How organisations can move towards their NEXT phase of economic growth and create new business growth

What are the five top of mind factors that organisations should consider their NEXT phase of innovation?

• Rebalancing organisational focus across three areas – business and operational performance; compliance; and being future-focused. Being future-focused must be an organisation’s main agenda in order to embed a new transformative culture, and to pivot towards making businesses more efficient to achieve a new measure of success.
• Building for scale and resilience – adopting technology, cloudification, smart solutions, business analytics with AI and machine learning, and stronger cybersecurity is key for business growth and sustainability.
• Partnerships – offer a unique opportunity for collaboration across ecosystems and cultures. By combining competencies and different perspectives, companies can quickly create innovative solutions that would otherwise be challenging to develop. Embracing partnerships allows companies to tap into new ideas for growth, and create value in a way that wouldn’t have been possible without collaboration.
• ESG – embracing sustainability includes forward-looking value creation that enriches mid- to long- term value for communities, businesses and the Government. Tapping into resource-efficient solutions will also bring about differentiated user and consumer experiences.
• Talent management –  in becoming future-focused, managing talent is key with greater emphasis on talent reskilling, upskilling, retention and effective recruitment. Improving talent management also includes adopting agile practices and digital workspaces, embracing a digital-first mindset that sets organisations apart.

“It is clear that taking advantage of technologies, coupled with strong partnerships will help build a more resilient and responsive ecosystem.” Shazurawati Abd Karim – Executive Vice President at TM One

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TM ONE is your trusted partner in enabling your next advantage today and tomorrow by harnessing the power of human centered technology and innovation. We provide secure and robust fit-for-purpose business solutions to enterprises and the Government from across diverse industries, from banking to retail, oil & gas and energy, logistics, education, healthcare and many more.

We understand that every organisation has different needs and goals, with different business models, systems and operational landscapes.

Our end-to-end managed services and vertical solutions built across our pillars of connectivity solutions, data centres, cloud, cybersecurity and smart services which leverage the latest technologies empowers organisations to harness the power of big data and IR 4.0.

Together with our professional services teams across Malaysia and Indonesia, TM One offers value-based innovative solutions to businesses in line with TM’s role as the enabler of progressive innovative transformation.

TM One’s 5G Sphere, our circle of local and global smart solutions and technology partners, will also enable the next phase of enterprise innovation and transformation, harnessing 5G capabilities.

TM One’s 5G Sphere offers the opportunity for enterprises to springboard and accelerate their transformation, offering bespoke solution ideation and implementation to drive and generate positive business outcomes that address the unique needs of diverse businesses.

Register for your next advantage now at: 5g.tmone.com.my Your Next is Now.

This article was first published in Reuters Breakingview 2023

The post TM One, Enabling Your Next Innovative Transformation appeared first on TM One.

Despite limited resources and facing the challenge of covering a large geographic area, the mainland half of Penang, comprising 738 square kilometers with a population of 1,145,200 people, MBSP has set out to successfully slash turnaround times in managing citizens’ voice complaints and complaint collections. Incidentally, COVID-19 related lockdowns further exacerbated pressure on state councils tasked with the problem of effective customer engagement engaging, especially with utilisation of digital channels which had become critical in the 'new normal'.

Strategically, MBSP also needed to maintain the momentum of synchronising with the enhanced customer-centric goal adopted by the council's other departments and functions. The first step of MBSP's journey towards serving the customer faster and better started in 2019 when the “Digital State 2030” was launched.

Consequently, MBSP collaborated with TM One Business Services to benefit from business process outsourcing (BPO) services, which helped to establish a contact centre equipped with world-class solutions to build and improve customer service excellence. As a one-stop centre, MBSP Customer Experience Contact Centre (CX Premier) serves individuals and businesses by providing different services, including business, commercial and individual support, to facilitate the ease of doing business in Seberang Perai. CX Premier also serves as a vital link between citizens and community groups or organisations that work with municipalities at MBSP.

A milestone in MBSP's transformational journey. CX Premier delivered some immediate wins:

• MBSP's range of services is now more seamlessly accessible to citizens. They no longer face the inconvenience of going to different locations to complete one simple task.
• City council workers are now able to reallocate working hours to focus on the quality of service to meet citizens’ requests.

“The collaboration with TM One through their CX Premier has helped MBSP Call Centre improve the quality of service delivery and no complaints are dropped or missed. It makes MBSP more efficient in receiving complaints and delivering services to solve all the enquiries of the public”

- YBhg. Dato’ Sr Hj Rozali bin Hj Mohamud
Mayor of Seberang Perai

A Seamless Customer Journey

Given its motto of ‘Seberang Perai Aspiring City of Tomorrow’, MBSP is naturally committed to provisioning a first-class customer experience in line with expectations of today's digital first-world.

Despite the pandemic, MBSP must remain digitally connected to customers to help address their issues. Additionally, MBSP needs to integrate its array of different services under its umbrella into one single channel, which is more customer-centric. This entails a more strategic approach in interconnecting with other departments and functions within the council. Part of the journey entails overcoming security, training and business continuity hurdles in order to unlock operational benefits.

Unlocking Operational Efficiencies

When MBSP made the strategic decision to turn to CX Premier to prevail over its operational challenges and to empower an effective, seamless digital experience for their customers, it was ideally positioned the council to facilitate seamless communications with the public within a new normal of pandemic related restricted social interaction.

On a broader level, the overall digital solution is helping MBSP to achieve its objectives by delivering the following strategic technological drivers:

• A highly scalable contact centre solution built with best-in-class CX services, which ensures that volume growth is managed appropriately by anticipating and mitigating unexpected complaint spikes. As CX Premier can be scaled up or down at any time by maximising the utilisation of resources, MBSP benefits from overall productivity gains and reduced operational costs.
• MBSP also has the ability to turn on or off CX Premier features from the Omni Cloud CX, which ensures faster enablement of its digital interaction journey. Cloud CX helps MBSP provide greater insights into operations, which in turn helps develop strategies in key areas and achieve operational excellence. An Omni-ready platform is essential as customers today expect seamless and consistent communication.
• Cloud CX also supports the practice of Work From Home (WFH). This is another strategy that TM One optimises to manage day-to-day operations, capacity, and business continuity planning throughout the pandemic period. With Cloud CX security, MBSP is assured of the data privacy and security aspect of going digital.
• Moreover, TM One's extensive knowledge management and training strategy ensures that all contact centre agents are correctly oriented and given a superlative understanding of MBSP's services and customer needs. Consistent use of these knowledge management tools empowers a highly effective role in resolving customer issues rapidly, and improves overall productivity.

