Companies are hurrying to leverage digital technologies to boost efficiency and productivity while reducing costs and challenges after the pandemic.

In 2019, nearly US$380 billion was spent in the Asia-Pacific region alone on technologies and services intended to promote the digital transformation of business practices, products and organizations, according to market researcher IDC. The five-year compound growth rate from 2017 to 2022 is expected to reach 17.4 percent per year.

“The pandemic has promoted companies to be digitally resilient to more uncertainty before a global recovery. Many companies were forced to walk out of the comfort zone,” said Peter Herweck, executive vice president of Industrial Automation at Schneider Electric.

“Companies’ recognition of digital transformation is increasing greatly due to the pandemic. We see strong demand in China as most companies here now prioritize increasing efficiency and resilience by way of digital transformation,” said Pang Xingjian, vice president of Industry Automation China at Schneider Electric.

Small and medium-sized enterprises, which are more agile, can implement digital transformation better and faster, say insiders.

“For SMEs, they should find the most critical need and transform step by step. It’s a long process and cannot be completed in one step,” Pang said.

“For example, Schneider Electric has 23 factories in China and their digital transformation never ends. Every year, we will allocate special money to spend on digital transformation,” Pang added.