Tag: Philippines

Manila, Philippines – Philippine telecommunications company Globe announced that it has secured a 67% stake in business applications company Third Pillar, a partner of customer relationship management (CRM) company Salesforce.

The acquisition comes as the local telco giant targets an even more improved customer experience for its user base. Globe has shown its diversity in terms of mobile and data services, delivering access on global platforms such as Netflix, Viu, and Spotify. Furthermore, the telco industry has become a lifeline for most businesses by introducing connectivity, cloud, cybersecurity, and a host of other digital solutions befitting a remote work structure.

According to Peter Maquera, senior vice president for Globe Business, the partnership stems from their desire to give the telco’s enterprise customers a holistic experience, and at the same time playing a vital part in helping navigate through Salesforce and design processes that work for Globe.

Maquera admits that prior to utilizing Salesforce, they had no integrated view of customers, which were already at thousands. He mentioned that they were closing deals but not as fast as they hoped, and they didn’t have all of the information they needed to take immediate actions.

“Our collaboration with Third Pillar enabled us to use Salesforce in automating our B2B sales processes; enhancing workflows among teams, and expediting our turnaround time. With a 360-degree view of our customers, we’re able to identify where they are in the customer journey; extract more accurate forecasts and reports; improve pipeline management, and come up with faster, well-informed decisions,” Maquera explained.

He added, “In fact, after only a year into the partnership, we were able to log more than 8,000 opportunities; reduce neglected initiatives from 57 percent to 1.8 percent; diminish delayed projects from 53 percent to 1.1 percent, and decrease dwell time by 300 percent.”

Meanwhile, Maridol Ylanan, head of strategy and marketing for Globe myBusiness commented that through Third Pillar’s consulting services, combined with their background in telco, they were able to maximize Salesforce and configure it based on the telco’s needs.

“Implementing Salesforce wasn’t just about finding opportunities and closing transactions. The platform empowers us to start conversations with our customers and look out for their needs, no matter where they are in their journey. Now that we can leverage Third Pillar’s subject matter experts and industry specialists, coupled with our own experience in using Salesforce, we hope to empower more businesses to truly connect with their customers,” Ylanan stated.

Manila, Philippines – A handful of local brands and organizations in the Philippines have shown their quirky side by joining the online trend in regards to the recently-debated online trend #LugawIsEssential.

The context draws its origin from the now infamous ‘lugaw incident’ where Marvin Ignacio, a food delivery rider working for Grab Philippines, was held in a checkpoint at Brgy. Muzon, San Jose del Monte, Bulacan by barangay (local government unit) officials since his delivery of ‘lugaw’, the Filipino equivalent of savory porridge, was not deemed ‘essential’ in terms of service.

As the Greater Manila area, including the province of Bulacan, is still under enhanced community quarantine (ECQ), many people resort to food deliveries, to which the Inter-Agency Task Force (IATF) has deemed ‘essential’.

The video appeared in the Facebook Live video of the food delivery rider, who streamed the confrontation with barangay officials. The incident went viral on Maundy Thursday, 1 April, which has drawn flak among netizens due to the ‘paradoxical’ nature the barangay officials gave in terms of the item’s essential nature. Despite initially blowing up on Facebook, the trend became more prominent in other social media channels, including Instagram and Twitter.

As the trend #LugawIsEssential spiked in popularity on Twitter Philippines, several known and local brands have jumped in the trend to poke fun at the ongoing trend, while maintaining campaign presence and relevancy at the same time.

Jumping first on the trend is the rider’s employer Grab Philippines, where in one of their posts, they quote that “If food is essential, and lugaw is essential, therefore LUGAWISESSENTIAL”. The post itself has acted as a new local campaign by Grab PH of using the promo code to gain a free delivery perk from the service itself.

Furthermore, the Philippine arm of GrabMart also uses the same promo code campaign to entice customers with a free delivery perk when they buy the ingredients of lugaw, which include rice, egg, garlic, salt, and ginger as staples.

Some Grab PH users have also noted a new advisory message on the app’s dashboard which similarly pokes fun at the lugaw incident, stating that they are “serving you 24/7 this ECQ so that you can stay safe at home while we bring you essentials (food and lugaw included!).”