Moving Forward: Unleashing Fresh Benefits

TM One has played an important role as the data aggregator for MBSP by sharing business-related insights through quarterly business meetings. This information has benefited MBSP to improve the back-end operation towards improving their complaint resolution timeline through focused improvement strategies.

MBSP has been able to reduce processing time for applications and complaints, as well as improve response time to customers. The citizens are now able to obtain the services and assistance that they need in a more efficient manner, which is greatly benefiting them. The call centre also employs trained operators who are able to provide better customer service and this will enable MBSP to resolve the public complaints and enquiries more quickly and efficiently.

CX Premier is delivering exceptional customer service with performance levels exceeding previously committed targets. In addition to taking good care of voice transactions, CX Premier is also at the helm of managing digital transactions, which include e-aduan on a web platform, emails, e-pintas and itegur apps, among others. As well as expertly assessing and implementing the most appropriate technologies and processes, TM One addressed key areas connected to a more effective Service Level Agreement (SLA) to resolve complaint cases.

Today, 93% of the customer’s calls to CX Premier will be answered within 20 seconds. TM One has also actualised MBSP's digital interaction journey by managing a total of seven (7) different channels six (6) of which are digital channels such as email, social media, mobile applications, and web portal inquiries. An exceptional customer journey has been innovated on an integrated interactive platform of telephonic and digital channels.

Apart from this, our recent WFH strategy has helped MBSP sustain its customer service operations without any interruption throughout the pandemic period. The strategy has ensured the customer operation functions without interruption even after adhering to 60/40 workforce conditions by Majlis Keselamatan Negara Malaysia (MKN) & Kementerian Kesihatan Malaysia (KKM). This approach has also improved the productivity of the agents with a safe and comfortable working environment.

With TM One Business Services taking care of operational aspects of MBSP’s one-stop centre, MBSP is now ideally positioned to focus on serving the people faster and delivering superior levels of performance. This success story is another stride forward in revolutionising MBSP's efforts to achieve its Digital State objectives, which is pivoting on putting its customers' interests at the heart of all of the city council's services.

The post Digital Success Story: How Majlis Bandaraya Seberang Perai is Revolutionising Customer Service appeared first on TM One.

Indeed, adopting a human approach is rapidly becoming a core driver behind numerous digitally powered growth and recovery strategies across many forward-thinking countries amid today's rapidly shifting Covid-19 scenario together with other dynamics.

Malaysia's own digital economy, boosted somewhat by a lockdown-related 68% surge in eCommerce, will grow to RM80 billion in gross merchandise value (GMV) by 2025, according to the 'e-Conomy SEA 2021: Roaring 20s — The SEA Digital Decade' report by Google Inc, Temasek Holdings and Bain & Co. This report also notes growth other sectors — such as food and transport increasing by 35%, and online media by 14%. The e-Conomy study also highlights the dramatic growth of digital consumers, currently 94% prefer digital transactions — on average 4.2 times more than in the pre-Covid era.

In his welcome keynote to industry leaders at the 4th edition of TM One’s annual flagship event for public and private sector leaders, themed Human-Centred Technology: Taking Transformation Forward, Imri Mokhtar, group chief executive of Telekom Malaysia (TM) said industry studies clearly signal a sea change in human behaviours.

In his welcome keynote to industry leaders at the 4th edition of TM One’s annual flagship event for public and private sector leaders, themed Human-Centred Technology: Taking Transformation Forward, Imri Mokhtar, group chief executive of Telekom Malaysia (TM) said industry studies clearly signal a sea change in human behaviours.

The Power of Knowing

“The accelerated adoption of technology in the post pandemic era shows the world is ready for this change in the norm of how we work and live. Customer expectations have evolved to the point where the ultimate experience is typified by a seamless digital journey,” commented Imri.

“To drive this forward, requires the right organisational DNA including agility and a collaborative, human-centred approach,” he said, when outlining some of the milestones for the TM Group. “As a national institution, TM has evolved into a human-centred technology company, inspired by this dynamic evolution of customer needs and desires. Our capabilities to address human needs and easing processes is demonstrated in multiple areas.”

Examples included making unmanned platforms a reality in the O&G (oil & gas) sector, which reduced exposure to risk while maintaining productivity, while in manufacturing, the use of advanced automation is making light work of formerly resource heavy processes. In TM itself, the use of AI to enhance operations has already automated 230,000 work hours, which can be pivoted to empower employees with higher quality work and help them take control of their time.

However, the key to achieving such milestones lies in the power of knowing, and to recognising opportunities in the face of adversity, he explained. “The power of knowing requires balance between human and technological intelligence in order to delight the customer. The next wave of innovation, arising from digital technology and human skills, requires collaboration, innovation and an open coalition to benefit all Malaysians."

Human-Centred Transformation

Following TM One Leap’s tradition of drawing global thinkers, the next keynote speaker, an advocate for human led innovation, Shivvy Jervis, Founder of FutureScape248, and award-winning futurist, echoed Imri’s thoughts, commenting that the current challenges faced by leaders in Malaysia have much in common with the rest of the world.

“Malaysia's experience is common, and I welcome the country's proactive approach in finding fresh ways to build a hybrid scenario and to see digitalisation's role grow as a lifeline for citizens through public services.”

Commending the country’s digital prioritisation and TM’s leadership as a change driver, she added that delegates at the event constituted a “collective of the brightest minds in the country’s industries and government, and are the change drivers for Malaysia in these times, when we must become future ready by creating meaningful changes, and to making digital transformation truly human.”

“The future is far more hopeful than you and I think,” she said, when explaining her interest in areas including scientific advancements, brain chemistry and digital breakthroughs.

