Category: News

Verapat Chantaravannakul, Chief Information Technology Officer at FWD Life Insurance PCL, delivered a workshop around “Agile Mindset: Key to Digital Transformation in Corporate Enterprise”.

Digital Transformation is about people making changes in their mindset to innovate business processes by using technology, to better serve the customers. Verapat’s presentation took the audience through his personal experience of the digital transformation age.

About Verapat Chantaravannakul

Saurabh Gupta, Associate Director Digital Asia-Pacific at Frost & Sullivan, delivered a workshop around “Building sophisticated digital platforms that can map digital customer journeys”.

In this increasingly complex digital world, organisations today, need to deliver experiences that supports customers across the entire customer journey. As much as the customers expect engaging and consistent digital experience at every touchpoint, they also need seamless delivery regardless of the fact that they are just browsing for information or use the channel only for non-purchase activities. This session covered the different phases of digital customer journey and the technology or platforms required to deliver these expectations including BI, CRM, Portal, WCM, Marketing and search automation. It also also looked at how, organisations can and should build optimised and new age digital platforms that can map as well as enable these journeys to drive sales and loyalty.

About Saurabh Gupta

Joel Dickson, Development Manager at Agoda, delivered a presentation around “Breaking Down Silos – is moving from a component team to a feature team structure required to scale?”

Joel Dickson talked about how Agoda broke down silos and shifted from a component team to a feature team structure. Implementing GitHub as a central platform and creating a “pull request culture” that fostered agility & flexibility allowing Agoda to scale exponentially.

About Agoda
Agoda is transforming travel for millions of customers across the globe. Headquartered in Asia, Agoda is one of the world’s largest online travel accommodation platforms. Founded in 2005 and now part of Booking Holdings (Nasdaq:BKNG), Agoda has a network of over 1,000,000 vacation rentals and hotels worldwide. Our web and mobile products provide a first-rate reservation service in 38 languages that uniquely combines local knowledge and local connections to provide the best deals for business and leisure travelers.

About GitHub
GitHub is the best place to share code with friends, co-workers, classmates, and complete strangers. Over 24 million people use GitHub to build amazing things together across 67 million repositories. With the collaborative features of GitHub.com and GitHub Business, it has never been easier for individuals and teams to write faster, better code.

Derek Granath, Vice President, Product Marketing at Silver Peak, moderated a Panel Discussion around “SD – WAN – The Application Driven AGILE Network”. Panellists included:

– Athikom Kanchanavibhu, Vice President of Information Technology, Shera Public Company Limited
– Voranuch Dejakaisaya, Chief Information and Operations Officer, Bank of Ayudhya Plc.
– Preecha Kamnoetsing, Regional IT Manager, APAC & MEA, Troy Siam Company Limited

This session discussed how organizations can utilize an SD-WAN to consolidate and simplify the branch:

• What a “Thin Branch” is and how it benefits the entire enterprise
• Is SD-WAN for your organization?
• What considerations should you consider when choosing an SD-WAN solution to build a better WAN including:
– Active use of broadband services for enterprise applications
– Security
– Centralized orchestration
– Application acceleration (WAN optimization)
• New ways to gracefully migrate to SD-WAN at your own pace

About Derek Granath
Derek has more than 20 years of technology product marketing, product management and business development experience with a focus on high-performance enterprise and service provider networking systems. At Silver Peak, he leads the Product Marketing and Technical Marketing Engineering teams responsible for product positioning and messaging for service provider and enterprise SD-WAN offerings.

About Athikom Kanchanavibhu
Athikom is Vice President of Information Technology at Shera Public Company Limited. Responsible for overall strategy and execution of all IT pillars and digital transformation program in Thailand and investment countries. Before joining Shera, he has been working with leading consulting firm like Accenture, IBM, AtoS and global FMCG company like Nestle. Currently, Shera has undergone cloud infrastructure and domestic WAN transformation in the past 6 months and is in the journey to transform its global WAN landscape.

About Voranuch Dejakaisaya
Voranuch Dejakaisaya is the Chief Information and Operations Officer at Bank of Ayudhya PCL and has been in this role since January 1, 2017. Prior this role she was IT SEA Leader of GE Capital before transferring to be CIO at the Bank of Ayudhya in year 2009. Bank of Ayudhya is in the group of MUFG bank Japan, be the 5th largest bank in Thailand with number of branches in country over 630 branches, 6500 ATMs, 20,000 staffs.

About Preecha Kamnoetsing
Regional IT Manager, responsible for all IT Systems and IT Services in TROY’s Asia Pacific and Middle East and Africa (including China, India, Japan, Australia, New Zealand and Turkey).

Ritesh Sarda, Chief Information Officer at Sunlife Hong Kong, opens the CIO Leaders Summit Thailand with a presentation around “AI & Machine Learning”.