Meanwhile, the Philippine division of smartphone brand Xiaomi posted a tweet reminiscent of the time of how the founders of Xiaomi in 2010 united on a meal of lugaw in deciding what to call their company as.

Oil company Phoenix Fuels, on the other hand, pokes fun at the debacle by posting an infographic stating the ‘essential’ ingredients of making lugaw, accompanied with a Twitter thread helping online users how to cook porridge. The online post aims to promote Phoenix Fuels’ liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) products.

On a similar note, local weather channel Panahon.TV also posted a photo, enumerating and visualizing the lugaw ingredients at the same time.

As the trend fell into the observance of April Fool’s Day as well, some smaller local brands have also jumped into ‘trolling’ their online audiences with ‘new products’.

On a weird note, local adult pleasure brand frisky ‘announced’ that they have recently launched a new lube product, with lugaw as the new flavor, to which they ‘announced’ is on sale on both Lazada and Shopee.

https://twitter.com/FriskyUltd/status/1377406606963396610

Meanwhile, local candle scents maker Clementine Scents announced that they have launched a ‘lugaw-scented candle’ to allow customers “enjoy the scent of [the] favorite Filipino porridge, wherever, whenever.”

A screenshot of the Instagram post of Clementine Scents

Other brands and organizations that poked fun on the #LugawIsEssential debacle includes the National Historical Commission of the Philippines, local anime media group portal AniRadio Plus, and Default Cafe Pub, which made a jovial take on the likewise viral photo of President Rodrigo Duterte blowing a ‘birthday cake’ made out of steamed rice.

Manila, Philippines – PLDT Global Corp. (PGC), the international arm of Philippine-based telecommunications company PLDT, has announced that it has partnered experience management (XM) company Qualtrics to redesign its customer experience (CX).

PGC will be utilizing and standardizing the use of Qualtrics’ CustomerXM program in order to better understand and act on customers’ unique needs. Qualtrics will provide PGC with a single platform to capture, analyze, and act on experience data, enabling PGC to uncover deeper customer insights, scale and personalize engagements, and automate workflows to resolve or escalate customer issues in real time.

Furthermore, CustomerXM integrates with PGC’s existing CRM platform to deliver further value. Bringing together experience data from Qualtrics and operational data from the CRM platform aims to assist PGC in better understanding the drivers of its CX so the company can take targeted action to continually design and improve the experiences delivered.

According to Leah Garcia, VP for experience at PGC, Qualtrics’ XM service best serves the company’s commitment to bring innovative services across their customers and enterprise partners globally.

“We will be able to listen closely to the needs of our customers and rapidly respond, which will ensure PGC continually brings to market the products and services our customers want and deserve,” Garcia stated.

Meanwhile, Mao Gen Foo, head of Southeast Asia at Qualtrics stated that their service comes in response to the recent consumer behavior shifts by the offset of the global pandemic, which has also changed customer expectations significantly.

“It’s a reality that means being able to listen, understand, and rapidly act on the changing needs of your customers is a key competitive advantage. By standardizing its CX program with Qualtrics, PGC is well placed to unlock critical insights enabling the company to continually design and improve customer experiences that drive business outcomes,” Gen Foo stated.

Manila, Philippines – As the country’s number of COVID-19 cases are continuously surging, Philippine-based marketplace HyperLokal has developed and recently launched its contact tracing web application Hyperpass that allows a more efficient approach to contact tracing through data analytics and insights.

Through Hyperpass, registered users can be easily notified via SMS alert if a particular place or establishment has recorded cases of COVID-19, and then recommends safety measures to protect themselves from the virus.

Users can access the program from a web browser, and is both desktop and mobile-friendly.

Hyperpass’ ability to create notifications about COVID-19 cases is all in the app’s ‘intelligent tracing and notification’ algorithm, which is dependent on data accumulated from registered users and establishments.

For places, the establishment or location only needs to register in the Hyperpass website as a place and Hyperpass will automatically generate its unique poster that can be immediately printed and displayed. The poster is complete with a QR code for scanning and checking in and directions for visitors, employees, or guests on how to complete their health declaration forms.

For visitors, guests, students, and employees, they only need to scan the QR Code or go to the shortlink on the place’s poster. As described by the place’s printable poster, they would then need to enter their personal and contact details (with an option to password-save their details for future use), answer the Health Declaration Form in the app interface, and click ‘Submit’.