Shivvy cautioned that the failure rate for transformation projects was high. “Firstly, we need to break down the idea that digital transformation is just a technological challenge to be addressed by the digital people; 60 to 70% of organisations treat transformation exercises solely as technological.”

“Human-centred technology can revolutionise services, but only if the people rolling out these initiatives understand human expectations and balance this with technological advances,” Shivvy continued. “You need to build fluidity into the digital value chain, rather than just a linear project planning approach. You should also ensure you have the right skills and talent into place, decision-making requires a more holistic approach, balancing board level expectations with the IT leaders; everyone needs to be at the table and move forward with clarity and a moral code.”

Humanity 5.0

A moral code is more than just a philosophical concept, it is a set of ethical values, she explained when giving examples from her client roster. “Our Humanity 5.0 Guide suggests that organisations have a responsibility to their workforce and to their communities. This approach ensures a stronger path to successful transformation; such organisations can attract three times more talent than their peers.”

Turning to some innovations and concepts that would build ‘future readiness’, she said the world will be largely influenced by adaptive artificial intelligence (AI).

*Adaptive AI *is a term coined by her lab, which had for five years been tracking the ways to bridge the gap through design between man and software. “This was to understand the human way of thinking, and these tools essentially give social intelligence to coding, and has resulted in up to 30% cost savings.“

Considering Malaysia’s 5G plan from the end of this year, Shivvy said. “Low latency and higher firepower will strengthen many tools such — as AR, robotics, and advanced data science — and open up new abilities and uses - especially towards an ‘internet of senses’ — connecting us to bodies, skills, people, and things: the internet of things is evolving in to the internet of senses.”

“Other examples include e-learning platforms that will better adapt to individual needs, and many tedious processes will be removed from our plate, although there is a caveat: we have to be mindful of ethical oversight. Mindfulness of data privacy. The evolving technology is reading us better and decoding our moods better.”

The broad benefits include the building of everyday ecosystems - cities - “where we are developing the ability to prevent issues that could become serious problems, including pollution”, she said, adding that another emerging innovation lies in digital twin models. “An exact digital replica of our body can help with virtually test experiences of the impact from citizen services, traffic, and so on.”

This is an example of what Shivvy calls the ’tactile internet’ and which has opened up uses such as a remote arm for surgeons to enact some procedures. "Another near future example is the use of digital pills containing tiny sensors, which can be injected into the body and then transmit key data to our phones, could help warn us hours in advance of serious episodes,” she said. “We could track trends in the population — with user permission, of course — such as disease waves, and mitigate these before they escalate into pandemics."

"Let me end with a shout-out to TM One; they are at the vanguard of taking transformation forward. Empowering the digital journey and humanising transformation. Hidden opportunities."

"The future is now - and it is human-led," she concluded. "Keep the human spirit at the front. Market dynamics are changing across the world. Review and refresh and how we will adapt to change. Collaboration with the right partner is possibly one of the key factors to be future ready."

Panel: 'Design is how it works'

‘Design is not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works,’ so said Tim Kobe, founder & chief executive officer of Eight Inc, quoting Steve Jobs of Apple.

Renowned as the mind behind the design of Apple Store, Tim Kobe, was participating in a panel session - themed critical design aspects of everyday things - with other experts Shamsul Majid, chief technology & innovation officer from national regulator MCMC (Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission), Sudev Bangah, managing director of IDC ASEAN, and with Manoj Menon founder & manager director, Twimbit, acting as moderator.

Sharing from his 12 years’ experience working with Steve Jobs, Tim revealed that one of the strongest learnings is to think with both the left and right sides of the brain, “with both an analytical and intuitive perspective. Nine times of 10 though, Steve will trust his intuition. The Apple culture was borne from defining the culture you want to be known for, setting up a system to support this, and the team of teams that can help you deliver that.”

Talking to the concept of human centric technology, he elaborated that this was “a return on experience. Many people look at it from a business perspective. But the return on experience is the fundamental factor of the success behind Apple or Virgin. It is the design defines human progress In terms of the way we think and do things.”

“Steve taught that design is not just what something looks like, design is what it does for people: design is how it works,” he said. “When designing for people, you have to understand the types of things that influences behaviour, and this includes looking at the more primitive aspects of the brain {the non-verbal aspect}. Experience is a powerful aspect which influences behaviour. Experience is holistic — an expression of a core set of values that people feel. For example, communicating the values of what Apple stands for.”

Analyst findings that Tim cited include:

• 80% of CEOs think their product is differentiated, but only 8% of consumers agree (Bain).
• What makes you stand out? 50% of purchases are based on word of mouth. And 80% of word of mouth is generated by direct experience (McKinsey)

Tim said the key is to move beyond thinking about transactions, and look at relationships with a product or service. “Ultimately, great human outcomes lead to great business outcomes. A value creation engine is about human outcomes, which leads to the strategy and the tactics. The secret to value creation is human experience creation. In a meeting, Steve would ask what would competitors do; and then say, let us not do what they would do; let’s go in a different direction: this was a strategic decision.”

Companies that have taken that risk include Apple Global Retail, which grew from USD2 billion to 2 trillion in USD market value. Meanwhile, Virgin Atlantic Airways, is consistently in the world’s top 5 listing for over 10 years, despite not having the same capital or lucrative routes of the bigger companies. Globe Telecom grew from 23% to 56% market share by shifting from ‘selling pipes to delivering emotion’.

Asean perspectives

“Emulating this approach in ASEAN may be more difficult because you don’t have the same competitive pressures in the public sector; though I understand some cities in Australia see themselves in competition with other cities in the country,” opined Tim.

Sharing his thoughts on the Asean perspective of human-centred experience, IDC’s Sudev said that the Southeast Asia region had shown considerable interest with 60% of organisations reporting that they are increasing investment in technologies to enable CX and UX to drive better customer engagement and loyalty, which they felt they had lost since the start of Covid-19.

“However, my concern is that much of these investments still seem to be around technology rather than on forwarding human/emotional related discussions is relatively low,” he continued. “For example, Malaysia is one of the countries where the ownership of UX, and its expectations, are by technology teams.”

