It’s the perennial challenge for business leaders across Southeast Asia: How do we meet short-term goals while implementing long-term transformation? One that’s sustainable in every sense of the word, not just for the business, but also for employees, the wider community and society at large, in terms of environmental benefits.

The pressure to deliver immediate results, often for meeting quarterly targets, can hinder investments in initiatives that may take time to show returns, namely sustainability goals. Yet it’s an imperative that must be met. While businesses need to thrive in the short term, they must survive for the long term. And that appears to be more strongly recognized in Asia-Pacific (APAC). A recent survey found 53% of APAC CEOs (14% more than global CEOs) believed their current business models would not survive within the next decade. 

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CEOs in our region clearly recognize the need to ensure long-term, sustainable transformation. Based on my own experiences of speaking to and dealing with organizations in Southeast Asia, there are a few key learnings here. 

Overcoming challenges

Large-scale transformation projects take time and are, for the most part, technology-enabled. In an industry that’s constantly evolving and changing, sometimes in a matter of weeks, how do you ensure that what you’re implementing now won’t be redundant in the near future? And how do you quantify what success looks like in the long term? Measuring outcomes is vital to being able to sell change internally to stakeholders. But often, leaders, particularly those in technology, can struggle to articulate that.

Effective leadership and change management both play a critical role in managing expectations. Clear communication of your organization’s vision and strategy will help align short-term actions with broader transformational objectives. Our own transformation experience, coupled with advising our clients helped identify three critical enablers of managing this balance:

Experience first, not users

NTT’s transformation taught us to create experiences, enabled by technology, as opposed to a people-first mentality. Thinking about experiences removes the focus on people-driven, manual processes. Instead, a technology mindset, utilizing next-generation tech such as artificial intelligence (AI), automation and machine learning for example, better enables those experiences. It also helps upskill people for more rewarding and effective outcomes. 

An experience-led approach helps overcome two core challenges. First, it can remove a siloed approach by creating a digital workplace where everything is virtualized and global. As part of our own transformation efforts, we focused on the employee experience by making it easier to adopt and consume our technology products. We also simplified entry points to make tools intuitive and extremely easy to use. This has helped increase productivity significantly.

Building transformation around experiences can also help drive more sustainable practices and goals across the organization. For example, as part of workplace transformation efforts, smart office systems can detect occupancy and adjust the surroundings accordingly. This can help reduce the environmental footprint, as well as bring down energy usage. 

The impact can be significant. NTT’s 2022-2023 Networking Report found that organizations that have aligned their network strategy with their business needs are almost three times as likely to reduce their environmental footprint than those that have not.  

Develop a partner strategy

A strategic partner is worth their weight in gold when embarking on long-term, sustainable transformation. And more specifically, a services partner over a pure-play technology provider. With deeper consulting insights, a services partner brings a holistic view across the business. They can also help to break down longer-term transformation projects into bite-sized chunks, where short-term wins can be reported back to senior stakeholders. At the same time, they can help keep your organization on track with technological changes occurring over the long term.

When it comes to creating sustainable long-term value, a trusted partner can also help you optimize your IT infrastructure for energy efficiency. For example, optimizing data centre operations, as well as implementing virtualization technologies to reduce overall energy consumption and resource usage.

As part of NTT’s transformation, we used a co-innovation process to create differentiation; something we implemented not just for ourselves but also through leveraging strategic alliances to maximize our collective strength to drive business outcomes for our clients.

For example, as part of our transformation, a dedicated team, with people from NTT and our partners, helped to innovate, standardize and automate our core HR and finance processes. This process happened in just seven months, creating short-term wins with the collaboration of two external service providers. It not only brought greater operational and sustainability efficiencies into our business but also helped improve our client and employee experience significantly. Importantly, we kept a laser-sharp focus on our long-term goals.

Full stack and integrated

Effective digital leadership over time is vastly improved by implementing a technology stack ‘as one offering. Ensuring a unified platform and experience, across a variety of technologies to bring together all facets of the business will drive successful transformation outcomes.

There are countless technology companies across the world, but not many are able to offer a full stack of solutions and services that span all the transformation requirements of a business. And the longer-term benefits of this approach are significant. Not only does it ensure a seamless flow of information across multiple systems, but it can help your organization drive real-time insights to enable better decision-making. This in turn will help boost productivity and of course, greater experiences. 

Working with a services partner offering full-stack capabilities enables the integration of systems and the optimization of data flows. This can lead to more efficient data management, reduced redundancy, and streamlined processes, contributing to lower energy consumption and a smaller environmental footprint.

Change management

Lastly, managing all the above changes well is crucial in addressing the human and organizational aspects of the transformation. This ensures people are prepared, engaged, and empowered to adapt to new technologies and ways of working. 

But in the long term, sustainable transformation must also be enabled by direction and leadership from the top. Clear and transparent communication helps people understand the rationale for the transformation, its goals, and the expected impact on their roles. This will reduce uncertainty and foster a sense of trust in the organization’s leadership as short-term milestones are acknowledged as part of a longer-term vision.

The article titled “Balancing sustainable, long-term transformation with short-term goals” is authored by Kim Meng Png, Chief Executive Officer, NTT Ltd. Singapore

About the author

Png Kim Meng is currently the CEO of NTT Ltd. Singapore and CEO designate for NTT DATA Singapore Inc. He will be assuming the role of CEO of NTT DATA Singapore Inc. on 1 st April 2024. He will be responsible for the company’s overall strategic development and Profit & Loss of the combined organisation. NTT DATA Inc. will be formed by the merger of NTT DATA group of companies and NTT Ltd. operating in Singapore. His prior appointment was CEO, ASEAN sub-region of NTT Ltd. on 1 October 2019. Incorporated on 1 July 2019, NTT Ltd. brought together 31 businesses, including Dimension Data, NTT Communications and NTT Security, into a single global technology services
company.