PETALING JAYA: In commemoration of Star Media Group’s 50th anniversary, the StarBiz Summit held on November 25 and 26 was the finale of the group’s #digitalXdata 2021 events.

The StarBiz Summit was the avenue for businesses and organisations to learn about the industry outlook and market forecasts of 2022 in various critical industry verticals, business areas and organisational functions.

Among the speakers was World Economic Forum head of regional agenda (Asia-Pacific) Joo-Ok Lee, who addressed that Covid-19 has really catalysed greater adoption and acceleration of the 4IR, and led to a wider rollout of digital transformation.

Lee highlighted a World Economic Forum’s 2021 report, jointly developed with Sea Ltd, which found that 85% of the survey respondents considered digitalisation as being a key factor towards economic recovery.

Meanwhile, the opening panel discussion was moderated by Omdia principal analyst (digital enterprise services) Adam Etherington, and the panellists included Datuk Dr Suhana Md Saleh, director of K-economy division from the Economic Planning Unit; Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development head of South and South-East Asia Dr Alexander Böhmer, Fave Group co-founder Yeoh Chen Chow and SAP Malaysia managing director KC Hong.

Bohmer said the Covid-19 pandemic is a chance to speed up the digital transformation of Asean industries, which are heavily reliant on labour intensive manufacturing and foreign labour.

“Industries can introduce more artificial intelligence, and automated production processes,” he said.

Dr Suhana pointed out that the digital economy also played a vital role in lessening the impact of the pandemic and also brought about a change in consumer behaviour.

According to Yeoh, Fave Group serves 40,000 small and medium enterprises (SMEs), of which 20,000 are in Malaysia, and are predominantly offline.

“We help offline businesses to solve their problems. How to make it easier, cheaper, better, and faster for smaller players to do what the big players can do,” he said.

Digital SME track

Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (Apec) Secretariat, Singapore executive director Tan Sri Dr Rebecca Fatima Sta Maria spoke about the winners of the Apec Digital Prosperity Award that recognises innovative digital products or applications that have the potential to increase prosperity and inclusive growth.

The industry panel discussion was moderated by Gartner vice-president Andy Rowsell-Jones, and the panellists included SME Association of Malaysia national deputy president Datin Dorph Peng Wen Yin, Ministry of Entrepreneur Development and Cooperatives secretary-general Datuk Suriani Datuk Ahmad, Oracle Malaysia Corp managing director Mohamed Fitri Abdullah and SME Association of Australia spokesperson Angela Vithoulkas.

Peng pointed out that the government has targeted SMEs’ gross domestic product contribution to rise from 38% to 45% by 2025 and also, to increase exports of Malaysian SMEs from 13.5% to 25% by 2025.

“For SMEs to thrive and compete effectively, digital adoption is definitely not a choice, but a necessity, although it’s very disruptive,” she said.

Suriani said the government has initiated and implemented many stimulus and funding programmes to help micro, small and medium enterprises to weather the lockdowns caused by the Covid-19 pandemic.

“The programmes cover a wide range of aspects, such as capacity building, financial assistance, as well as the skills and entrepreneur training,” said Suriani.

“Obviously, there are many challenges in terms of awareness, solutions for digitalisation, funding, the knowledge, expertise, and also talents. I believe that cloud-based solutions is the key for SMEs going forward,” Mohamed Fitri said.

Vithoulkas said the SME sector in Australia employs 70% of the workforce.

“We struggled during the pandemic to transform and pivot. Many of our SMEs in Australia didn’t have global connections, markets overseas and they suffered the most,” added Vithoulkas.

Manufacturing and construction track

Oxford Business Group managing editor (Middle East and Asia) Patrick Cooke’s keynote presentation showed that the pandemic had highlighted some structural problems within the Malaysian economy including low utilisation of technologies in some sectors - particularly the construction sector.

“After two years of contraction, a resurgence in the economy would be driven by the resumption of the accelerating of existing projects such as mass transit and road, utilities projects, and also a renewed focus on addressing the affordable housing backlog, as well as ongoing commercial projects that can be linked to improvements in consumer demand,” he said.

The industry panel discussion was moderated by John Low, co-managing partner of Roland Berger’s South East Asia practice, and the panel included Malaysian Investment Development Authority deputy CEO Sivasuriyamoorthy Sundara Raja, FMM vice-president Datuk Gan Tack Kong, MMC Corp group chief financial officer Badrulhisyam Fauzi and Prof Dr Satesh Namasivayam, associate head of the energy, geoscience infrastructure and society school at Heriot-Watt University Malaysia.

