New Delhi, July 3 (IANS): With innovation being the key instrument in guiding businesses, customer retention is the top priority for Asian companies with India leading the trend, a new research revealed on Monday.

According to "Innovation: All Eyes on Asia", a report by US-based cloud computing firm Salesforce, 70 per cent of Asian companies have customer retention as their key priority for the next 12 to 24 months and 53 per cent are likely to adopt new innovation to achieve this goal.

Companies in India (90 per cent), Indonesia (83 per cent), Vietnam (85 per cent), Philippines (84 per cent) and Thailand (84 per cent) showed willingness to adopt a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) platform powered by artificial intelligence (AI).

While the companies rank enterprise apps (83 per cent), CRM, Cloud-computing (82 per cent) and AI as top innovation priorities, 93 per cent of Indian companies are likely to invest in these to boost customer retention, followed by Singapore (88 per cent), Philippines (88 per cent) and Malaysia (82 per cent).

Asia with 77 per cent is being viewed as the region to lead innovation globally in the next five years, with America at a close second (64 per cent).

Japan, Korea and China are the top three Asian countries seen to be driving the trajectory.

However, cost, complexity of technology and lack of talent are the three key hurdles that are holding Asian companies back from adopting innovation, the report added.