Why CIO’s adapting this technology, and how is this transforming the way we work?

ABOUT RITESH SARDA
Ritesh Sarda is Chief Information Officer for Sun Life Financial Hong Kong. He is an insurance technology leader with over 18 years of experience life insurance and pension business with proven leadership experience in Hong Kong, Philippines, India, Japan, and Singapore while working extensively with US, Canada and Asia business.

 1) What do you feel are the biggest challenges IT leaders are currently faced with within their business?
Truly understanding and internalising the role of not only being a technologist / project manager / solution expert but also accepting the fact that the organisation looks to IT leadership to play the role of organisation coach / transformation or change mgt. expert / part business or operations owner.

2) As an IT leader, what do you feel businesses continue to get wrong when it comes to their IT strategy?
The tendency to play safe / only make the bets with clear and proven track record / ROI etc.

3) What are the latest trends and behaviours you predict will be surfacing on the market over the coming 12 months?
Increasing pressure and anxiety caused by emerging tech / new business models / digital disruption will tend to cause knee-jerk mgt. decision making and impatience – both a deadly combination to the business.

4) What is the best piece of advice you have received within your job over the years?
Not only you have to show that you have a sharp mind and a listening ear but you need to earn the trust and win the love of the organisation to get any results. Which leads to: At the end of that day, you have to “change people” or you have to “change” people.

5) What is one key takeaway you hope our IT audience leaves with after hearing your presentation on site?
All the knowledge and mastery of digital transformation is only the “How” answer. You still have to individually deal with the organisation’s “Why”, “Who”, “What” and “When” to achieve your goals.

ABOUT ANANDA DEVELOPMENT
Ananda Development was founded in 1999 and held its IPO on SET (Thailand) in 2012. Since its inception, it has focused on developing captivating brands that offer unique Urban Living Solutions. This has resulted in it becoming the leading developer of high rise residential projects in close proximity to mass transit stations in Bangkok and the largest developer of new residential units in Bangkok. Ananda achieved this success through its branded products such as “IDEO”, first launched in 2007 and “IDEO MOBI” first launched in 2012. Its stylish, modern, technological and high quality, yet affordable products have led to Ananda becoming one of the best-known property development brands in Bangkok.

 1) What do you feel are the biggest challenges IT leaders are currently faced with within their business?

I think the biggest challenges CIOs and IT leaders are currently faced within their business is how to successfully drive digital transformation and innovation to achieve sustainable business growth while keeping the business systems up and running against sophisticated cyberattack. It’s all about putting digital at the heart of the business, leveraging digital technologies to improve performance and operational efficiency, turning data into a competitive advantage and creating more values to customer, enabling consistent innovation, seeking the right talent, and balancing cybersecurity with accessibility. At the end of the day, CIOs and IT Leaders need to transform themselves to become Chief Meaning Officer in order to lead people in the organization to understand what’s in it for them to go with you for successful digital transformation journey.

2) As an IT leader, what do you feel businesses continue to get wrong when it comes to their IT strategy?

In the digital era, new digital and IT technologies are continuously introduced. When it comes to customer solution, sometimes business fall into the technology’s trap and fall in love with a digital or IT technology that may not necessary suited with customer needs or solve customer problem either it’s too complicate or too costly to implement. My advice to the business is don’t fall in love with new fancy technologies but just pick the right digital or IT technology and tools that solve customer problems or response exactly to customer needs with cost competitiveness.

3) What are the latest trends and behaviors you predict will be surfacing on the market over the coming 12 months?

Digital transformation continues to be crucial in energy industry especially for energy services business. Brings together the best breed of IoT, Big Data, Cloud computing and AI/Machine learning technologies working together to enable data-driven solutions to customer in form of Data-as-a-Service or Insight-as-a Service will bring the business to stay in the competitive edge in the market over the coming 12 months and beyond.

4) What is the best piece of advice you have received within your job over the years?

For the best piece of advice, I would refer to an advice from Isabelle Kocher, CEO of ENGIE, to all CIOs and IT leaders in the Digital & IT summit in Paris on Nov 9th, 2016. She said, “Keep clearing mindset of rapid & pragmatic delivery, keep enthusiasm and positive thinking and keep collective approach and team spirit, all these values are key for success to support the digital transformation”. I have cascaded down to my team and it has proven to be sage advice for me over the years.

5) What is one key takeaway you hope our IT audience leaves with after hearing your presentation on site?

A food for thought to overcome the challenges and key for success to build a data-driven company.

