2021 was an exceptionally challenging year for businesses as well as society at large. Externally, organisations had to find ways to cope with challenges like Covid-19 and climate change, and internally the retention of talent became a major issue.

Analytics and big data continued to play a crucial role in developing innovative solutions to all these challenges.

Digital transformation was already on the enterprise agenda, but the structural changes wrought by the pandemic forced an acceleration of the process. The shift to work-from-home puts additional stress on corporate IT, which had to greatly improve reliable connectivity, available bandwidth and network security.

At the start of 2022, the world of business continues to face some serious unknowns. Recovery from the pandemic has been patchy so far and the latest variant, omicron, threatens to once again delay the return to normal. The accelerating impact of climate change means we can expect more extreme weather events, and manpower issues will continue to worry HR leaders.

The Great Resignation due to changing expectations

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The work-from-home phenomenon has changed expectations of what working conditions and prospects should offer – and this in turn has contributed to the Great Resignation.

A survey by Mercer showed that 69% of the respondents in Singapore reported an increase in turnover in the first half of 2021 compared to the same period the previous year. Most of the respondents in Malaysia, Indonesia, Philippines and Thailand observed a higher staff turnover rate, especially at the mid-career level, compared to previous years.

However, the steps enterprises are taking to respond to the challenges of 2021 bode well for the resilience of the sector. Change is a constant in both the way we work and the way we want to work, and the key to the innovative solutions that will emerge in 2022 will be curiosity.

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As companies adjust their hiring practices to cope with this new situation and address evolving business challenges, it becomes apparent that curiosity is a desirable skill in managers and employees.

The SAS Curiosity@Work survey found that 72% of managers globally consider curiosity a highly valuable trait, and a majority see it as a critical skill for fostering digital transformation, innovation and digital insights.

The survey findings show that in order to succeed in the next three years, managers in Singapore need employees with technical skills in artificial intelligence (65%) and data analysis (61%), and personal attributes like problem-solving (65%) and creative thinking (64%).

They believe it is valuable for employees to have this trait when innovating on new solutions (61%), understanding the hearts and minds of customers (51%), tackling complex problems (50%) and analysing data (49%).

It is clear that Singapore managers see the interconnectedness of curiosity and data expertise and digital integration. These are the factors that can help shape a new world of work, satisfying younger employees’ expectations and delivering innovative products and solutions that would be impossible to imagine under the old system.

Managing the curious customer

2021 has shone a fierce light on the importance of the customer experience. Digital transformation has played a major role in helping organisations understand and respond to their customers’ behaviour, but the truth is, it has not yet gone far enough.

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Those companies that fell behind in transforming themselves have been shown up, and even those that did transform need to reimagine the process. The pandemic dramatically and rapidly changed customer expectations and actions, and some players in sectors like finance and government have found their solutions were inadequate.

Customer behaviour is still unstable, given the ecosystem volatility, and will likely remain so until Q2 2022. Other sectors that are rebuilding their customer experience solutions include hospitality and travel, retail and logistics. Analytics will play a more vital role than ever in helping organisations define and meet their customers’ needs.

Technology holds the answer

Curiosity played a significant role in 2021’s technological advances. It led to brilliant scientists exploring new ways of developing vaccines, and the world went from seeing no end to the pandemic in 2020, to delivering six or seven billion doses of vaccine in 2021.

This was only possible for governments that had reached a sufficient stage of digital transformation, and the vaccine roll-outs would not have been possible without the advantages of the cloud – an eye-opener for business.

The continuing move to the cloud in 2022 will see manufacturing recover and grow at an exponential rate, powered by cloud applications and analytics that will help semi-conductor companies, for example, address quality issues and unplug supply chain blockages.

Technology will also play a huge role in tackling the climate crisis, at many different levels.  The finance and public sectors, for example, will apply analytics to disaster modelling. Case in point: Jakarta is currently developing a smart city solution that will help with flood prediction.

AI and machine learning will find more and more applications, but to really derive their value it will be necessary to return to core analytics principles.  The huge changes in customer behaviour driven by the pressures of the pandemic mean insights based on earlier data are likely no longer valid, and data analysts must look at shorter, more intense periods of study and anticipate rapid statistical changes.

Curiosity, the desirable trait

Curiosity is an obvious driver for the solutions that will be developed in 2022, addressing both external and internal challenges.

Encouraging employees to think out of the box and find fresh applications for analytics will lead to unexpected positive results for all aspects of business. The good news is that many companies in Singapore have formally included curiosity, or similar traits, in employee performance review criteria (71%), company training and development (67%), promotion and advancement decisions (62%), and hiring criteria (60%).

The arrival of the omicron variant is clearly a setback to global recovery, but the learnings acquired by businesses in 2021 provide a solid basis for confidence that the world will be able to meet the challenges of 2022. The enterprises that not only survive but flourish, will be those that develop and implement next-generation digital transformation, based on advanced analytics principles and inspired by curiosity.

Deepak Ramanathan is the vice president for Global Technology Practice at SAS Institute

Photo: <a href="https://unsplash.com/photos/YG8rZ323UsU">Gary Butterfield/Unsplash</a>

Curiosity: A game changer for 2022

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