“Hyperpass is built on Serverless Technology that automatically scales when used. So if Hyperpass is suddenly used by the 100-million Filipino population, it will automatically scale to serve that number without lag or crashing. Hyperpass is database integration-ready and is AI-ready for analytics, human traffic management, and other applications,” the company said in a press statement.

The company, led by its CEO Guilian Sencio and CTO Danilo Enova, aims to apply the said application for the benefit of the national government to aid them in contact tracing of positive and exposed individuals.

“The success of Hyperpass (and of the national Contact Tracing effort) will rely on its universal adoption for contact tracing—and its centralization—across the nation. With its numerous features and unlimited potential for developing more, it’s the best option that we have in the country right now,” Hyperlokal added.

The company also aims to make Hyperpass fully integrated with public and private healthcare databases, adding that “technology-powered contact tracing will only make sense if there is a free flow and centralisation of information between public and private testing centers, vaccination hubs.”

To date, Hyperpass is continuously adding more features in the platform, including vaccine card passes and tagging that tags various vaccine manufacturers, as well as travel clearances and passes, and also specific dashboards for public and private healthcare providers to check on vaccination drives and testing results. A COVID-19 test history is also set to be included in the app.

Manila, Philippines – Rizal Commercial Banking Corporation (RCBC), one of the well-known commercial banks in the country, has been awarded the Golden Feather Award during the 18th Quill Awards, for its recent campaign ‘Every Step of the Way: How RCBC used digital to help clients move forward in the face of the pandemic.’

The Quill Awards is one of the Philippines’ largest award-giving bodies that recognizes research, programs, skills, and creative work among institutions in terms of business communication. All campaign nominations are screened under the guidelines of International Association of Business Communicators (IABC).

The campaign, made by marketing agency Entropia CBR, made use of their RCBC’s data to truly understand their clients’ profiles, challenges, and needs during the pandemic. From this, they launched a personalization-at-scale strategy that matched each client’s need with the right banking solution. 

Furthermore, the campaign not only maximized conversion among current bank customers to RCBC’s online banking services, but ultimately, uplifted their clients that they could still fulfil their banking needs despite the challenges.

RCBCEveryStepofTheWay_EntropiaCBR
The people behind RCBC’s winning entry and their partners in Entropia CBR: (From top left to right) Gabe Olivares, Niccolo Viado, Kaye Enriquez, Gene Sto. Tomas, Eunice Sentillas, Johann Ocampo, (from bottom left to right) Ces Natividad, Alexis Villafuerte, and Ed Mapa Jr.

“The needs and challenges of our clients are always in our hearts and minds. It’s the core of everything we do and being recognized for it, for showing Filipinos that we can help them move forward through every personal banking need or challenge they face, makes it all more rewarding and worthwhile,” said Ces Natividad, chief marketing officer of RCBC.

RCBC’s winning campaign echoes this year’s theme of ‘ARISE: Communications that uplift’ for the Quill Awards, a theme that calls on communicators to shine light on what truly matters and inspire Filipinos to rise and move forward amid challenging times.

According to Kaye Enriquez, principal for data analytics, insights and media performance at Entropia CBR, RCBC’s campaign is a “testament of how they are hands-on with their clients.”

“By helping them anticipate and understand the unique and personal challenges their clients are facing, we were able to communicate the right solutions to help them move forward. We’re happy with the results, but we’re ecstatic about how this campaign helped empower others during difficult times,” Enriquez stated.

The newest Golden Feather award is RCBC’s 11th award since they joined in 2018.

Manila, Philippines – The country’s election body Commission on Elections (COMELEC) has partnered with hackathon organizer Impact Hub Manila to upgrade its voter education website called ‘Vote Pilipinas’, as the country gears up with the upcoming 2022 national elections.

Aside from being a sole website, ‘Vote Pilipinas’ is the campaign arm of COMELEC in raising awareness among the public to go out and register to the nearest COMELEC office in their municipality.

Furthermore, the site showcases easily-digestible information on the registration process, voting precincts, requirements, and important dates to remember.

“We are thrilled for Filipino people to utilize and take advantage of Vote Pilipinas. This is a crucial step to educate voters and bring more people in to exercise their right to suffrage,” said James Jimenez, COMELEC spokesperson.