ABOUT ENGIE

We are a global energy and services group, focused on three core activities: low-carbon power generation, mainly based on natural gas and renewable energy, global networks and customer solutions. Driven by our ambition to contribute to a harmonious progress, we take up major global challenges such as the fight against global warming, access to energy to all, or mobility, and offer our residential customers, businesses and communities energy production solutions and services that reconcile individual and collective interests.

Our integrated – low-carbon, high-performing and sustainable – offers are based on digital technologies. Beyond energy, they facilitate the development of new uses and promote new ways of living and working. Our ambition is conveyed by each of our 150,000 employees in 70 countries. Together with our customers and partners, they form a community of imaginative builders who invent and build today solutions for tomorrow.

2017 turnover: 65 billion Euros. Listed in Paris and Brussels (ENGI), the Group is represented in the main financial (CAC 40, BEL 20, Euro STOXX 50, STOXX Europe 600, MSCI Europe, Euronext 100, FTSE Eurotop 100, Euro STOXX Utilities, STOXX Europe 600 Utilities) and extra-financial indices  (DJSI World, DJSI Europe and Euronext Vigeo Eiris – World 120, Eurozone 120, Europe 120, France 20, CAC 40 Governance).To learn more : www.engie.com

24th March 2016 – Focus Network is proud to announce the CIO Leaders Summit Thailand, which will take place on September 28th in Bangkok.

5th November 2015 – Focus Network has announced the Keynote Panel Discussion, “Digital Transformation” to take place on Day 1 at the upcoming CIO Leaders Summit Singapore, November 18 – 19, Resorts World, Sentosa.

This expert panel will come together to reassess their business models, operating structures and strategy in order to future proof their business model and drive digital transformation. Basker Rangachari, Global Head of Brand & Retail Marketing, Standard Chartered will moderate this panel that will be provided by panelists, Malikkhan Kotadia, Snr Vice President Global Digital Engagement, Citi Bank Paul De Bruijn, Head of Transformation Services, AIG Insurance and Gowthaman Manickam, AMEA Practice Head, IT Solutions, BT Global Services, BT Singapore. The panel will include key takeaways that include:

• Developing an effective response strategy for your business: fostering innovation, speed to market, flexibility, customer engagement and organisational effectiveness
• Short term and long term response strategies: channel driven solutions and organisational change
• Overcoming reluctance and driving transformation: topdown vs. collaborative change
• “The Biggest Risk to your Business is No Action” – how inaction and delay will impact revenue, market share and the longevity of enterprise

“Our advisory committee has stressed the pertinence of a discussion on Digital Transformation for the upcoming CIO Leaders Summit Singapore, which will play a major overlying theme at during the event. We’re looking forward to this panel that will offer a raw format Q&A between our expert panelists who will provide their highly esteemed insight.” Tyron McGurgan, CEO Focus Network.

About Focus Network:
Focus Network organises business to business events across a range of industries throughout Asia Pacific. MCI brings senior decision makers together with suppliers and organises a series of roundtable discussions, face to face business meetings and keynote speaker sessions. These events give senior leaders of many industries the opportunity to learn about the latest technology and service offerings along with understanding and exchanging ideas with their peers on relevant industry topics through targeted workshops and sessions.

For further information, please contact:

Jennifer Hoch
Marketing Manager
Focus Network
Suite 2, Level 2,
2-10 Loftus Street
Sydney, NSW 2000

Email: jennifer@focusnetwork.co

26th October 2015 – Focus Network is proudly supporting the Global CIO Leadership Trek, taking place in 2016 from August 19 to August 28, Kilimanjaro, Tanzania.

The Global CIO Leadership Trek, brought to you by CIO Academy Asia presents an opportunity for like-minded peers from across the globe to challenge themselves while raising funds for building a kindergarten in Bhutan.

If you wish to participate in this venture, please register your interest here.

About CIO Academy Asia: CIO Academy Asia enables IT management gain relevant insights they need to excel and advance in their career. The institute is a platform where seasoned CIOs and experienced senior IT management executives impart their practical knowledge to guide learners on how they have navigated through complex issues and challenges within their industry. The learning is made relevant with experience practitioners giving their views on real-life industry collaborations. Their sharing and connection is invaluable, and can potentially help those who attend succeed in a fast changing business world driven by technology advancement.

About Focus Network:
Focus Network organises business to business events across a range of industries throughout Asia Pacific. MCI brings senior decision makers together with suppliers and organises a series of roundtable discussions, face to face business meetings and keynote speaker sessions. These events give senior leaders of many industries the opportunity to learn about the latest technology and service offerings along with understanding and exchanging ideas with their peers on relevant industry topics through targeted workshops and sessions.

For further information, please contact:

Jennifer Hoch
Marketing Manager
Focus Network
Suite 2, Level 2,
2-10 Loftus Street
Sydney, NSW 2000

Email: jennifer@focusnetwork.co