropriate digital abilities to accomplish their job, according to a recent PricewaterhouseCoopers report. This is worsened by rising rates of skill-related underemployment (35.8%) and a scarcity of local tech talent — only 10% of Malaysia’s population are skilled digital workers, with the rest imported.

This gap is also affecting businesses’ ability to adopt crucial technology required to progress their operations and adapt to a digital age. More than 85% of organisations in the Asia-Pacific region struggled to gain agility from cloud adoption last year, according to International Data Corp, due to constraints such as a lack of capabilities to support the journey.

Skilled migration as a talent source is one lever we currently cannot pull as international travel bans are in place for many countries and may continue for the foreseeable future. In response to these challenges, organisations are turning to emerging technologies to remain competitive, ensure business continuity, and help address talent needs. Automation is one such technology that is shaking up the business landscape.

While automation has shown great potential, research indicates that Malaysians are increasingly apprehensive of it, with 71% fearing their jobs might be at risk with the rise of such technology — a sharp 34% increase from the previous year. These fears add to ongoing concerns around job opportunities and security in the pandemic, painting a bleak picture of economic recovery.

The government has sought to address these concerns with more than RM100 million invested in its MyDigitalWorkForce Work in Tech initiative to upskill and reskill employees.

In parallel, the emphasis has been placed on how automation will accelerate Malaysia’s digital economy and its role in enabling business continuity, recovery, and resilience for every enterprise. Automation frees employees to focus on higher value tasks, enabling them to augment their skillsets with emerging capabilities. At the same time, it propels organisations to drive more strategic competencies across their business, that grant them an economic advantage over their competitors.

Business executives must aim to proactively upskill their personnel as well as modernise their tech infrastructure if they want to reap the benefits and speed of automation. This will allow businesses to take a holistic approach to transformation, encompassing people, processes, and technology, and position themselves for the future.

Trainocate, an authorised learning partner for technology multinational companies and authorised training partner for Nutanix, recommends the same for organisations in Malaysia. Ruby Kaur, country manager of Malaysia shares: “The pandemic has boosted transformation and automation efforts across industries in Malaysia. Many organisations are now transitioning from antiquated and traditional IT infrastructures to hybrid or multi-cloud environments.”

“However, these changes come alongside an urgency for organisations to upskill their existing IT workforce when adopting fast-growing technologies. Automation will continue to trend upward in the pandemic, and the World Economic Forum (WEF) forecasts that over 97 million new roles will be generated as a result — business leaders will need to push for automation, or risk falling behind.”

Manual, labour-intensive, traditional IT blocks productivity and impacts business ability to respond in an agile manner to changing environments. In fact, across the globe, automation is seeing an increase in uptake in the shift to a more on-demand IT-as-a-Service model.. In fact, according to Nutanix’s recent Enterprise Cloud Index, 31% of respondents saw automation as a top priority for the next 12 to 18 months. Human error is reduced and productivity is raised by decreasing human interaction in processes such as creating user environments, managing database lifecycles, and deploying cloud workloads. IT teams’ scarce digital talents can then be focused on strategic tasks that shift the needle for businesses.

In light of the rapid change that has been accelerated in response to the pandemic, businesses are now reviewing their digital transformation plans and reassessing how strategic IT investments can drive business growth. Organisations must continue to tackle challenges with innovation and optimise business processes, and automation is a key factor in this.

Whether it be to bridge the digital skills gap and grow the local tech talent pool, save costs, or realise more long-term business benefits, there are plenty of reasons for Malaysia’s enterprises to consider automation across their IT environments.