Tag: Digital

Malaysia – The Malaysia Digital Economy Corporation (MDEC), Malaysia’s national agency tasked with leading the country’s digitization, has announced its latest virtual expo titled Go-eCommerce Expo, with the main theme “Unleash the power of live streaming e-commerce”.

MDEC said following the success of its nationwide e-Dagang Expo (eDX) in May 2020, which gathered SMEs to discuss the transition from offline to online selling, the new expo aims to continue the agency’s efforts in educating local businesses on why they should be selling online.

The Go-eCommerce Expo, which will take place from December 8 to 10, aims to promote the adoption of live streaming e-commerce as a new sales channel for Malaysian businesses. Another agenda of the expo is to also encourage live selling by imparting the latest skills, techniques, best practices, and platforms in line with it.

Among the speakers are Nur Azre, community and government relations manager from e-commerce enabler ShopLine; Jerry Hang, founder and CEO of MODEN, the first academy in Malaysia in training professional KOLs and a KOL marketing service for brands; as well as MDEC professionals themselves such as Mohd Fazreen bin Maslan and Mohd Zullutfi Abd Razak who are PeDAS heads, MDEC’s one-stop digital learning centers for MSMEs.

With logistics and payments also among the expos’ focus points, MDEC has gathered speakers from e-commerce fulfillment company TresGo Janio Asia, end-to-end electronic payment MPAY, and Visa among others.

MDEC said the event will be concluded with a LIVE Selling Carnival, featuring PeDAS participants, where viewers can purchase locally made products at deals and discounts.

Singapore – Singtel launched its annual festive tribute today, an uplifting short film depicting the staunch determination of seniors who refuse to let COVID-19 upend their lives.

Titled “Seniors go digital too!”, the film tells the stories of three seniors as they head back to “school” to pick up digital skills to help them stay connected and overcome the social distancing brought on by the pandemic.

The weekly attendance of seniors aunty Lilian, aunty Shirley, and uncle Andrew at Singtel’s digital clinics under its Digital Silvers program are documented in the film. Through Singtel staff volunteers, the seniors learn the use of smart devices, to surf the internet, stay in touch with loved ones online, and make cashless payments. 

Held at Senior Activity Centres (SACs) across the country, the Digital Silvers initiative is designed to foster digital inclusion and help ease the sense of isolation that the elderly have experienced as COVID curtailed peoples’ ability to socialize. 

It’s been a tough year for everyone, but the elderly are one of the more vulnerable groups affected by the pandemic. While most of us can easily access the plethora of online channels and apps for communication and entertainment, the older generation may not have the requisite digital skills to do so. This is what we’re trying to address through our digitalization initiative

Lian Pek, Vice President of Group Strategic Communications and Brand, Singtel

In the film, viewers see the conclusion of the seniors’ digital boot camp, with all of them finding a new sense of confidence and purpose: Aunty Lilian learns how to further her singing hobby and learn songs with the aid of apps on her device; Uncle Andrew learns how to use Zoom to stay in touch with friends and family, and Aunty Shirley becomes a “messaging expert”, connecting with her children as well as learning to use the contact tracing app TraceTogether.

Singtel shared that moving forward, the Digital Silvers program will see S$1M worth of assistance go towards transforming SACs into digital hubs to help more than 10,000 seniors build confidence in using digital devices and platforms. This involves tech upgrades including Wi-Fi connections, Singtel TV content, and tablets to facilitate virtual engagement as well as digital clinics and one-to-one tutorials run by Singtel staff volunteers. 

In addition, Singtel has also set aside priority queues for seniors at stores and hotlines so that they can be given digital guidance and served more expediently. 

Commenting on the program, Jeannie Ho, head of social enterprise NTUC Health’s senior cluster network said, “We’re very heartened to see many seniors from our Senior Activity Centres excitedly pick up new skills in the past month, as they realize that going digital is not as difficult as they imagined. This program and the digital workshops by Singtel have greatly empowered seniors to become so much more comfortable with using technology, enabling them to remain connected with their friends and loved ones amid the pandemic and especially during the festive season.”

Lian Pek added, “Even before COVID-19 and the pivot to online channels and tools, digitalization was already happening at breakneck pace, and for the elderly left on the wrong side of the digital divide, this can be very overwhelming. We believe that seniors can benefit from the digital revolution and that the process of picking up tech-related skills, no matter how basic, can also go a long way in helping their active aging.”