There is more positive UX development in Indonesia, for example, especially among insurance companies, he revealed. “Design thinking is increasing in that country and with putting people at the centre of things. Non-MNCs are still too focused on technological aspects, even though 73% of consumers want a differentiated product/experience. We see much imitation and not much of human-centred initiatives. On a positive note, TM One is one of the organisations out in front.”

In the discussion about how super apps could transform the citizen journey, MCMC’s Shamsul pointed to MySejahtra, which connects users with Covid-19 information, data, health, vaccination, and mitigation management.

“All Malaysians were scrambling for a single trusted point of information and help, and MySejahtra has filled that role. Looking to the future, we held a national super app survey, as part of understanding citizen needs. 84,000 respondents favour a national super app, provided data privacy concerns have been addressed. In 2022, MCMC will reveal more about our increased focus on a human-centred approach.”

Shamsul, together with Sudev, Manoj and Tim, urged thinking ‘outside the box’ by “looking outside your industry into any other industry. Moreover, break down silos within the organisation. Try different things, and be open-minded.”

Tim’s concluding remark summarises many of the panel’s key rejoinders: “If you are not focusing on the outcomes you are creating, you are probably leaving money on the table. Look at focusing on outcomes at the primary level.”

“If you look at history, tech tends to improve things and delivers on value to people, whether they knew they required it or not. Look for the gaps: for example, passports, which is definitely outdated technology, is screaming for a solution!”

Demystifying digital services

Eyeing the coming new year in her closing keynote, Shazurawati Abd Karim, executive vice president of TM One, reiterated today’s themes of the power of knowing, a human-centred approach to transformation, and powerful design thinking.

“To stay ahead of the game, we have to continue to transform and embrace new frontiers. Bringing about the quantum leap for our digital services rests firstly on AI, which is definitely our BFF! AI is a competitive necessity for all businesses, driving new levels of efficiency for businesses of all sizes. According to IDC, 40% of SEA firms have adopted AI to some extent, with another 37% planning to in the next five years.” - Shazurawati Abd Karim

Furthermore, she said the adoption of AI, if properly implemented, could add US$1 trillion by 2030 to Southeast Asia’s GDP, according to a Kearney study.

“Already AI is part of our everyday daily life,” said Shazurawati, citing examples including navigation apps such as Waze, Google Maps, Food Panda, and pandemic related apps. AI is also key in detecting malicious cybersecurity threats.

She also expects that the coming of 5G will engender a further boost to machine learning and AI capabilities, enabling faster predictive analysis and decision-making. “IDC research suggests that with investments in IoT, enterprises can yield improvements in business operations by at least of 30%, and the enhancement of employee safety and security with better monitoring of health and safety targets.”

Many of the benefits are applicable across multiple sectors. In Smart agriculture, the use of sensors on farms to monitor growth metrics such as temperature and moisture levels are driving significant improvements in yield.

Another key for enterprise is the use of mobile apps, which have achieved ‘fashion necessity’ status, Shazurawati said. “Mobile applications now every aspect of daily life. According to Statista, worldwide mobile app downloads are increasing to 161 billion by 2023. Mobile phones currently account for 70% of all user traffic.”

“Today, 42% of adult population have used at least one on-demand service — for food, groceries, medicine & parcel deliveries, and on-demand B2B services. In 2022, we will embrace more on-demand services — and businesses must adapt to this dynamic demand in digital services.”

Moving forward, Shazurawati urged enterprises to fundamentally manage change in digital services by (a) adopt scale agile practices, processes and mindset, and (b) to embrace digital coalition and co-creation, and to be responsive to change and to pivot to a cloud-first principle to be future ready.

Indeed, digitalisation has forged new ways of continuing business and conduct much of daily life globally. And Malaysia is clearly prioritising transformation in its national development plan (RMK12) with the country's government envisions that the digital economy will contribute 25.5% of the country's gross domestic product (GDP) by 2025.

The provisioning of enough of the right skills and talent will also be critical. According to Corsera's 2021 global skills report, Malaysia is considered competitive on a broad level with 57% proficiency, ranking 46th globally and fourth in Southeast Asia. But we have a lot more work to do as the report also reveals that Malaysia lags neighbours such as Singapore (#10), Vietnam (#20), and Indonesia (#45).

Digital technologies have a pivotal role in shaping a future that must be tempered by human needs and aspirations. TM One's efforts to enable Malaysia's trajectory into a future-ready nation calls for the delicate balancing of a human-centred focus with applied digital technologies, such an approach will prove vital to empower robust recovery and growth.

This feature article was first published on Disruptive Asia.

The post Deep Dive: Into the Human Heart of Malaysia’s Digital Transformation appeared first on TM One.

During the TM Leap Summit 2021, we heard about aspects such as the power of knowing, a human-centred approach for transformation and design thinking. Here is a quick summary of our top five picks required to reshape our digital services strategies.

#1 Artificial intelligence is our forever companion

AI is a competitive necessity driving new levels of efficiency and performance for businesses of all sizes. According to IDC, 14% of Southeast Asian firms have adopted AI to some extent, with another 37% planning to adopt it in the next five years. Additionally, an EDBI and Kearney assessment of ASEAN nations forecasted AI to add USD 1 trillion¹ to the region’s GDP if properly implemented. AI is already part and parcel of our lives. AI enables apps like Google Maps, Waze and Foodpanda, and we also see the technology in chatbots and digital marketing tool use cases.

The use of AI in cybersecurity applications is also growing. The ASEAN Post suggests that Southeast Asian companies may suffer a loss of USD180 billion to USD365 billion over the next few years due to massive data breaches. However, AI-powered cybersecurity technologies can collect data from various sources and digital networks. They use algorithms to spot trends and flag up potentially malicious threats.

5G and IoT applications will further fuel the usage of AI.

#2 Mobile app is the enterprise’s best fashion accessory

Mobile apps have made their way to every sector covering all aspects of modern life. According to Statista, worldwide mobile app downloads will reach 161 billion by 2023. Mobile phones already account for 70% of all user traffic. Interestingly, about 42% of the adult population have used at least one on-demand service app in their lifetimes, such as food, grocery, and parcel delivery.

