Insights

Thailand’s push toward its 4.0 economic model gained a lot of momentum in 2018, as the government made investments and policy changes in countless areas to smooth the way for business. The way forward is clear on most fronts, and the next decade is sure to be an exciting one for Thailand and the advanced manufacturing and digital economy that is well on its way.

Culture and technology around the world are rapidly progressing, and the only clear prediction we can make about the future is that change will continue to occur at every level of society. Most businesses have realised that they must follow these changes to keep up with the new world – and others have decided to actually become leaders and drive the change further forward.

A recent Grant Thornton survey of over 300 senior executives found that 89% believe the CFO of the future will require much stronger data analytics skills – and fully 75% plan to upgrade their personal data analytics skills in the coming year.

In Part 1 of this article, we examined the importance of speed, flexibility, and successful adaptation in the current business climate.

In the natural world, the big winners are not always the strongest or fastest, but rather the ones that are best at adapting to changes in their environment. The business world follows similar rules – and its current environment is changing more rapidly than at any time in history, thanks to the digital revolution.

Wave after wave of new business technology has been hyped as revolutionary, leaving organisations with the options either to invest in strategic transformation and disruptive technologies or to dismiss it all as mere noise and carry on with traditional methods of business administration.

The vision for Thailand 4.0 is certainly ambitious, and is extremely well adapted to the digital economic stage that the world is now entering. But is that vision also well adapted to Thailand itself? Can this moderately advanced Southeast Asian nation handle the weight of its own development plan?

Much has been made of the Thai government’s commitment to developing a modern industrial base. In large part, the praise from the business community has been deserved. Concerted efforts include a range of initiatives, from a detailed program of BOI incentives, to the fast-tracking of business permits across industries, to the ambitious upgrades in infrastructure and government support that are making the Eastern Economic Corridor a highly promising region for manufacturing.

A thought leadership, article and research from our experts to help empower your business strategy.

The global charity sector is having to adapt in a fast-moving world. At the heart of this transformation is a strong collective ambition to drive positive change for beneficiaries and communities both locally and internationally. But what happens when charitable giving doesn’t reflect this?

After deciding on a vision, there are two main barriers that generally prevent companies from following through on their initial ideas: Money, and expertise.

The reluctance is understandable. Your business has showed good signs of health for years (or decades), in large part because you’ve concentrated on creating value in the field you know best. Within a short span of time, you’ve begun to hear plenty of talk about the need for businesses to transform themselves for entry into the digital world.

Many organisations have placed tremendous efforts in implementing a new ERP system or improving their current system. They correctly believed that the ERP system would bring lots of advantages to their organisation, such as process efficiency improvements, benefits of a single database, and data analytics capabilities for corporate strategy.

The latest global survey findings from our International Business Report (IBR) shows that despite the rise of automation and record global business optimism (net 58%) businesses will turn to people in 2018 to meet swelling order books.

Cross-border merger and acquisition opportunities are increasing as healthy company financials in many economies drive an appetite for deals. However, while cross-border transactions can generate new market opportunities, they often bring heightened risk and a range of challenges.

This report provides an analysis of Grant Thornton in Thailand’s annual hotel industry survey. The survey looks specifically at 4 and 5 star hotels in Thailand and was conducted in April and May 2016.