The short film is the final film in Singtel’s year-long brand campaign encouraging Singaporeans to keep their spirits up in the current climate through the feature of the lives of ordinary folks. This includes “This Is The Year”, Singtel’s annual National Day film which paid tribute to the Majulah spirit, and “Keeping The Spirit Of Hari Raya Alive” which documented how the Malay Community kept the spirit of Ramadan alive during the circuit breaker period.

The six-minute film will air on Singtel TV and on various social media channels from 3 to 25 December 2020.

Manila, Philippines – We often think in the range of equivalents, that is, if something is big, we expect that all things toward it mirror the same gigantic force, but such is certainly not the case with JG Summit Holdings – one of the biggest conglomerates in the Philippines – which revealed that in bringing to life the company’s digital transformation, one of its most powerful weapons is “starting small.”

Two years ago, JG Summit fully jumped on its intention to shift to a digital experience when it declared that it aims to become the leading digital company in the Philippines. In the recently held UXPH Conference Saturday, a two-day conference for experience designers in the Philippines, the company’s SVP for digital transformation and corporate services Lisa Gokongwei-Cheng walked UX specialists through on how the firm successfully materialized its digitization, not just for its customers but for its employees as well.

If you’re a startup built in the heights of the current digital lifestyle, innovation in such area most probably comes second nature, for if it isn’t the business’ bread and butter, it’s one of its main operational pillars. But for a giant like JG Summit that was incorporated in the 50’s, to adopt digital transformation poses a bigger challenge.

JG Summit has over five business units emanating from different industries, such as airline company Cebu Pacific Air, commercial bank Robinsons Bank (RBank), and F&B Universal Robina Corporation (URC). According to Cheng, the biggest question for the company to answer is, “How do you innovate within a traditional, successful, and large conglomerate?”

Cheng said the question emerges because of resistors – businesses who can’t seem to see the ROI of taking a 360 degree turn to digital, because with their eyebrows raised, they tend to think, “Why fix it, if it ain’t broken?”

“At the beginning, none of the business units wanted to work with us. It would cost too much, it would disrupt their business as usual,” shared Cheng in the conference’s session Lessons in Digital Transformation in a Corporate Setting.

With much persistence, the company eventually found its willing guinea pig, its property development unit – Robinsons Land Corporation (RLC).

The digitization initiative with RLC launched four projects in six months – a hotel property management system, a sellers portal, a buyers portal, and a malls directory.

As Cheng emphasized in her virtual talk, “start with small wins,” and through RLC’s leadership, President and CEO Frederick Go, the projects have been pioneered through the “lighthouse” mindset – which like a lighthouse, the first of JG Summit’s digital experiences are meant to light the way, “to guide ships,” or its other business units to fully harness technological innovation.

According to a blog post by JG Summit, Go said the main goal of the digitization project was to find the pain points among its stakeholders – customers, employees, and clients – and figure out how technology can offer as a solution. As identified, those were not being able to find a store in the mall, a room for a more simplified buyer and seller process for clients and sales agents within its residential division, and finding a way to enhance the customer experience for the guests of its hotel.

Of the buyers portal, for example, Go said, “ It helps automate our buyers’ most common interactions with us. We will make it easy for them to know when their next payments are due and monitor their receipts. The Buyers Portal allows them to view and update their account information, manage their payments, view and download the latest statement of accounts, and log requests and inquiries directly.”

In jumpstarting the “lighthouse” with RLC, JG summit had to take the baby step of working with one resource at the time – a single digital consultant.

“So we worked with our consultant, our one full-time resource for Robinsons land who worked with RLC employees on these projects, while they were also pursuing business as usual,” said Cheng.

Two years in from declaring its mission of digitization, JG Summit’s was a home run – successfully realizing its intent of digital transformation, with a slew of online portals and systems rolled out, following its pilot digital experiences with RLC.

For its commercial banking, RBank was able to develop the QuickR feature for its banking app, where the bank now offers a contactless alternative for sending and receiving money through a QR code.

URC’s global exports division, on the other hand, wanted to address their clients’ concerns with placing orders manually and solved it through the Global Export Order Management System (OMS). For SouthStar Drug, a division of JG Summit’s retail holdings, an e-commerce site has been established just right before the community quarantine was enacted in the country.

Meanwhile, for its guinea pig RLC, its team of just one consultant has now sprung to 10 key people in its digital transformation team, with 21 new projects under its belt. One of its recent – a portal for its condominium residents, myRLC Homeowner’s Portal, where residents’ requests such as work permits or gate passes have now been digitized.

Cheng said, “[It goes to show] that you can start with one project and a few resources. Don’t try to boil the ocean. We used the RLC example to show different parts of the conglomerate how it can be done. They are still trying to scale agile, but are on the right path.”