The demand for application-based on-demand services will become more assertive in 2022. It will expand to other categories such as fuel delivery, medicine delivery, etc. One of the leading drivers would be growing momentum for on-demand services in the B2B space. Consequently, it becomes important for businesses to differentiate and compete in the market.

#3 The digital gap will always be there

There are two key approaches to manage the constant changes in digital services:

• Adopting agile practices at scale help businesses to respond to the changes with speed and the quick thinking required to mitigate alterations. Thus, agility at scale is fundamental for an enterprise’s digital transformation and service development.
• Secondly, embrace digital coalition and co-creation. A digital coalition between enterprises and digital service providers is a powerful way to co-create sustainable and impactful solutions. This practice allows the building of solutions that is aligned to the strategic objectives of an enterprise, leveraging on the strength of digital talents across all parties.

#4 Cloud-powered future

Cloud will serve as a key driver to navigate innovation, new business models, new revenue streams, and most importantly, to create the ultimate customer experience. By 2025, nearly all companies will have a cloud-first approach, and we can expect cloud spend to surpass non-cloud spend. To compete with digital giants, it has become a necessity for enterprises to shift their focus towards platform-based business models. Capital UK projects that 80% of organisations will migrate to cloud hosting and colocation services by 2025. Shift to the cloud will also enable organisations to connect to a vast ecosystem of partners and suppliers that offer an extensive array of digital solutions and services.

#5 Level up your IT budget

Irrespective of the industry you are operating in, you cannot ignore investments in technology. Spending on technology can also help in differentiating your products and services. There is an expectation for technology to reach 20% of the total operating costs by 2023, and technology spending as a portion of revenue could range from 6.2% to 8%.

By and large CIOs report less than 15% of their technology budget for fostering innovation. We recommend successful companies set aside at least 20 to 25% of their IT spending to reimagine value creation and discover new ways to disrupt the status quo. As far as costs are concerned, taking a hybrid approach of outsourcing some of the digital services is be the best solution to sustain digital transformation efforts without dissipating technology budgets.

TM One empowers enterprises and the public sector human centered transformation forward by harnessing the power of IR 4.0, AI, IoT, and big data through our robust building blocks of cloud, cybersecurity, smart services, connectivity solutions, data centre, and professional services, along with our many leading global partners.

Reference:
https://www.kearney.com/digital/article/?/a/racing-toward-the-future-artificial-intelligence-in-southeast-asia

The post Demystifying Emerging Digital Services appeared first on TM One.

Manoj Menon, Founder & Managing Director, Twimbit ignited the discussion for the panel members around emerging technologies, evolving digital landscapes, and most importantly, human centricity, placed at the core of it all. 

Here are key highlights from the discussion:

#1 Providing a human-centric experience is the fundamental key to success across industries

Kobe beautifully explained the leadership styles of Steve Jobs and Tim Cook who emphasised and focused on the human outcome. As such, it is crucial to understand — what drives human behaviour?

Kobe mentioned that the right strategy behind building an emotional connection with people can result in exponential business outcomes. But ultimately, the tactics you apply narrow down to the experience your customer has with a product or service. According to McKinsey, 80% of "word of mouth" is generated by experience. The human outcome should therefore be at the top, even before you strategise. By doing so, you can instil your values at every touchpoint with clear communication, create greater engagement for your brand and, in turn, develop a positive emotional connection with your customer.

He highlighted that an essential aspect of human centricity is in differentiating your products; not to emulate what the competition is doing.

In the Malaysian context, Shamsul shared that citizens will soon be able to enjoy human-centered experiences in the form of unified public services via a national Super App. ASEAN companies have a greater focus on investment in technology as opposed to non-technological aspects like emotions and human behaviour.

#2 Building trust is a powerful way to deliver frictionless services

According to Steve Jobs, ‘Brands are only about one thing, and that’s trust.’ Apple is a great example that has demonstrated this trust with how it secures people’s information. Embracing an innovation led business model requires companies to enable the democratization of data. But this needs to be done with a strong emphasis on aspects like data governance and security.

Sudev highlighted that be it the governments or the organisations that possess data in abundance, planning for innovation should have security as high priority. Governments in many countries, including Malaysia, aim to unify services from all departments in one place. Thus, it becomes vital to have a technology capable of building trust to deliver frictionless services. The government of Malaysia is planning to roll out a biometric-based national digital ID for its citizens. This will give rise to many data sharing needs, which will bring security to the forefront.

#3 Workforce upskilling in transformative times need permanent conditioning of the human behaviour

We are living in a very fast-paced transformative time. It is essential to train the human brain to be able to accept changes with an open mindset. Indeed, there is a need for upskilling and reskilling, but what should be the approach for doing it right?

• Look at the current capabilities; from there, you can see opportunities to proliferate with the current skillsets. It is equally important to be future-ready and evolve those skill sets into new, incoming technologies.
• Leadership plays an essential role in creating space for the upskilled to use their talent immediately. Leaders should also monitor to ensure that upskilling efforts do not dissipate.
• There is a need to inculcate dynamic stability, which means that created skills should be able to respond to a rapidly changing world, rather than being fearful of those changes.

#4 Organisations need to think about a next-generation operating system for effective collaboration across teams

Even today, the operating systems, i.e., organization structures of companies are disconnected from the latest working styles. They are still limited to function-based models, working more like traditional industries. Companies need to look outside their industries to build these next-generation operating systems. The ability of a business to break its shell and look at where the world is heading is crucial for it to have the edge over its competition.

Breaking silos could create more room for collaboration. For example, job descriptions that are just restricted to a particular set of responsibilities, will never create an opportunity for collaboration.

To build effective collaboration across various teams, there is a need for effective two-way communication. Organisations should be able to communicate the value they are delivering successfully. The next-generation operating models should also unfold improved models for hiring people.

The post UX: The Design of Everyday Things appeared first on TM One.

Here are the 4 major key takeaways from her presentation:

Elements for digital transformation to thrive

Shivvy Jervis highlighted that 60-70% of digital transformation programs fail. Therefore, it becomes necessary to understand the factors that can help implement a successful human-centred business.