Sivasuriyamoorthy said the first half of 2021 had seen the country attracting quite a number of foreign direct investments.

“We believe that by the end of this year, the overall investments in the manufacturing sector will be much higher, even from the 2019 figure. There is a surge of investments in the semiconductor industries as well as the electronics industry,” he said.

Meanwhile, Gan commented that some of the companies, even with the International Trade and Industry Ministry’s (Miti) approval, chose not to operate. And as a result of that, there was loss of production, business, and manpower in the manufacturing sector.

Badrulhisyam said Covid-19 had pushed companies to accelerate investments in digital infrastructure.

“There is a lot more emphasis on remote access to operating data for us to enable decision making. Also, cybersecurity and data integrity have become a paramount issue,” he said.

Dr Satesh said there are a wealth of engineering challenges that would cater for the progression of technology, and perhaps support the re-start of certain industries as economies recover.

“Some examples are making solar energy economical, enhancing virtual reality, and providing access to clean water. What we as engineers are saying is, if some issues aren’t addressed and solved by the end of the 21st century, the human race would be threatened,” he said.

Future of work track

At her keynote presentation, International Labour Organisation deputy regional director Panudda Boonpala said the challenge will be to address increasing inequality, which has been intensified by the Covid-19 crisis.

“High skilled workers with secure jobs have been able to utilise the latest technologies to work safely from home without any impact on their wages and salaries. Conversely, too many low skilled workers have not had the same option and have endured considerable losses in working hours and earnings.”

She said without strong government interventions, “we will face what almost certainly will be an uneven recovery that could have longer term effects on the future of work, and the prosperity of our societies.”

The industry panel discussion was moderated by Forrester vice-president and research director Frederic Giron, and panellists included Muhammad Suhada, deputy (acting) chief information officer of Blue Bird Group; Pauline Ho, chief strategic operations officer and assurance partner of PwC Malaysia and co-lead, board mentoring of 30% Club Malaysia; and Tomasz Gaczynski, robotic process automation presales manager of UiPath Malaysia.

Muhammad Suhada noted while hybrid work systems are increasingly popular, it does not foster better communication of company culture and policies to employees.

”Also, not everyone has the privilege to work at home all the time. Those in operations work cannot be at home 100%,” he said.

“You should come back to the office maybe a couple of days in a month, so that you can still get to know people, bond and build relationships. Human interactions should not be removed just because you’re working remotely,” Ho added.

Gaczynski said the Covid-19 pandemic has proved that hybrid work is a future that is possible, and it not only benefits the employees, but also employers.

“If I put you in front of a computer, and I just ask you to do the same thing over and over – we as humans, we’re not wired this way. In coming up with new ideas, how to address specific issues, strategising, I’ll probably see a lot more commitment and engagement from my employees,” said Gaczynski.

Digital finance track

During her keynote presentation, World Bank senior financial sector specialist Rekha Reddy said in Malaysia, there is room to grow digital payments particularly for the bottom 40% and other vulnerable groups.

“The World Bank survey data from 2021 show that 57% of Malaysian firms reported investing in digital platforms. This is higher than what we observe in the Philippines, Cambodia and Mongolia, but below the levels reported in Vietnam and Indonesia,” said Rekha.

The industry panel discussion was moderated by Aadarsh Baijal partner and head of digital practice in Bain & Company, and panellists included Maybank group chief technology officer Mohd Suhail Amar Suresh, Pertama Digital director of strategy Saify Akhtar, GOtyme Digital Bank president and CEO Jojo Malolos and ServiceNow senior manager, solution consulting Liew Kok Mun.

The summit’s exclusive Diamond Sponsor was CrowdStrike; Gold Sponsors were Cyberview, Dell Technologies and SAP; Silver Sponsors were ServiceNow and UiPath; and the Bronze Sponsor was Oracle.

The summits’ Knowledge Partners were Bain & Company, Forrester, Gartner, Omdia, Oxford Business Group, and Roland Berger. It was supported by the Federation of Malaysian Manufacturers (FMM), SME Association of Malaysia, SME Association of Australia and 30% Club Malaysia, with sendQuick as the Mobile Messaging Partner and the summit was live on Jublia. Watch the playback of the sessions at bit.ly/starbizplaylist.

Source: https://www.thestar.com.my/business/business-news/2021/12/13/an-insight-on-industry-outlook-and-market-forecasts