In addition to the existing information on the site, ‘Vote Pilipinas’ will now have a Voter Registration Service Test which gives users additional information such as the nearest Office of the Election Officer to contact, list of IDs to bring, forms to download, and other important reminders to reduce the time spent at COMELEC headquarters during on-ground registration.

Initially launched last August 2020, the campaign responds to the data obtained by COMELEC that only 75.9% of registered voters turned up to cast their votes in 2019, or that about 1 in every four registered voters did not participate in voting. Hence, the campaign aims to register 7 million more voters this upcoming election. 

“One of the campaign’s goals is to provide every Filipino with access to the right information so they can register and ultimately vote. We hope that through the Vote Pilipinas campaign, we can shift mindsets and make people realize that every vote counts,” said Ces Rondario, Impact Hub Manila’s co-founder and the brainchild of Vote Pilipinas.

According to a town hall conference conducted by ‘Vote Pilipinas’ yesterday, 24 March, part of the campaign will also rely on external help from volunteers, partners and stakeholders, from media practitioners, social media influencers and community organizations.

Manila, Philippines – Kumu, Filipino video-sharing and e-commerce social networking platform, has launched an entertainment show called ‘Sana OL’ under the official @wetviflix account on its platform.

The new show is a collaboration between two video streaming providers – WeTV and iflix. Its title ‘Sana OL’ is a Filipino expression that means ‘to want what others have’, and is often jovially expressed to someone that has shown an amazing feat or is in possession of a trait or material thing that is a crowd favorite. 

The show aims to provide viewers a deep-dive into Asia’s passion for entertainment, premiering today from 8:00 pm PHT to 9:00 pm PHT. 

Every Wednesday night, viewers can expect guest hosts and streamers to talk about the latest contents of WeTV and iflix, the hottest trends in entertainment, and an occasional show review.

To kick-off the first stream of ‘Sana OL’, the pilot theme is ‘K-Drama or C-Drama?’. The hosts will talk about the unique cultures, the influences, and how these dramas shaped the pop culture today.

Georgette Tengco, country manager of WeTV and iflix in the Philippines, said that the show’s ultimate goal is to be relatable to all fans of Asian entertainment, saying that it will allow people of all ages and backgrounds to engage, sharing their thoughts on the shows they love to stream and binge-watch.

“We believe that Kumu is the best platform to use, to connect with our users and partners. It allows us to better engage consumers, to dig around and find out what it is they want to see, what they’re interested in, and how WeTV iflix can help materialize those ‘content cravings’,” added Tengco.

Manila, Philippines – Top technology-related unboxing and review YouTube channels in the Philippines are seen to be able to earn a YouTuber on average ₱522K per month, new statistics from e-commerce aggregator iPrice.

Individual tech vloggers Unbox Diaries and Mary Bautista earn ₱522K and ₱351K per month respectively, despite the fact that Unbox Diaries has fewer subscribers (1.25M) than Bautista (1.42M).

Meanwhile, tech blogs like YugaTech and GadgetMatch earn less compared to individual creators, as these competitor sites earned ₱119K and ₱65K per month respectively. However, this is best supported by the smaller subscriber size they have, as YugaTech has only 453K subscribers, while GadgetMatch has 631K subscribers.

Moreover, individual vloggers like Liz Tech and Poy Reviews are both estimated to earn above ₱100K a month, which are more than the estimated amount of authoritative blogs with Youtube reviews like Unbox PH (₱52K/month) and Manila Shaker (₱17K/month).

“iPrice hypothesizes that consumers like watching content that is more personal and relatable. Thus, this is why individual vloggers that review in Filipino seem to have an affinity with the country’s market,” the company said in a press statement.

Tech-Vlogger-Philippines-iPrice-Study-Page-2

Despite the high earnings these YouTubers get, new regulations by YouTube may change their earnings, as the company announced that any amount earned from US viewers through Youtube Premium, ad views, Super Chat, Super Stickers, and Channel membership will now be taxable. Creators may be taxable up to 24% of their total earnings if they aren’t able to submit their tax information to AdSense before May 31, 2021.

