Philippine family businesses score high in confidence towards future readiness in Southeast Asia 

Edler Panlilio (extreme right), managing director of SAP Philippines, joins the roundtable discussion on the future readiness of Filipino family businesses. He is joined by (left to right) Jonathan Ramos, chief executive officer of Premiere Family Business Family Consultants; Ricardo De Vera, author and management consultant; and Jacob Cabochan, director Finance and Operations of Pandayan Bookshop Inc. /Photo by Irene R. Sino Cruz

CEBU CITY, Philippines–Family businesses in the Philippines expressed high levels of confidence in their readiness to adopt to the changing business environment.

This was the result of the study conducted by The Economist Intelligence Unit and sponsored by SAP,  a cloud company and the market leader in enterprise application software.

The regional study included family business leaders from Southeast Asia including Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, and Thailand.

It rated the future readiness of these countries in terms of people, environment, processes and technology.

The study found that the Philippines has the highest level of confidence or readiness in Southeast Asia.

The country averaged 8.29 on a 10-point scale, 10 being the most confident, across the four categories.

Thailand is second at 8.26, followed by Indonesia (8.21), Singapore (7.44) and Malaysia (7.28).

The Philippines, tied with Thailand, posted the highest score at 8.6 as far as development of skills is concerned.

Filipino family businesses also expressed confidence in their capability to deploy the latest technology, with a score of 8.25 for cloud computing versus the Southeast Asia benchmark of 7.88 and 8.125 versus SEA benchmark of 7.86 for automation.

However, Filipino family businesses have the highest concern over regulatory and regional geopolitical risks.

Michael Gold, EIU editor of the report, noted that the strong level of optimism among Filipino family businesses would help support the country’s growth agenda.

However, Gold maintained that to compete in the international arena, Filipino family businesses and small and medium enterprises have to adopt digital know-how and innovation.

“To strengthen their legacy and seize opportunities in the digital economy, they cannot continue to depend solely on connections or customer loyalty,” he added.

Elder Panlilio, managing director of SAP Philippines, explained that Philippine businesses can become intelligent enterprises with the help of technologies like analytics, machine learning, and cloud computing. /dcb