Various teams within an organisation that is going through digital transformation need to collaborate through unifying applications that cut across different functions.
This was the consensus gathered recently among a group of C-level business and technology executives at a multi-sector roundtable held at Conrad Centennial Hotel in Singapore. All 24 participants come from a range of industries from pharmaceutical, banking and e-commerce to name a few.
Dubbed “Mastering the art and science of a future-fit enterprise”, the event was jointly hosted by Fujifilm Business Innovation Singapore and FutureCIO to tackle different areas such as business resilience, cybersecurity, data, and business intelligence, which form part of an organisation’s digital journey.
The participants also exchanged insights about building technological competency and planning for capacity, both of which are crucial in future-proofing IT investments in their respective organisations.
Automation key to business resilience
For many participants, automating as many aspects of the business as possible is a key to survival for businesses across the Asia Pacific.
According to Bernard Chew, managing director and regional head of cash product infrastructure and systems at CIMB Singapore, while banking is a highly regulated industry, it is imperative to leverage machine learning to help the staff ease into the business transformation.
“How are we driving automation and how can we enable and transform our existing staff? Do they have relevant skill sets and do we have the right tools,” said Chew, stressing the importance of asking the right questions, particularly around resources and capacity.
Several of his peers in the banking sector, meanwhile, said they are keen on deploying cloud-based next-generation analytics offerings which are powered by artificial intelligence.
The steady shift towards automation is what prompted Wefaa Robotics to move its focus to robotics and 3D printing. The company now provides educational robots for teaching STEAM (science, technology, engineering, artificial intelligence, and mathematics) subjects.
Company co-founder Srinivasan Venkita Padmanabhan pointed out that companies need to keep their eye out for the changing business landscape, which now increasingly relies on technology to conduct their business operations.
“As a business, you are under pressure to maintain profit margins while staying ahead of competitors. However, you should not ignore technology trends such as the metaverse, Web 3.0 and holograms. If they want to ‘future-fit’ their company, they need to know intelligent ways of operating a business,” said Padmanabhan.
Furthermore, he urged companies to stress-test their business models to stay competitive.
Wee Tee Hsien, general manager of integrated sales and channels at Fujifilm Business Innovation Singapore, noted that there is no cookie-cutter approach to digital transformation and the employees’ responses vary across companies and verticals.
“Mindsets and attitudes toward digital adoption often differ from employees who work in the technology sector as compared to those who are facing the customer,” said Wee.
Using technology to focus on the customer
The deployment of robotics digitised content and machine learning is not only done to make employees productive and efficient in looking after an organisation’s internal business processes.
More importantly, these technologies are used to enhance interactions with customers and elevate their experience when dealing with your organisation.
“By understanding where customers are on their journey, we can better apply tools and recommend the relevant technology - and then tailor what we can do to help them. But the reality is to see whether they’re ready,” said Wasim Khan, commercial officer at Fujifilm Ripcord.
He added that when smart tools are coupled with mining for data intelligence, they can optimise business processes significantly.
“While the base process is related to digitisation, workflow and understanding the data better to add more value, more companies are repurposing the information for marketing opportunities,” said Khan.
He cautioned companies to be discerning in doing this, however. “We can gather as much data in the hope that we can use it to up-sell or cross-sell during customer engagement. We can take data and use it for every purpose, but it needs to add some value.”
Chandresh Boranaa, head of IT, engineering and development, data, and business intelligence services at Credit Suisse AG, observed that business analytics and intelligence are important skills for the management to stay relevant and stay competitive in the space that they operate.
“How an organisation remains future fit depends on where you are in the journey and see where the work is moving towards,” he said.
He added that the challenge also lies with those he engages externally. “Organisations need to be aware that the rate of technological adoption differs across developing economies. For example, many companies in Bangladesh are still paper-based.”
Joel Chan, regional head of IT service for Allianz Asia Pacific, said: “We need to think about how to make that transformation experience seamless for end users. Strong change management capability is key. Also, how do we know what the future holds and what technologies we should harness before we invest?”
Chan explained that to future fit an organisation, processes need to be in place to scan the horizon for new technologies (especially those that could disrupt the market), evaluate them, and make decisions to adopt them or to prepare for the disruption.
Managing expectations
Meanwhile, companies must manage their expectations – both internally and externally – of what automation and digitisation bring to the table.
“During the presentations, they show you the best parts. But not all the nice and beautiful things are real, they’re just sparkles. Sometimes, there is a gap between reality and actual expectations,” said Ong Sin Hong, finance vice president at Natsteel Holdings. “Even after the implemented technology ‘goes live', the various teams need to collaborate to conduct testing and resolve problem areas.”
Bringing in the vendor’s perspective, Fujifilm Business Innovation Singapore said it resolves this challenge by customising solution that caters to an organisation’s specific needs.
“Expectations are managed by working closely with customers to understand exactly their business problems,” said Howard Ng, general manager for services & solutions business, Fujifilm Business Innovation Singapore.
Over the last 10 years, Fujifilm Business Innovation Singapore has delivered digitisation and automation solutions to a wide spectrum of customers – from SMEs that are less regulated to large enterprises with complex outsourcing models.
“We have experience working with different kinds of environments, from different verticals with different maturity levels. All these require different skill sets, different specialists to deal with the challenges based on the maturity of the organisations – each of the solutions we design are exactly for the outcome they want to achieve,” said Ng.
Bridging the skills gap in tech competency
Many roundtable participants lamented the uneven maturity levels among employees in terms of technological competency, with the younger staff outpacing their senior peers in the use of digital tools.
One participant noted that this challenge is confounded at the regional level given that not all Asian countries are at the same pace in their digital adoption.
He commented that not everyone, particularly in developing countries, conducts sufficient training. While he acknowledged that internally they have made efforts to harmonise different systems, not everyone has the same mindset or priority. That said, he is hopeful everyone will move in the same direction.
According to Damian Wong, head of internal audit at Singapura Finance, a balance should be struck between how an organisation wants to standardise and how it is applied across the business.
“What is the business benefit, we ask this before we make any decisions,” said Wong, “When new projects take off, do new standards need to be applied or are there exceptions?”
Lim Siew Har, chief financial officer at Natsteel Holding, echoed the general sentiment that, to bridge the skills gap, a change of mindset is in order – not only by employees but also by the company’s customers.
“Internally, we may be ready to digitise many aspects of the operations, but not all of our external customers are ready to embrace the changes,” said Lim, whose company has embraced an electronic payment system.
She added: “We can have an electronic platform, but some customers still prefer paper. Perhaps, the government needs to step in to encourage digitisation to a point that it leaves the buyer little choice but to move ahead with the times.”
