Top firms highlight ways to digital transformation
Credit to Author: MAYVELIN U. CARABALLO, TMT| Date: Wed, 17 Jul 2019 16:25:25 +0000
PHILIPPINE companies are taking different approaches in reshaping and transforming their businesses in the age of digitalization.
Representatives from Union Bank of the Philippines (UnionBank), Bank of the Philippine Islands (BPI) and PLDT Inc.-Smart Communications Inc. revealed their firm’s strategies for digital transformation during The Manila Times Digital Transformation and Innovation Forum in Pasay City on Wednesday
According to UnionBank Senior Executive Vice President Henry Aguda, the listed Aboitiz-led lender did not only change its business model through technology, but also its context.
“We said [that], beyond the balance sheet and the income statement, we will define our success in the context of how many Filipinos we serve,” Aguda said.
“We aligned almost everybody in the bank in terms of our aspiration. We call it the moonshot — whether we get there or not, it’s not so much about the number. It’s the aspiration of doing something greater and grander,” he added.
Aguda, also UnionBank’s chief transformation officer and chief technology and operations, said the bank’s strategic objectives during its digital transformation were quality, availability of products, straight-through service and security.
For his part, BPI Chief Digital Officer Noel Santiago said the Ayala-led bank was always trying to prioritize the larger part of its customer base whenever it encountered challenges during its digital transformation effort.
According to him, BPI recently decided to continue providing service to its big customers during its recent systems upgrade, which affected a smaller percentage of its clients.
“We’re catering for millions of customers performing hundreds of thousands of transactions. The people complaining are a [smaller] percentage of that. There were cases that they weren’t able to perform transaction, but we have to serve the majority first,” he said.
“We could have easily taken the system down for a few days, but that means that everybody cannot perform any of our financial services. So we took the bullet. We said, ‘Let’s address that bigger population that will be disenfranchised, and we will manage those customers who will be affected,” Santiago added.
PLDT-Smart Vice President Carlo Ople highlighted the importance of connecting to the country’s younger population while the telecommunications firm was undergoing its digital transformation.
“I’ve seen the benefits of being able to talk to the younger generation, to the digital generation, and to the Y generation,” said Ople, also the deputy head for PLDT-Smart public affairs and corporate communications.
One big agenda that he pursued for the firm, he also said, is to transform PLDT-Smart into a YouTuber.
“I wanted to change the way we create content, change the way we communicate with our customers, change the way we reach out and educate the masses and our customers and everybody else of everything that we’ve been doing in the company,” Ople added.
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