Bigger budgets for HR technology in Asia-Pacific
- Kelvin Ong
The first-ever HR Festival Asia, brought to you by the combined experience of HR Technology Conference & Exposition (US) and HR Summit (Asia), takes over the Suntec Singapore Convention & Exhibition Centre on May 8 and 9. With a line-up of more than 100 speakers across six dedicated streams, and an Expo Hall with more than 100 exhibitors, there’s a little something for everyone at the event. Check out our HR Festival Asia tag for more coverage direct from the event. |
Asia-Pacific organisations are increasing HR technology budgets faster than any other region, a new Sierra-Cedar whitepaper has found.
In an exclusive presentation at HR Festival Asia’s HR Tech stage, Stacey Harris (pictured), Vice-President of Research and Analytics, Sierra-Cedar, said that bigger budgets also meant companies in the region are employing HR tech more strategically than in the past.
Organisations, Harris added, are now choosing to up their expenditure on service delivery solutions like HR help desks and employee self service platforms, as well as emerging technologies like benchmarking databases, IoT, and blockchain.
“It is clear from these findings that the focus on employee experience is bigger than ever,” she said.
By category, talent management (62%), payroll (61%), and shared services (51%) were found to be the top three groups that HR decision makers are spending the bulk of their budgets on. There were also big jumps of 38% in the areas of business process intelligence, 36% for HR analytics, and 31% for artificial intelligence.
Harris noted that the proliferation of technology has seen demand for data analytical tools and skills grow.
In fact, nearly half of survey respondents (48%) said they have plans to increase hiring for HR data analytics roles.
“Artificial intelligence, machine learning – all these are almost impossible to implement if we don’t have clean data. Data management is becoming one of the number one conversations we are hearing here in Asia,” said Harris.
This focus on data has enabled leaders to think about HR technology in more strategic terms.
“We have to ask ourselves: What are we trying to achieve from the technology? And what data governance do I want to address in my organisation?,” Harris added.
