Skip to the content
W.Media
  • Home
  • Company
  • Conventions
  • Digital Events
  • Contact Us
  • Home
  • Company
  • Conventions
  • Digital Events
  • Awards
  • Contact Us
  • Tech News
  • Forum
  • Tech News
  • Digital Week
search
×

W.Media Spotlight Digital Event: A promising post-pandemic future for digital transformation in Southeast Asia

Published 15 May 2020

0 comments

stuart-crowley
W.media | editor
Share on Facebook Share
Share on TwitterTweet
Share on LinkedIn Share

Businesses across Southeast Asia are looking to rapidly initiate digital transformation strategies after being forced online to continue operations during the pandemic.

More than 180 top executives joined C-level speakers from a broad spectrum of industries to hear a promising outlook for our digital transformation future in a post-pandemic world during W.Media’s Spotlight digital event.

We kicked off our pre-show with Tran Viet Hoan, the Group CIO of Vietnam’s second largest company and leading automaker, THACO Group. He noticed digital transformation is happening fast with banks, microfinance and life insurance industries pioneering DX strategies during the pandemic.

Mr Tran warned: “If you don’t transform your business digitally, you will die faster.”

Telcos in Southeast Asia is just one example of where digital transformation is happening constantly, moving from traditional landlines and cell phones to a digitally connected platform.

Mr Tran said: “VNPT, the biggest telco service provider in Vietnam, only moved to the platform for agriculture. You could not believe that 10 years before, a telco company did agriculture.”

A Gartner study revealed around 50% of successful digital transformation strategies focus on people issues and 37% on process issues. Mr Tran advised listeners to focus on customer experience, operational efficiencies, business model transformation and pain points, with the customer coming first.

Mr Tran added: “No digital transformation is successful without investment throughout the business, this includes every single staff in the organisation, including the Chairman or CEO.”

We were then joined by Nelson Tan, the Director of InfoComm Infrastructure at Nanyang Technological University, who shared a fascinating case study on how NTU digitally transformed their operations during the pandemic.

Thriving through automation and digitisation

In our first panel session, we explored how startups and enterprises can overcome the challenges of digitisation.

Maximising sustainability is crucial for companies going through these unprecedented times. Jae Lee, CTO of online travel agency WorldRoamer, believes applying process automation is one initiative that could achieve sustainability.

At WorldRoamer, they focus automation on business operation and product development workflow to find areas where they can reduce the lead time in communication and resolution time for product delivery.

Aik-Phong Ng, the Managing Director for Fave, a leading lifestyle app in Singapore, believes the outlook for digital transformation is a positive one with a lot of opportunities to increase business and reduce costs.

Mr Ng said: “I think one of the reasons is because there really is no choice. You’re forced [to go digital] by regulation or because your revenue drops to zero.”

Before the pandemic, Fave would physically onboard around 1,000 merchants a month for their cashless payment product using QR codes. Now, during the Circuit Breaker period in Singapore, they digitally onboard merchants, leading to an increase in efficiency and sales productivity.

Mr Ng added: “Those who can adapt and thrive in this new environment and work remotely are going to be the winners.”

The Chairman of the global professional body of IT architects, IASA, Aaron Tan Dani noted that case studies of successful digital transformation have applied an enterprise architecture model by understanding how the changes to operations have impacted internal and external stakeholders.

Creating a innovative culture through technology leadership

Digital Transformation efforts often require a transformational culture in their people, processes and technology, but many separate the business teams from the IT teams. Transformation strategies require strong commitment from senior management to enable both teams to collaborate and work closely on strategy.

Axel Winter, the CTO for Thailand’s largest retailer, Central Group, said: “Empowerment is important, but you need the CEO, CIO, CTO, CMO to be in the day to day perspective going into the details.” 

He added: “This is not something you can have a traditional people manager looking at your report once a week. There has to be instant messaging, there has to be daily touch points across the bottom to the top.”

Wilbertus Darmadi, the CIO of Toyota Astra Motors, started digitally transforming the business by setting a technology benchmark against large companies like Microsoft and AWS to open the mindset of C-level staff and showing them examples of how businesses can change using technology.

Mr Darmadi also highlighted one way to digitally transform staff and help them become digitally ready was by modernising the physical environment of their offices and promoting an innovative culture with competitions.

Stay tuned for more insights from our Digital Transformation Spotlight Digital Event

In the coming weeks, we will take a deeper look at the sessions from the digital event, including answers to your unanswered questions!

Thank you to our supporting partners across Southeast Asia. We will be back on Thursday 21 May to discover how Open Compute Project Foundation’s open networking solutions can transform legacy data center systems.

Watch Digital Transformation – Through the Lens of CXOs and SME Business Owners on demand.

Receive the latest news.

We'll keep you in the loop.

Great! now press

Featured Articles


How China’s Data Center Industry is likely to shape up in 2021


Socomec energises Singapore with a powerful UPS training course


Back To Tech News

More Articles

Equinix rebrands Equinix Fabric, expands Network Edge capabilities

Equinix has announced the rebranding and upgrade of its two... Read More

How China’s Data Center Industry is likely to shape up in 2021

The year 2021 could be termed as a “Year of Renewal”.... Read More

Fujitsu, FANUC and NTT Com form DUCNET, a joint venture for manufacturing digital transformation

Japanese conglomerates Fujitsu, FANUC, and NTT... Read More

ABB selects Google Cloud for cloud expansion and data center optimisation

Swiss technology leader ABB has selected Google Cloud to... Read More

W.Media is global B2B Tech
Marketing Agency that specializes in
PR, Digital Media Marketing and Events Coordination

  • facebook
  • linkedin
Quick Links
  • Company
  • Contact Us
  • Privacy Policy
  • Terms & Conditions
Offerings
  • Tech News
  • Digital Events
  • Conventions
  • Digital Week

Copyright © 2020 W.Media | All Rights Reserved

Receive the latest news.

We'll keep you in the loop.

Great! now press