To achieve digitalisation, the organisation must go beyond just relying on the tech team. Going digital is beyond an IT challenge; organisations looking to adopt it must bring leadership from different business lines together. This will enable the technical leadership to understand the bigger agenda of the organisation. Also, the people implementing it must feel equipped with all the resources required to deal with those digital developments.

Secondly, organisations should invest in upskilling people. It must focus on finding the right talent capable of scaling the digitalisation.

The moral economy, as the name suggests, is all about an organisation’s morals, ethics and code of conduct towards its employees and communities in which they operate and society at large. Organisations acknowledging all their stakeholders have a better success rate as they do not miss on reassessing the values they stand for, particularly generations that make up the current talent. They also tend to attract top talent compared to their competitors.

Jervis advised, key decision-makers to consider looking at a non-linear timeline. Having a non-linear timeline allows you to plot the short and long term in parallel. It allows you to factor in multiple variables during the digital transformation, enabling you to predict and anticipate future scenarios.

Adaptive AI: Giving social intelligence to coding

Giving social intelligence to code simply means giving digital tools a sense of how humans behave or think. In other words, it is about equipping digital tools with cognition capabilities that understand human needs. For example, e-commerce bots or virtual assistants would understand the situation context of what we want.

Over the coming years, we can witness more and more use cases of adaptive AI emerging within digital tools like Alexa, Siri, Google Cortana, data science dashboards.

The level of complexity of these use cases is also going to evolve. For instance, it could be as advanced as a business intelligence tool learning about your working style, the integration of adaptive AI into road safety software that can read our levels of distraction and fatigue to keep us safer behind the wheel, or an integration in upskilling and e-learning platforms that adapt to each of our unique ways of learning.

While adoption of AI is great, Jervis suggests the industry be mindful of digital integrity and data privacy when designing these digital tools.

Next-Gen IoT: An internet of senses

Combining 5G capabilities such as high-speed connectivity, low latency with different technological advancements like immersive reality will unlock the full potential of 5G. This will lead to an evolution of connectivity called the Internet of Things.

The use of IoT in cities is fascinating. Breakthroughs happened through connected sensors capable of tracking air pollution, the gathering of live data from traffic, and helping road users to increase safety and also give them warnings of hazards in advance.

The digital twin model is like having a digital replica of our own body where you can test all sorts of health and fitness endurance activities on it before we do them in reality. The digital twin model, therefore, if applied to cities, can indeed have a transformative impact. The replica for cities can be created down to the last detail, with information feeding into those servers and systems that are coming in live from all the servers that are connected to different sources of information. It can then virtually test how certain changes would affect the city in real life.

Robotic surgery is another use case that demonstrates the use of sensors by the doctor at one end, and the exact procedure replicated by a robotic arm at the other end.

Next, is the internet of bodies which safely connects our bodies to internet connectivity. An example is digital pills with connected sensors that are swallowable and made of digestible material. These indeed are seeing development and the approval of the FDA. The digital pill via sensors can give you any warning signs (such as heart attacks, seizures) to our devices. This will allow us to take preventive action to mitigate serious illness.

Digital transformation should be an inclusive process

Finally, when we examine the impact of the fourth industrial revolution, Shivvy believes that we are currently at more than halfway through. Organisations should create people-oriented programmes during the transformation process. They should focus on society’s expectations and profit moving at the same pace to fix pain points before to manage roadblocks to digital adoption.

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The past 18 months of the COVID- 19 pandemic has proven that in the face of adversity, we have opportunities as well. People have learnt not just to survive, but to strive. The lessons from these challenging times are both valuable and profound, digitalisation being one of them.

The world is all set to move beyond the fringes of digitalisation to make it a way of life. All have become possible through digital tools, from working remotely to hybrid models. Not only our working styles, but even the way we conduct businesses, fast-changing customer expectations have evolved to digital experiences, which has led digital platforms to become the preferred choice for all.

Seamless digital journey and personalisation is the new normal

It has now become crucial for us to understand consumer behaviour through insights and intelligence. Doing so enables us to cater for our customers with personalised services. We call it the ‘Power of Knowing’.The establishment of a relationship between human intelligence and artificial intelligence is a true version of the power of knowing:

• AI is to assist us in filtering, processing, and deciphering the huge amounts of data and information gathered from day-to-day business operations. Human intelligence is required to interpret the data, utilising it in ways that will delight the customer.

• Predicting the future with our intuitions by leveraging the existing data on consumer trends.

The changing needs of Malaysians guide TM’s journey to human-centred technology company

TM is a national institution, one that has served you for many decades. Throughout this period, we've evolved from a telecommunications provider to a convergence player, and we are now on a journey to become a human-centred technology company.

The changing needs of our customers guide us on our journey. This paradigm shift is essential for us to continue to play our part in empowering a digital Malaysia. In the next three years, we will continue to invest in our people, infrastructure, and technology to be ready for the next wave of innovation that will come, especially in digital solutions that shall deliver a delightful customer experience.

Over the past decade, TM invested over RM 22.4billion in digital connectivity and infrastructure. We have deployed an extensive state-of-the-art network with over 640,000 fibre cables (equivalent to 16 times the circumference of the Earth), alongside the expansion of solutions into cloud and security. As soon as Malaysia moves into a 5G-enabled future, our network will be ready to serve retail customers, enterprises, as well as the public sector:

• By bringing efficiencies into our processes and operations with the right balance between human and artificial intelligence (with an RPA-like technology), we have automated 230,000 hours of tasks at TM. Digital means have also enabled us to introduce a hybrid working model, empowering our employees to take control of their time while still being productive in their work at TM.

• Providing digital services to our customers is an outcome of optimising our systems, technologies, solutions, and capabilities to, most importantly, address the human over anything else.

• We also continue to demonstrate our capabilities to work closely with our customers to understand their needs better from operational and human perspectives. For example, in the Energy sector, we are collaborating with our customers to make unmanned platforms a reality. Similarly, in the manufacturing sector, we are working closely with our customers to enable advanced factory automation.

