The Information & Communications Technology (ICT) market in the Philippines is set to continue to grow in 2020 driven by wider digital transformation initiatives taken by local enterprises and growing customers’ needs despite COVID-19 crisis, says GlobalData, a leading data and analytics company.

The company’s latest report, ‘Enterprise ICT Investment Trends 2020 Philippines’, reveals that a total of 84% of Philippines enterprises have increased their ICT budget in 2020 compared to only 66% in 2019, despite new business challenges such as declining sales and retrenchment due to COVID-19.

Operational efficiency and customer satisfaction top two drivers

Alfie Amir, Principal Analyst at GlobalData, comments: “As IT role is moving from operational support to business enabler, ICT purchasing today is significantly influenced by outcome-based objectives. Philippine enterprises have identified improving operational efficiency and increasing customer satisfaction as the top two drivers for their ICT investment in 2020.

“More businesses are considering investments in technologies such as cloud, IoT, unified communication and collaboration (UC&C) and AI/ML to increase operational efficiency and enhance customer experience.”

According to the report, 84% and 74% of enterprises are considering to invest in managed cloud services and cloud management platform, respectively, within the next two years.

This enables businesses to orchestrate workloads across different platforms to drive operational efficiency. Philippine enterprises are also looking to increase their investment in IoT and analytics (e.g., AI/ML) to gain a wider view of operational data to improve business processes (e.g., predictive maintenance) as well as to enhance customer experience (e.g., real-time asset tracking for logistics company).

UC&C and contact center tools key ICT investment areas

UC&C and contact center tools are the other key ICT investment areas in the Philippines, according to the report. 80% of the local enterprises plan to implement cloud-based UC in the next 24 months, 88% plan to invest in team collaboration applications while 78% in IP contact center solution during the same period.

Amir explains: “The cloud-based UC and team collaboration enable them to address the increasing needs for remote working due to COVID-19 while contact center solutions provide them the flexibility and scalability needed to meet the changing customers’ expectations (e.g., remote agent, physical store to e-commerce). This is also in-line with the top ICT investment drivers: to improve operational efficiency and increase customer satisfaction.”

Overall ICT spending in Philippines remains unchanged

Despite the significant business impact of COVID-19 such as declining sales, retrenchment and longer operational support, the overall ICT spending in the Philippines remained unchanged. The majority of enterprises indicated the same budget across different technology areas pre and post COVID-19 crisis. For example, in managed services, 68% claimed to have the same budget, 18% increased and 14% decreased. Further, Philippine enterprises have increased their budget for digital transformation initiatives from 44% to 50%, out of the total ICT spending in 2020.

Amir concludes: “The increase in digital transformation will drive outcome-based solutions and managed services demands in the country. However, there are several key areas providers need to focus on to fill the gap, such as professional services to address business challenges in the post-COVID-19 era, as well as cloud and network infrastructure.”