Digital Transformer

Piramal Glass is a global specialist in glass packaging design, production, and decoration for businesses in the pharmaceutical, cosmetics and perfumery, and specialty food and beverage industries. The company offers complete end-to-end glass packaging solutions in over 50 countries, with its design, production, and decoration footprint in the United States, India, and Sri Lanka having an overall capacity of 1,375 tons daily and using 12 furnaces and 60 production lines. With glass container production a continuous complex manufacturing process with over 150 variables, Piramal Glass has custom-developed Real-Time Manufacturing Insights (RTMI), a smart manufacturing platform, to gain live visibility into operations and analyze defects and losses at various stages. This initiative is at the core of the company’s overall digital transformation (DX) to transform itself into an insights-driven organization, led by customer centricity and operational excellence and imbibed with a digital–as–a–fabric perspective. The company has also built a partner ecosystem that provides best-in-class solutions by leveraging analytics, Internet of Things (IoT), cloud, and security and constantly introducing upskilling programs and initiatives for employees, making them future-ready. To date, Piramal Glass has analyzed over 200 million data points from 4,000 sensors and equipment, achieving production efficiency. 

The MTR Corporation recognizes the fast-changing business landscape and new possibilities of evolving digital technologies. Under its corporate digital strategy, 11 digital road maps were formulated for various business domains, with the “Digital Road Map for Intelligent Customer Lifestyle Platform“ as one of the key initiatives focused on customer engagement and experience. The road map was crafted with support from top management and backed by a cross-functional agile team of IT and 10 diverse business units. The full-fledged strategy defines a three-year program for four perspectives: artificial intelligence (AI) and data-driven personalized services and offerings to customers; an intelligent loyalty platform to deepen customer engagement and smart mobility features for customers‘ end-to-end journey; and advancement of a digital culture within the organization. The road map was formulated with design thinking workshops to identify the needs of customers, and a series of digital projects was initiated and implemented with an agile approach. In addition, MTR launched a series of activities, such as AI contests and data workshops, to promote the adoption of digital solutions into business functions. With the three-year program, MTR commits to be the industry pioneer in enhancing customer experience using digital technologies and support Smart City developments in Hong Kong and the Greater Bay Area. 

Since entering China in 1993, AstraZeneca China has been committed to meeting China’s increasing healthcare needs by continuously focusing on science innovations. It focuses on therapeutic areas, such as respiratory, cardiovascular, metabolic, oncology, gastrointestinal, and renal diseases. In 2017, AstraZeneca China’s Healthcare Internet of Things Innovation Center was established in Wuxi. Two years later, AstraZeneca China announced to co-build the Wuxi International Life Science Innovation Campus with the Wuxi government, partnering with China International Capital Corporation (CICC) to establish a global healthcare industrial fund. AstraZeneca China’s business in the country continues to grow, with an increase of 26% in 2019, and it has become the number 1 multinational pharmaceutical company in China. Adhering to the value of patient centricity, AstraZeneca China is dedicated to transforming from a traditional pharmaceutical company to a platform that provides holistic disease management solutions. As a result, it has become a pioneer in global innovation and development, exporting Chinese innovations to the world. Leveraging advanced technologies, such as artificial intelligence (AI), big data, Internet of Things (IoT), 5G, and mobile internet, AstraZeneca China has established cross-sector partnerships in diagnosis, devices, and digitization at home and abroad to co-create integrated diagnosis and treatment solutions that derive from the unmet needs of patients in the whole process of screening, diagnosis, treatment, and follow-up of diagnosis and treatment, ultimately individuals worldwide.

Countdown has a long history of pioneering digital grocery in New Zealand since it has launched online shopping nearly 25 years ago. In 2018, the CountdownX business unit was established to ensure that the organization remained at the forefront of technological advancements through continuous innovation. CountdownX brought together online shopping, payments, digital marketing, loyalty rewards, and IT teams. In February 2020, New Zealand recorded its first COVID-19 case, which drove Countdown’s biggest online business transformation. Demonstrating its ability to adapt quickly to huge surges in demand, Countdown increased online grocery delivery capacity by 60% and registered more than 120,000 Kiwis who were most at risk of COVID-19 in online shopping Priority Assistance Service, which was developed and launched within five days. Countdown has also registered 200,000 new online shopping customers and has opened New Zealand’s first dedicated supermarket estore, fulfilling 15,000 orders a week at full capacity. To keep up with the demand, Countdown employed over 2,000 workers to support its online shopping service and temporarily closed five stores and turned them into “dark stores” servicing only online orders. Countdown’s virtual assistant Olive was also introduced to relieve pressure on the customer care team by triaging customer queries with over 300,000 conversations in April 2020 alone. Countdown’s purpose is to make Kiwis’ lives a little better every day. Its online business transformation was focused on doing just that — harnessing the power of technology, data, and people to create better experiences for customers at a time when these are needed the most.