Concluding her talk at the conference, Cheng gave some powerful words, saying, “[Digital] transformation is not an end state, it’s a journey.”

She added, “We keep iterating our operational model as we learn. In a few months, we probably will learn a few more things, or realize that some of these [are] wrong. The point is to keep pivoting.”

MARKETECH APAC is an official media partner at the UXPH Conference 2020: Designers as Navigators of Change, which was held from November 14 to 15, 2020.

Singapore – Local retailers selling on Amazon.sg can receive the Digital Resilience Bonus (DRB) administered by Singapore’s Infocomm Media Development Authority (IMDA), reminds the company in a press release.

DRB is one of the efforts by the Singapore government amid the pandemic to uplift the digital capabilities of businesses across their different points of operations. Initially, DRB is offered to F&B and retail enterprises. 

IMDA has listed the different solutions that enterprises can apply for a subsidy, which includes eCommerce. Sellers, if eligible, can receive a one-time S$2,500 automatic cash payout.

According to IMDA, in order to qualify, the enterprise must be incorporated on or before 26 May 2020 with a Food Service or Retail SSIC code, and has been using the digital solutions on IMDA’s list between 1 June 2020 and 30 June 2021.

Bernard Tay, the country leader for Amazon.sg seller services said, “As local retailers continue to adapt to the new normal, digitalisation is key to enabling them to build resilience and tap into new revenue streams domestically and internationally.”

He added, “Small and medium businesses are a part of Amazon’s DNA and we remain committed to their success. The new initiatives will provide the necessary push in encouraging local retailers to step up digitalisation efforts and we’re happy to work with IMDA on the Digital Resilience Bonus to offer additional support to them during this time of need.”

Just recently, Amazon has pledged to invest US$18 billion in 2020 to support small and medium businesses globally and an additional US$100 million assistance to be given out during its annual deal event Prime Day and throughout the holiday season.

The Singaporean unit of the company is also in an ongoing collaboration with Enterprise Singapore on the eCommerce Booster Package which will offer local retailers a one-time grant of up to S$9,000 when they register to sell with Amazon.sg.

Starting an online business is becoming more of an option amid the ongoing pandemic as more people are relying on online purchases to obtain their needs. Albeit such a trend, deciding to put up a digital business can still be a tricky affair, as you’re dealing with matters that of any other type of business such as setting up a capital, procuring suppliers for your products, and building a staff among others. 

One of the considerations that must be taken into account is your marketing strategy, and with the influx of social media tools at your disposal, one must learn to leverage such tools in order to translate branding into sales, and eventually start seeing those bucks rolling  in.

Social Media Strategist Janelle Swing of the entrepreneurship and freelancing group Filipina Home-based Moms (FH Moms) shares the best ways to do just that. 

Janelle imparts six expert but doable steps the you can do right now to maximize the available online platforms, and eventually see an improved growth on your business online.

1. Product knowledge should be at the back of your hand

Start off by listing the features, benefits, and real of your products in order to identify how to properly draw your communication and marketing plan.

Janelle said that these three facets are essential for customizing branding and helping the product or service stand out amid a sea of online sellers breaking from the clutter 

“As an entrepreneur, you must be fully aware of the product feature and offerings that you are selling. It builds credibility and institutes trust amongst your target customers,” said Janelle.

2. Identify your target audience

As an entrepreneur, you have to walk in your customers’ shoes and identify correctly your customers’ concerns, needs, and pain points. Once you have figured your business audience, you can come up with an effective marketing effort, content plan, and communication treatment to reach out to your target audience.

3. Identify your price points

As an online seller, it is important to identify accurate price points of your offerings. Reaching a reasonable price point will be based on factors like your target audience, their consumption habits, the market competition as well as the value for money the product offers. 

Janelle further advises that an estimated price point lets you benchmark your position and helps you customize your communication plans for promoting your offerings and engaging well on social media without overdoing it. If gauged well, a well thought of price point can scale up a business to a great extent.

4. Craft a content strategy

An essential way to maximize social media reach for your business is to have a content strategy calendar in place, which if properly utilized can prove advantageous for most brands or businesses.

“It doesn’t have to be an expert strategy. But rather, you must identify what would best appeal to your audience. You just have to be able to use the existing tools of your platform in order to get the most out of it,” shares Janelle.

