It’s easy to understand why Asia Pacific leaders find it hard to believe that they can let go of (some of) their caution as they make plans for 2024. I don’t need to tell you that the past four years have been tough, but past isn’t always prologue. As we made plans last year for 2023, China wasn’t yet out of zero-Covid, Russia had just gone to war with Ukraine, inflation raged, interest rates were climbing, and recession forecasts were everywhere.
Looking ahead to 2024, conditions look far more promising. The IMF expects global economic growth to bottom out at 2.8% in 2023 and rise modestly to 3.0% in 2024 as inflation slowly falls. Growth in emerging and developing Asia is expected to be a healthier 5.1%, with China’s growth dropping slightly to 4.5% as India goes in the opposite direction, increasing to 6.3%. In our latest tech forecast, Asia Pacific tech purchase growth will climb from 5.8% in 2023 to 6.8% in 2024.
To help our clients develop superior plans, we have just published Forrester’s 2024 Planning Guides. They provide detailed guidance for technology, customer experience, digital, marketing, sales, and product leaders on where to invest, pull back, and strategically experiment to grow and succeed in the coming year. (Our 14 Planning Guides are available for clients here; nonclients can read our overarching report with links to select guides here.)
While we encourage you to explore the guides in depth, a few key actions to prioritize in 2024 include the following:
- Build an AI strategy focused on customer value. We know that the AI buzz is becoming overwhelming, but our research tells us that it’s the real deal. We expect to see AI receive the greatest budget increases by far next year. Focus on developing a versatile AI approach that can address multiple needs simultaneously while putting in place the necessary guardrails to yield returns responsibly. Prioritize leveraging AI for both efficiency and effectiveness in the pursuit of delivering more customer value. In Asia Pacific, augment global strategies with a review of regional innovations and providers.
- Hire a revenue operations leader to drive alignment and growth. For organizations with established sales and marketing operations functions, revenue operations is neither a reshuffling of existing capabilities nor the insertion of a new level of hierarchy into a leadership structure — it’s an additive effort that harnesses operational resources, improves the buyer experience, and drives predictable growth. Ultimately, a revenue operations leader delivers customer value through tighter alignment between traditionally siloed disciplines.
- Leverage TuringBots to build software faster, better, and cheaper. TuringBots, AI that assists development teams in being more productive across the end-to-end software development lifecycle, are maturing fast. Maturity and adoption in areas such as coding, testing, and deployment is happening in real time. Technology leaders should invest in TuringBots to build higher-quality custom software and deliver faster to differentiate the business and propel it forward.
Our 2024 Planning Guides explore these takeaways in greater depth and provide additional insights to inform your planning and budgeting. Explore our overarching report and other Planning Guide resources to navigate the current planning season with confidence.