Changi Airport Group’s Digital Master Plan (DMP) is a business transformation program for the airport that has transformed Changi’s passenger experience and laid the foundation for Changi to be a Smart Airport of the future. The DMP helped Changi create a unified digital identity and presence by communicating to its passengers through streamlined, omni-channel content delivery and providing a revamped Changi mobile experience.

Changi leverages big data to deliver a personalized Changi experience for each of its passengers. By digitalizing core operations processes and gaining deep understanding of key operating imperatives, Changi has achieved improved operational anticipation and reaction, data-enabled resource planning, and a data-driven platform for collaboration and problem-solving.

To become a world-class sugar and bio-energy leader, the Mitr Phol Group began its digital transformation journey in September 2015 by combining its fully integrated agriculture business model with digital technologies. In line with Thailand’s 4.0 initiative, the Mitr Phol Group defined a World-Class Organization policy to guide the organization in achieving business transformation in a digital world, which includes the right talent management and technology implementation strategies. Through design thinking, the Mitr Phol Group developed a framework to redefine its business processes.

Digital technologies such as mobile devices, cloud, big data analytics, automation, and IoT sensors have been introduced in three main areas: supply chain management, plant maintenance, and inventory management, covering 33 plants across 18 companies within the Mitr Phol Group. Through digital transformation, the Mitr Phol Group has achieved THB 12 million in inventory cost savings, a system changing-over cost reduction of 84%, and increased customer satisfaction of 90%.

MTR is proactively enhancing Hong Kong’s railway transportation service to meet the shifting customer needs, through leveraging disruptive digital technologies, and strategically integrating them into our established business processes. A digitalization roadmap was formulated with a top down management approach to catalyze and ensure continuous delivery of these new technology projects, marketed externally via the ‘Rail Gen 2.0’ initiative.

With the rise of digital media and decline of the traditional newspaper, SCMP has turned to digital technologies to transform user experiences across digital marketing channels and geographies while ensuring security, reliability, and accessibility across multiple devices. New media consumption patterns, including “off-platform” content such as instant articles on social media, have prompted SCMP to begin its transformation using a cloud-based multi-channel content management system to facilitate content authoring and publishing through different channels, including web and mobile devices. In delivering news ahead of the competition, SCMP has captured a wider audience, tripling its readership since beginning digital transformation.

To respond to the disruption of the media industry’s traditional business model, SCMP has also begun to utilize advanced analytics to deepen its understanding of its readers, not just to grow reach and engagement through personalized content and targeted advertising, but also to generate insights for better-informed operational decisions and new, organization-wide KPIs for SCMP and drive business growth in the region and around the world.

Crafting authentic and immersive engagements is key to the insurance sector – both internally as well as externally. For a sector that is predominantly high on manual intervention at moments of truth, technology becomes a critical factor in orchestrating transformation. Bajaj Allianz leveraged AI and Machine Learning to deploy BOTs to transform the way the traditional insurance interacts with its internal and external customers; by delivering – conversational support to customers, instant information and overall ease and convenience. With a BOT based 24×7 support, Bajaj Allianz enabled end to end customer service and support across various facets of insurance and claims.

Cathay United Bank has reaffirmed the customer as the center of its business in its digital transformation journey. Through transformation of culture, services, and processes, Cathay United Bank aims to break silos within the business to foster collaboration for the creation of customer-centric products and services. For its culture transformation, the bank promotes diversity by recruiting digital-savvy employees from different industries to establish a Center of Excellence and User Experience team to work with the Digital Banking business unit, which has grown three times in size within two years.

Cathay United Bank has improved the digital experience of customers through the following: a brand-new version of its mobile app and website to simplify and enhance customer experience, fully automated prescreening for credit card applications, integration with LINE Business Connect to provide core financial services such as credit card application inquiry and fees payment, and more. The bank has also increased traffic to both desktop and mobile website, which is embedded with an AI-powered recommendation platform for financial services and specialized programs using data from its customer relationship management (CRM) and Sitecore Content Management System (CMS). The bank has also utilized robotic process automation to identify business processes that can be standardized. With transformation from both bottom-up and top-down approaches, the project has reaped huge benefits for the organization.