Championing digitalisation requires us to take a collaborative approach

Technology in isolation cannot lead to digitalisation on its own. There is an equal need to focus on upskilling talent in various technologies like cloud, cybersecurity and analytics. This can happen in three ways. Firstly, through the upskilling of our current workforce. The second is by hiring highly skilled digital talents from leading global technology companies, and finally, certainly collaborating through JVs or even the acquisition of technology companies to support our aspirations, and yours too.

As leaders, we will continue to find the best path forward for the organisation and our nation. We need to find new ways to marry technology and human curiosity with forward-thinking leadership to fast track our country's digitalisation journey. This journey will require the coming together of Malaysians, corporations and the government with technology partners like TM One in an open and innovative digital coalition, one that I believe will benefit everyone.

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In hindsight, Covid-19 has accelerated digital transformation for better or worst. Nonetheless, not all employees found it seamless to transition into the new digital workforce.

As the dynamic of this new era of work requires employees to be tech-savvy and agile with minimum supervision, on the receiving end, our organisation need to embrace the open culture and look beyond digital tools.

Being the enabler of Malaysia digital transformation, here are three essentials on how we at TM One support our employee digital journey.

1. Wolf leadership: Leading from the pack

The battle cry for new ways of working in the digital age must start at the top. At TM, GCEO Imri Mokhtar signalled the company's digital transformation when he introduced 'Ini Cara Kita' to set in motion NEW TM initiatives.

This initiative will equip 'Warga TM' with the right culture, talent and necessary skills as we re-invent to catapult TM and TM One towards a Human-Centred Technology company.

We had set in stone a talent management framework to support Warga TM, where we will have a one-on-one career conversation and individual development plan with each employee at every level to support their digital journey.

Being the forefront of Malaysia digital enabler, Warga TM is forged with future skills in 5G, Software Defined Networking (SDN), Network Function Visualisation (NFV), IoT, Robotics and AI to act as the national execution engine.

True leaders make leaders, or in our case, 'Digital Leaders'. TM Elite graduate programme and other leadership programme is structured not only to provide a holistic overview of the new digital era but to hone the next digital leaders. Our employee will get the chance to get involved in high priority projects while being exposed to the new digital workforce culture.

2. Building the right culture

Why does most legacy organisation suffer from slowness and drudgery that come with unnecessary bureaucracy?

And what make start-ups so effective? Was it the bean bag at Google office? The free sneakers and bottomless coke at Facebook? or the unlimited vacation policy at Netflix?

These are part of the perks, but certainly not the differentiating factors. Start-up biggest competitive advantage is their agility. It's how fast they attack problems and mobilise talent to address client issues without waiting for layers of approval.

Start-up agility often contributed to the employee versatility to take on multiple roles, which required them to understand how other business units function. As most employees have this peripheral vision and ride on the same wavelength, employees are often empowered to take an executive decision, thus trust comes as a natural selection.

Nonetheless, a tayloristic hierarchical structure is needed when an organisation expands to a certain size and often carries the legacy DNA along with it. Just as DNA can mutate and adapt to its surroundings, organisations can model a start-up’s to ‘Agile at Scale’ by adjusting its structure.

'Ini Cara Kita' is our cultural statement in addressing the issue.

3. Collaboration tools

Like an athlete who needs more advanced equipment to reach new heights, organisations need to equip their employees with the proper collaboration tools to keep up with these new business imperatives; speed to market, mobility and globalisation.

Since the pandemic, platforms like Zoom and Microsoft Teams saw a significant increase in daily meeting participants and daily active users. In fact, both IDC and Forbes see 50% of global businesses expect to increase spending on collaboration software in 20211.

According to a survey done by Harvard Business Review, 63% of 315 respondents rated Cloud and file sync/sharing as the most effective collaboration tools while videoconferencing and content management portals come second at 58% each2.

These services enable integration across departments which supports a more open, trust-based culture. We see varying advantages of supporting employees with these tools, from better work productivity and project management to stronger cross-border networking and employee relationships. Ultimately, the objective is not more collaboration but greater collaboration efficiency.

For an organisation to run successfully, every team member has an assigned role, just like every wolf in the pack has a role to play where each role is crucial to the team success. While entering this new paradigm, organisations need to be cognizant of their employee pace as some will require time to settle in.

The post DEMYSTIFY TECHNOLOGY: Supporting Your Employees in Their Digital Transformation Journey – Suhaimi Sulong appeared first on TM One.

For a stakeholder economy to thrive, digital transformation is key. Leveraging the potential of change will not only benefit shareholders but offers new opportunities to employees, customers, government, suppliers and the planet.

Today, we will focus on a key stakeholder, “the employee” and how their experience must take centre stage in all digital transformations (DX). Merely a shift towards serving employees better, can be key to unlocking more DX wins. Asmadi Md. Saleh, Chief Strategy Officer, TM One shares with us his view on the 5 key strategies in ensuring a successful Digital Transformation.

Here are five (5) employee experience (EX) dimensions to ascertain a successful digital transformation.

1. Building tech talent

Digitally transformed companies often come out the other end of the change process with renewed capabilities and an economic moat. That’s because executing a digital strategy requires companies to integrate technology platforms and talent into existing business processes.

The latter is harder to build and develop but provides essential support for long-term digital growth aspirations. This is why companies with gaps in skills and expertise either collaborate with key partners or build capabilities in-house. Notably, 44% of top companies are already prepared to spend more on attracting, managing and improving their tech talent pipeline.

For companies with existing capabilities, being able to retrain and upskill employees is a blessing in disguise (reskilling is cheaper than hiring). Treat talent as scarcer than any new technology stack or capital injection and leverage the greatness in people to champion a successful digital journey.

2. Democratising innovation

As the industry-wide shift towards digital continues, organizations need to scale up their digital transformation efforts to get ahead. Most CEOs start their digital roadmaps with priority on developing or adopting next-gen technologies. This traditional mindset creates a top-down approach to innovation that only ever looks good on paper. With research suggesting that nearly 90% of all innovation labs, teams or projects fail, companies need to ‘go outside the box’ to rethink and drive innovation success at scale.

