COVID Made Me Do It! Our New Ways of Living in the Age of Digital Transformation
What’s New about Post-COVID? Digitisation Growth in APAC is 10 Years Ahead
Digital transformation contributes to more advanced operations in different sectors and the pandemic has catalysed this transformation across the globe.
A recent report by McKinsey & Company compared the global digitisation rate before and after the COVID-19. 80% of respondents said customers are more digital-driven in the age of the new normal, particularly in the financial, social, healthcare and security services industries. Cities in Asia-Pacific, especially, leverage the advantages of digitisation to boost socio-economic development and accelerate the growth of digitisation by 10 years, compared to the pre-crisis period.
How do Governments in Asia Integrate Digitisation to Boost Post-Covid Economy?
Japan Society 5.0
Concept of Society 5.0, photo from Financial Times
Japan is renowned for its advanced technological development, yet many Japanese corporates still position technology investment as a cost rather than an investment. When COVID-19 hit the world, the Japanese government realised the country has been slow to embrace digital transformation and lack digital competitiveness. Hence they envisioned transforming the country to Society 5.0 – Super Smart City, which aims to integrate digitisation in consideration of citizens’ needs.
Under such initiative, the Japanese government enacted the Super City Law and adopted six bills to implement digital transformation in information systems and digital services of the government. The cities selected to be the Super Cities will adopt AI and Big Data in areas such as transportation, healthcare and education. The digitisation projects were deployed across urban cities and rural areas to involve every citizen in the country to embrace digital transformation.
Taking the AI-based taxi-sharing application, a pilot digitisation project at Arao on Kyushu Island, Japan, as an example. It offers a digital solution for users to find the optimal routes with the most efficient cost and time. In post-pandemic Japan, digital transformation of the country will be its priority to create sustainable economic growth.
Singapore’s Road towards Smart Financial Centre
As more B2B and B2C businesses shift to the digital market during the pandemic, blockchain as a distributed ledger technology (DLT) that ensures transparency and security, helps companies to create trusts and security for trading in the digital world.
Announced last year, the Singaporean government invested S$12 million in its Singapore Blockchain Innovation Programme (SBIP) to develop and commercialise the adoption of blockchain technology by companies. The pandemic revealed the need to strengthen trusts and relationships amongst business industries in Singapore. The programme will prioritise blockchain development in international trade, logistics and the supply chain to support companies in growing the blockchain community.
Another blockchain-related initiative, Project Ubin, gathered a group of financial institutions based in Singapore, such as the DBS Bank, to collaborate with the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) to develop blockchain technology on financial services and lead Singapore to become a Smart Financial Centre. The Project Ubin aims to evaluate the implication of tokenizing the Singapore Dollar with DLT, to reduce risk and costs for the cross-border payments (Payment-vs-Payment) and securities transaction.
How do Businesses Thrive with Digital Transformation?
Bringing Remote Working to the Next Level
Wearing Nreal MR Glasses at home office, photo from Cnet
Remote working is another by-product under the influence of COVID-19. 93% of respondents in the mentioned report experienced significant changes of experience in remote working and collaborations including efficiency in work and high response rate, and these companies responded to the crisis 20 to 25 times faster than expected. Yet, the lack of interaction between teammates could be an issue, particularly for cross-department collaboration.
With that in mind, a Chinese tech start-up Nreal has marked the history of first mixed reality (MR) hardware in collaboration with workspaces apps, potentially a solution to solve the limitation of remote working. This MR start-up has launched the Nreal Light MR glasses and collaborated with the intelligent working platforms apps – Spatial and DingTalk Workspace. Users with Nreal MR glasses would be able to combine remote communication platforms with 3D virtual working environments, which provides a new experience for employees who work from home. Nreal expanded its partnership with LG in South Korea last year and prepares to launch its products in the US and Europe. The development of MR glasses indicates a huge potential for digital innovation to revolutionise the traditional working system.
Strengthening the Shield of Cybersecurity
Prior to the pandemic, the rise in the subscription-based economy has made Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) favourable. Virtualisation and cloud technologies especially played an important role in companies’ responses to the pandemic, by providing sustainable digital solutions and centralising its data management efficiently for businesses needs and remote working systems.
Horangi is a SaaS cybersecurity company based in Singapore, that provides product innovation and digital solutions to protect and optimise cloud-based organisations across Southeast Asia. In the wake of the acceleration in serving digital-first consumers, cybersecurity SaaS has become essential to remediate the vulnerabilities of digital infrastructure. For example, the company provides Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) to identify organisations’ security blind spots and to enhance its resiliency to cyber threats.
Beyond Covid - How would Digital Transformation Linger?
COVID-19 has catalysed the imperative of digital transformation and the need of technology-driven strategy. McKinsey & Company’s report highlighted ‘changing customer needs or expectations’, ‘increase in remote working’ and ‘increasing migration of assets to the cloud’ are the top 3 phenomena that are most likely to stick through the post-COVID period.
This notion of adopting digital transformation technology is indeed not new, but the pandemic has refocused and accelerated its need over the past year. Significant increase in investment to fuel digital transformation projects, such as the acceptance of e-signature by banks worldwide, proves that we all are thriving in the new normal with digitisation.
How could Marketers Tap on Digital Transformation to Reach Niche Audiences?
Leveraging data is the key to strive in the wave of digital transformation, and for data-driven marketing agencies like us at Comms8, it is fundamental to integrate data-based information into inbound marketing strategies, to deliver the right message at the right time to the right audience.
For example, marketers use programmatic advertising on social media platforms to reach niche audience groups and analyse data. Through identifying the audience's demographic characteristics, location, search behaviours and so on, it provides a cost-efficient campaign and drives long-term impact on the brands, businesses and community. That said, traditional and digital marketing does not operate exclusively from each other. Marketers could leverage traditional marketing methods and performance by using digital marketing strategies to strengthen the campaigns’ effectiveness and enhance the brand's presence in the new online-to-offline world.