Showcase your products with multiple photos

While Shopping online you would want to vet a product and inspect the product details quite minutely before making a purchase. Similarly, it is essential that your customer gets to view different angles of the product you are cataloging in your website. Always make sure that you upload multiple photos that are shot well, backed by suitable lighting conditions and background, for your audience to fully appreciate it.

Leverage FB’s pinned post option

You can highlight the product or service that you want to feature with this option. It could also be an FAQ, or a “ways to order,” and descriptions showing available modes of payment in order for your customers to easily navigate their way and understand your offerings.

Use the auto-response feature

Using an auto-response feature is the best way to engage your customers, while you’re away. You can earn loyal and new customers depending on reliable and satisfactory customer service. With this auto feature, you can assist customers and answer their queries in real-time without having to log into your account every single time.

Use the FB live-selling feature

Part of your content strategy must include FB Live sessions to further engage your online audience. With this feature, you can directly engage with your audience in an instant while also offering your product and services. However, live sessions must be well planned in advance and spaced out adequately to build a sense of anticipation amongst your audience. Do not rush into these sessions, live selling is a terrific opportunity and if leveraged well, can have a reaching impact for your brand and business.

5. Find a bankable supplier to tend to your overall business needs

Apart from a considerable social media presence, as a seller, you should have access to the best available space to procure your regular supplies.

Always make sure that your supplier is a legitimate source of products with trusted sellers and offers dedicated customer service.

6. Your creative materials are the most essential tools

Presenting a fetching catalog of product photos is no easy task – it takes a good amount of creativity and adequate photo skills to make your product stand out from the clutter of online sellers. There are a lot of good options to curate highly engaging content online as per your business taste and needs.

Use Canva

“For starters, you may use Canva in creating your layout. This is an easy- to-use platform where you can use templates to layout your product photos, plus it is free. You just have to be consistent with the colors and template style of your photos to have an effective brand recall and brand association,” said Janelle.

Using social media to get positive leads and generate revenue doesn’t need a big budget. As an entrepreneur, you need the right attitude, a positive and go-getter mindset, and the ability to tap into free online tools at your disposal to unlock the social media prowess and strive towards a successful online business venture.

This article is brought to you by Zilingo Philippines.

Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia – As Malaysia has stepped into the recovery stage of the Movement Control Order (MCO), more service industries have shifted stronger focus to gear up their digital avenue to increase their revenues that were badly affected since the nationwide lockdown earlier in March.

While other restaurants and food operators turn to online food delivery partnership to make up for the cutback faced due to Social Distancing and limited operational hours that the government has outlined, Tamarind Restaurants decided to take another turn by launching CiaoChow, Malaysia’s first virtual gourmet food court that allows food lovers to order a variety of cuisines from the different virtual kiosks within the CiaoChow food court.  

“We always pride ourselves on our brand values, high standards, and quality of products and services long before the lockdown due to the COVID-19 outbreak. Hence, we decided to launch CiaoChow to ensure our loyal customers will continue to enjoy our food at the comfort of their own home, while practicing safety protocols. Furthermore, the food varieties featured in the CiaoChow platform are not available in our group of physical restaurants, all menus from CiaoChow are specially crafted with delivery durability in mind,” said Federico Asaro, Founder of Tamarind Restaurants (pictured). “By running end-to-end online orders in-house, we can ensure the high quality of our food in our environmentally-friendly packaging is well-maintained while promoting our brands to new and existing customers”. 

“Our clientele comes from a group of people who appreciate the finer things in life and they are conscious about ethical food business, generally those of the middle to high-income bracket aged 30 and above. We work directly with fishermen who supply our fresh seafood. Our vegetables are primarily organic and sourced from a lowland and highland farm in Malaysia. Our meat comes from cage-free poultry and grass-fed cattle farms that apply humane sustainable practices. Therefore, it is important for us to maintain the quality of our online order service just like we do at physical restaurants,” Asaro added. 

Speaking further on CiaoChow, Asaro had hoped that the success of the online platform will allow their group of companies to sustain their business and operations to continue to retain their manpower as many from similar industries have gone either downsized or discontinued operations permanently. CiaoChow also receives orders from its official Facebook and Instagram channel to cater to the more social media savvy demography. 

“These kitchens do not operate as physical restaurants for walk-in customers. We hope by setting up these kitchens, we will be able to ensure the quality of our food and the efficiency of our delivery service within a 6km radius from each kitchen. 

There are further plans to add other brands within Ciaochow’s food court, one is to serve a diet-focused clientele by allowing customers to plan their weekly dietary needs for delivery to multiple addresses, work, home, and anywhere in between. Asaro is currently making plans to bring the brand to the Middle East in the near future.