Launched in 2016, CIMB’s EVA (Enhanced Virtual Assistant) was developed by CIMB’s digital team to provide 24/7 access to a growing customer demand for a seamless mobile banking experience. Designed with an intuitive chat-based interface, CIMB EVA is integrated with the most frequently used core banking functionalities such as accounts checking, fund transfer, bills payment, and prepaid mobile reloads, combined with a messaging platform which allows users to receive instant transaction alerts and customized promotion updates.

CIMB EVA has also been enhanced with a Spend Analyzer feature in collaboration with FinTech partner Moneythor to provide intelligent recommendations to users and with Active.AI for deep learning-based natural language processing for improved query focus and more meaningful conversations with customers. Real-time data insights enable personalized and customized financial advice based on customer banking portfolio and spending patterns. To date, CIMB EVA has garnered over 212,000 downloads and has processed over 1.4 million transactions.

The Directorate General of Taxation has begun to leverage digital capabilities to introduce more efficient business processes, increase touch points with citizens and the number of taxpayers, detect fraudulent transactions, and improve transparency with the public.

In optimizing efficiency and effectiveness to collect tax revenue to support the growth of Indonesia’s economy, the Directorate General of Taxation aims to increase registered taxpayers and boost tax revenue by 50 percent in 2021.

ICA has revolutionized the passport application and collection processes from a manual-based model with a novel suite of solutions that turned the entire passport experience into a seamless, pleasurable one for all. From applying through the mail in 1994 to electronic internet application in 2002, from passport collection at post offices near home to self-service iCollect kiosk, ICA never tires in generating greater convenience to citizens.

Union Bank of the Philippines (UnionBank) is relentless in its pursuit to transform into a Digital Bank, with a culture of innovation and experimentation changing the way how the UnionBank engages with clients and employees alike. Digital transformation is evident in all aspects of the business with projects including the use of artificial intelligence in customer-facing chatbots, deployment of an open API strategy for its partners, and implementation of Robotic Process Automation in centralized backroom operations for the creation and submission of financial reports and in other tasks leading to a decrease of up 80% in processing time.

The bank has also given focus to improving customer experience through the launch of its new mobile app and website, which has driven customer interactions from 26% to 98% of all total customer interactions since 2017. Its most recent initiative is The Ark, UnionBank’s first fully digital lifestyle branch. The Ark champions an interactional experience rather than a transactional space, with features that allow customers to open new accounts in less than 10 minutes with virtual telling machines and apply for home and auto loans with augmented and virtual reality experiences.

The Astro Digital Transformation Program has transformed Astro into a customer-centric, digital-, cloud- and mobile-first, analytics-driven organization, achieved through inventive content formats, digitalization of current services, new digital services, revamped web and e-commerce platforms, integrated advertising solutions (TV, radio and digital products) and workforce productivity tools.

Through the program, Astro has added new revenue streams from digital assets, increased customer base and engagement, and increased cost savings.

BTPN’s Jenius is Indonesia’s first truly digital bank offering all its products and services through an app with chat, email, and social media support. It utilizes a different brand identity, style, tone and manner from traditional financial services, offering features not previously available in the market.

Bank BTPN built Jenius from scratch through co-creation with early adopters, financial services experts, and like-minded members of the public who share similar views on the need to change banking in Indonesia.

The Instillery has collaborated with the Fonterra Co-operative Group, a global dairy nutrition company, and their respective digital marketing agencies to conceive and create a multivendor digital project ecosystem that is flexible, scalable and brings standardised project administration, management, and development processes, workflow and governance.

The Instillery’s Pipeline Creation Tool (PCT) offers a cloud-based toolset and process framework that includes automated project creation across best practice SaaS tools that encompass the full lifecycle of a digital project’s documentation and admin needs. The tool automates the entire process from creating a client brief through to code deployment and review.

GE has led the way in transforming into a digital industrial company, capturing value from its extensive network of assets through the Industrial Internet, driving productivity across its business through the Digital Thread and fueling new growth models across its business and for customers by unleashing its GE Digital business. GE is reimagining IT, transforming traditional Information Technology into Digital Technology under GE Digital to fuel business decisions and growth.

As the first domestic multi-brand management group of hotel chains, the Huazhu Hotel Group takes advantage of its overall business to develop its Expanded Online Service and Quick Offline Service platform. With this platform, Huazhu has transformed from a traditional enterprise to technology-cored enterprise, whose capital value of assessment is increasing rapidly.