A powerful first move must enable the decentralization of creativity and freedom to experiment. Empower every division, department and employee with the willingness to innovate and automate their legacy work processes. Innovation across horizontals, but practiced within governance and compliance parameters, is emerging as a crucial factor for successful digital transformations. As the Marissa Mayer saying goes “when you need to innovate, you need to collaborate”.

3. The digital employee

With lockdowns closing office doors, the workplace has been forced out of shape and employees are adapting to new ways of work. Several global studies have shown that remote work is a sustainable solution to the overwhelming stress faced by younger generations.

Millennials and Gen Zs are piling into the digital workforce and are bringing along with them, new sets of skills and values that need to be acknowledged. In fact, companies are starting to see the positives of operating a remote workforce, with lowered business expenses being the most prominent. Aiming to build a strong foundation for digital transformation, companies need to prioritize the provision of necessary tools for remote workers. Only with a mobile workplace that is safe, secure and compliant can they thrive and produce results to fuel the digital transformation strategy.

4. Employee as a customer

Similar to how customers drive organizations to do better and deliver value, employees are increasingly recognized as stakeholders in the business. We see organisations implementing the same 360o approach of analysing customer engagement in utilising employee data and analytics capabilities. A more robust approach towards improving employee experience will evoke a greater sense of belonging and drive employee retention. Studies have shown that increases in employee engagement leads to better customer service, revenue growth and sustainable business performance. Apart from improving KPIs, treating employees as customers will create an attractive organisation that prioritizes connection and collaboration. Engage in those two-way conversations with employees and the success of digital transformations will come naturally.

5. Reimagining employee journeys

Employees are the heart and soul of every organization. It is essential that all organizations envision and map out the employee journey from the point of the interview stage all the up to being an alumni. Better yet, companies now have that golden opportunity to reimagine and redesign those employee touch-points. Organizational silos can now be torn down and replaced with agile remote teams, working towards a common goal. One good place to start is the onboarding process. Done well, new employees are greeted into the company as a whole, not within a departmental island. Aligning individual success to a collective success will help create a community of high performers. Effective nurturing and development of employee journeys will open a floodgate of innovation opportunities and successful digital transformation.

The post TRENDS & DIGITAL STRATEGY: 5 Employee Experience Considerations for a Successful Digital Transformation appeared first on TM One.

Digital transformation continues to be the number one topic in Southeast Asia, especially as business leaders ramp up digital initiatives to face off disruptions arising from the Covid-19 pandemic.

According to Gartner, worldwide IT spending in 2021 is expected to grow by 4% in 2021, totalling US$3.8 trillion. Meanwhile, IDC's 2020 Digital SMB Pulse Survey confirms that more than 90% of small and medium businesses in Asia Pacific increased their reliance on technologies in the search for increased market share, customer engagement, and higher employee morale - and of course to enable remote working.

However, analysts point out the road to a digital-first strategy to transform processes, business models, and organisational culture brings up critical stumbling blocks. Right at the outset, business leaders face the problem of making the right choices within a bewildering scenario of rapidly evolving technologies, information security concerns, and other shifting economic patterns.

And while setting up remote work, e-payments and teleconferencing are a solid start, there is much more to the business of digital technology than meets the eye - such as correctly understanding and unlocking the best uses from automation, artificial intelligence (AI), the internet of things (IoT), and big data analytics, among others.

On top of that, another leading consulting firm Deloitte highlights in its 2021 Tech Trends report that: “Exploring technology trends individually is no longer enough to stay ahead. Organisations are deploying them in concert to create a foundation for innovation that can propel their business into the future.”

Even more critical, a Boston Consulting Group white paper warns that successful digital transformations are rare but getting that certain factors right can flip the odds of success from 30% to 80%.

Speed to market

Another Boston Consulting Group study of more than 200 companies said that “digital leaders achieved 1.8x higher earnings growth than digital laggards - and more than double the growth in total enterprise value."

No wonder that dependency on technology and digital solutions is growing as businesses compete to increase market share, customer engagement and to stay resilient in these challenging times.

The key message is that whether you run a small or medium business or work in a larger enterprise, you no longer have the luxury of time or resources to explore new technologies - one by one.

To ramp up the speed to market, discerning business leaders are turning to partnerships as a preferred approach. As a one-stop centre for businesses, TM ONE is an ideal partner for the transformation journey through the key digital steps of cloud, cybersecurity and smart services that we provide.

Step One: Cloud computing at the heart of transformation

The first digital key - cloud computing has proved to be the flexible answer to problems of how to enable remote working during pandemic lockdowns. More employees than ever before are using cloud-powered applications such as Google Workspace, iCloud and of course email.

Even before this, on a business level, cloud computing occupied a powerful role in fast tracking the digitalisation of both the private and public sectors. According to IDC, Southeast Asia’s cloud computing market is growing and is expected to be worth USD40.32 billion by 2025. Reflecting this trend, the Singapore sovereign fund recently announced plans to invest USD3.9 billion in building a data centre portfolio to respond to the booming cloud computing demand.

When the pandemic caught much of the world off guard last year, the Malaysian government, for example, was able to quickly scale its digital capabilities via cloud computing and disperse relief funds to vast numbers of businesses in need.

The same holds true for education ministries around the world that had to quickly upscale online learning with limited in-house digital infrastructure. In countries like Mexico, cloud computing mixed with AI was able to monitor hospital waiting rooms at a time when medical resources were overstretched.

Another prime public sector example, the government of Malaysia has said its Cloud First strategy aims to move 80% of public data to private-public cloud systems by the end of next year, as part of a move to improve the efficiency of its services.

Offering cost-effective, easily scalable, high-speed digital infrastructure, TM ONE – the enterprise and public sector business solutions arm of Telekom Malaysia Berhad – is the only Malaysian provider selected to help build this necessary infrastructure in the coming months in a group that includes Amazon, Google and Microsoft.

In addition to government ministries, TM ONE delivers cloud computing services to healthcare organisations and financial institutions, all of which understand the importance of digitalisation to stay competitive, secure and resilient in an age which demands greater agility and resilience.

LEARN MORE: Read TM ONE cloud e-book on how digitalisation will impact the region.

Produced by Going Places & SilverKris for TM ONE

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