“That said, Filipino tech vloggers may not be as affected, especially for the individuals that review in the Filipino language. However, this doesn’t discount their Filipino-American audience. With this new rule in place, we will have to wait and see how much this will affect the country’s tech vloggers,” the company added.

The survey was conducted with manual shortlisting done by Nox Influncer, and data is collected based on the channel’s analytics shown on the metric platform SocialBlade. Rates are determined based on a low click-per-minute (CPM) value ($0.25 USD) and a high CPM value ($4.00 USD), numbers that were found to be common from their partners, and multiply them by the number of views the channel gets per day.

Manila, Philippines – NextPay, a Philippine-based fintech startup, has secured a US$125K investment funding from startup accelerator Y Combinator, which will be used to expand NextPay’s services further and address the growing problem of financially-underserved businesses in the Philippines. 

Through the investment, NextPay founders aim to leverage their previous experience working in ‘unicorn’ companies to expand their line of digital banking services. Their plans include new digital solutions for payments, credit, and personal cash management.

“Our goal is to empower smaller businesses with a spectrum of banking services that were previously unavailable to them because of the steep requirements and high fees that are typically aimed at larger, more developed companies that can afford them. This funding round from Y Combinator allows us to scale even faster to bring digital financial services closer to MSMEs,” said Don Pansacola, CEO and co-founder at NextPay.

The platform allows small businesses to have the same financial capabilities as large banks, which gives growing companies access to affordable financial services such as digital invoicing, cash management, and batch payments to any bank or e-wallet in the Philippines.

Furthermore, the startup has positioned itself to enable more businesses, entrepreneurs, and freelancers to centralize all their financial requirements through one easy-to-use, affordable, and inclusive platform. 

“We plan to introduce more payment acceptance methods, virtual credit cards, and other digital solutions that enable businesses to manage their cash flow and alleviate the bottlenecks of the Philippine financial landscape. We will also partner with human resource and accounting software companies to further streamline the financial operations of a growing company,” Pansacola added.

According to Aldrich Tan, co-founder and chief experience officer at NextPay, the platform aims to give a wider opportunity among small businesses through accessible digital financial services.

“Through our platform, MSMEs can conduct their transactions seamlessly and allow business owners to free up resources and focus on their operations. This optimization and focus are vital in supporting and strengthening the country’s efforts towards economic recovery,” Tan stated.

Since its launch in 2020, NextPay has processed over US$2.5M (₱120M) in digital transactions for more than 100 businesses. Customers of NextPay can enjoy reduced processing times from as much as 3 days to just 30 minutes. 

“NextPay wants to help the Philippines bounce back. We want to enable growing enterprises to maximize their capital, reach more customers, and generate more jobs and opportunities. This then stimulates economic transactions and creates demand for stronger partnerships. It’s a domino effect, but it starts from having a digital platform like NextPay who empowers MSMEs to thrive and do more,” Pansacola concluded.

NextPay is the fifth Filipino startup to have received funding from Y Combinator, with companies including job searching platform Kalibrr, payment platform PayMongo, edtech Avion School, and laboratory software company Dashlabs.ai.

Manila, Philippines – ShopeePay, Shopee’s in-app digital wallet, will be running its cashless festival for the second time, this time, for its 4.4 platform sale. 

The special sale, called ‘ShopeePay Cashless Festival’, aims to encourage Filipino app users to shop, buy load, and pay bills through the digital wallet. The previously held cashless festival by Shopee was in February, while the currently ongoing festival will run up to 25 March.

All Shopee users who will pay via ShopeePay during the event will get to enjoy free shipping for a minimum spend of ₱149 on various categories. There will be sitewide free shipping vouchers redeemable for today for a minimum spend of ₱199, which will be released throughout the day in limited quantities. Meanwhile, there will be another all-day sitewide free shipping slated on 4 April. 

ShopeePay users can also enjoy exclusive ₱1 deals and different offers from local fast food brands, such as Jollibee, McDonald’s, and Dunkin’ Donuts, as well as Domino’s. Furthermore, on the festival’s slated last day 25 March, there will be flash deals for load buying throughout the day. Shoppers can get ₱20 load for only ₱10, and ₱50 load for only ₱37.

By using ShopeePay, shoppers can earn more coins cashback that they can use to get discounts on their next shopping spree.