The Expanded Online Service focuses on customer pain points and builds a closed-loop experience for guests and a strong direct sales channel, with 87 million members on the Expanded Online Service platform, and a direct sales channel account. Quick Offline Services can be accessed via a mobile app, enabling operational decisions to be based on customer data, thus improving efficiency and increasing profit.

Maynilad’s DX project leverages technology to transform itself and render more efficiencies to its business and operations. Driven by the challenges of non-revenue water (NRW) and having a low percentage of customers with 24-hour water supply, Maynilad embarked on transforming its “Stone Age” practices to the cutting edge of global best practice in today’s ICT economy.

Maynilad carefully examined business and IT objectives and streamlined these with deliberate steps between business and IT management. Maynilad also digitalized its customer interactions through the continuing development of its bills presentment platform, alongside the use of an interactive online application. Maynilad leadership rallied the organization to commit to the company’s DX journey, carefully putting in the required governance framework. As a result, NRW was reduced to 33% in 2017 compared to 67% in 2006. Clients likewise topped 1.3 million in 2017, from 600,000 in 2006.

The Ping An Brain Artificial Intelligence Engine uses AI technology to drive the transformation of fintech and health tech in one of world’s largest financial groups. It has helped 20+ internal business units and external organizations in over 200 applications to improve risk-control ability, marketing effectiveness, service quality and operational efficiency using AI technology.

As the core AI engine of the Ping An Group, Ping An Brain has integrated Ping An’s data from 800+ million individuals, 40+ million enterprises and billions of images. The Ping An Brain AI Engine delivers products such as Intelligent Auto Insurance Loss Assessment System, Early Financial Risk Alert Model, Intelligent Recommendation Engine, Disease Prediction Model, Image and Voiceprint Recognition Platform, and Ping An Intelligent Hardware Robot.

The Pervasive Network project for a digitally connected plant set up at its Saraburi operations has been granted with full endorsement by SCCC Board in the midst of its business expansion and acquisition in the region.

Being the first major IoT project in the manufacturing sector in Thailand, and the first for the cement manufacturing in Asia Pacific, the project has served as the core infrastructure foundation for the wholly integrated IT-OT operations in all cement plant areas. It will also an infrastructural enabler for the soon-to-come machine learning, predictive analytics, digital maintenance inspection, contractor management, digital safety, and asset tracking management.

As the younger generation moves toward digital channels for their financial needs, Taishin launched Richart, its digital bank in April 2016. Designed to provide the best user experience and products, Richart undertakes continuous customer research to provide the most innovative functions in the market, three of them protected by patents.

With seven major updates released in 11 months, Richart has been a huge success with over 90,000 new savings account applications in under a year, of which 70 percent of newly acquired customers are under the age of 35, matching the goals of Taishin’s strategy to attract a younger market. Richart has become the biggest digital bank in Taiwan, paving the way for the successful digital transformation of Taishin.

The Wanda Building Information Modeling (WBIM) Construction Project Management Platform is the world’s first building construction project coordination and management system in the Architecture, Engineering, and Construction (AEC) industry that supports the full cycle of building engineering and construction project management. It allows for online collaboration among all participating parties, has fully integrated BIM technologies and engineering project management, and incorporates IT, Internet, and IoT technologies.

Yuhan-Kimberly, a traditional home and personal care manufacturer, has transformed itself into one of the Digital Transformation leaders in Korea. The company has constructed core digital components such as company-wide site integration, linked CRM system, and big data analytics systems for their e-commerce business. Yuhan-Kimberly has been using value created from data to improve momQ, its onlineshopping mall.

The online shopping mall not only has the capability to understand consumer requirements quickly, but also to improve on its products. Extensive data analytics have been developed, incorporating social media analysis, custom dashboard development, and insights generation to support the eCommerce business.

In accordance with China’s administrative examination and approval system reform, Zhejiang province launched “At Most One Visit,” a new-generation government service platform designed to streamline data sharing for the top 100 most-handled administrative items at the provincial level. The platform is used by 26 provincial departments, including social security, construction, and local taxation. It makes full use of cloud computing, big data, and other digital technologies to connect 32 data sources with 161 types and more than 7 billion pieces of data. Since its launch in 2016, over 90% of services have been successfully transformed, with citizens and businesses only needing to visit government offices once throughout registration or application processes.

The platform has broken down information silos and has completed the government goal of “one window for integrated services.” At Most One Visit has also formed a common system standard for government data sharing and provides a reference for power delegation, administration, and service reforms across China, while government supply-side data sharing has brought tremendous data dividends for urban governance.