Digital Acceleration Key to Increase Resilience – A/NZ market

The pandemic pushed organisations worldwide to rethink the way they are operating, engaging with customers, and interacting with their employees. Business continuity has become crucial, with the focus shifting from top-line growth to making infrastructure more resilient and future-proof. Digital transformation has become a strategic priority, and multi-cloud, automation, and cybersecurity are among the top spending priorities.

Although this remains true for the Australia and New Zealand (A/NZ) market as well, there were a few regional aspects that accelerated this push towards digital technologies:

• • Climate change concerns have risen globally, leading to an increase in natural catastrophes, including bushfires in Australia. Hence, there is heightened interest and a need among government bodies to solve this problem. Digital technologies such as machine learning to accurately analyse data for predicting and responding to bushfires could be used to avoid a repeat of the Black Summer.
  • In 2019, the Royal Banking Commission uncovered malpractices and irregularities in how financial institutions were operating in the region. As banks and financial services firms responded to concerns, trying to fix issues raised by the commission, the sector opened itself up to digital investments to enable transparency, reduce risk, and improve compliance with industry and regional regulatory bodies.

Growing digitisation, openness to automation tools and platforms, limited cyber laws, and a lack of cyber awareness make A/NZ a fertile environment for service providers. As such, providers are setting up R&D centres, expanding regional security operations centres (SOCs), acquiring specialised companies, investing in their partner ecosystem, and focusing on local talent in collaboration with universities.

An example of this is Wipro, who held its A/NZ Analyst and Advisory Day on August 5, 2021. Sarah Adam–Gedge, Managing Director who recently took over this role for the Wipro A/NZ Team, clearly called out cloud, data, digital, and cybersecurity as key focus areas. Wipro’s goal is to establish itself as the preferred, local consulting and tech transformation partner in A/NZ and double its revenue share for the A//NZ market.

In this regard, Wipro plans its growth strategy around the following three areas:

1. 1. Cultivate an industry-centric approach. Wipro has identified the following industries in the A/NZ region to focus on: financial services, which accounts for one-third of its revenue, communications, energy, and utilities. Also, it plans to increase its footprint in the public sector space beyond state government to the federal level. Concentrating on specific industries will allow Wipro to tailor digital solutions to its customers rather than taking a more cookie-cutter method.
   2. Target acquisitions in high priority areas. Wipro continues to drive growth inorganically. Its most recent acquisition is Ampion, an Australian-based testing and cybersecurity provider. Ampion will help Wipro focus on business continuity, resiliency, and security issues crucial to the ANZ market. For more on Wipro’s acquisition strategy, see Avasant’s From IT Service Delivery to Business Consulting: Understanding the Wipro-Capco Deal.
   3. Develop a local talent pool. In 2020, Wipro hired around 60 graduates in the A/NZ region. It plans to double that number in 2021. With its acquisition of Ampion, it has added about 700 professionals specialising in data testing and cybersecurity to its existing team of approximately 2,000 employees in A/NZ.

Analysis by Gaurav Dewan, Associate Research Director at Avasant.