Human resources play a major role in transforming businesses into digital organisations while agility is imperative to help them weather a host of challenges in this disruptive world, according to two top business leaders in the financial and digital technology fields.
Rathian Srimongkol, chief executive and president of Krungthai Card Plc (KTC), a leading credit card provider, and Phichet Rerkpreecha, chief executive of Line Thailand, the operator of the most popular messaging app in Thailand, shared their views on Thursday at Bangkok Post's weekly CEO Talk 2021 webinar under the topic "Transformative Business and Organisations".
PEOPLE POWER
People are a key success factor of transforming to a digital organisation, Mr Rathian said.
The company has been transforming to a digital organisation in order to simplify services and business operations related to all parties including customers, staff, business partners and others.
Though technology is a core part of digitalisation, people and processes are also important to digitalise organisations, he added.
During the digital transformation, KTC has set clear communication with staff and sent them a clear message on the company's direction.
People's mindset and organisational culture are other factors supporting a successful digital transformation.
"Basically, digital transformation should benefit all stakeholders, especially building engagement between the company and customers, and employees as well. Creating a sense of ownership for staff would build up collaboration and facilitate going digital," he said.
He said technology disruption is a reason encouraging digital transformation, but the Covid-19 outbreak is another key factor speeding up the transformation.
Besides several businesses including KTC facing digital disruption, the company has also been affected by regulatory disruption amid the outbreak.
Given the pandemic's impact on the economy, businesses and people, the company's operations have also been impacted by the ceiling rate reduction for credit card and personal loans under the Bank of Thailand's debt relief measures to help borrowers amid the difficulty.
As a result, the company needs to adjust and redesign business operations in line with several challenges, uncertainties and disruptive factors amid the continued Covid-19 outbreak.
Mr Rathian said regulatory disruption would partly restrict innovative development of businesses. Tougher regulations would hinder business operators thinking outside the box. It would stymie the opportunity to create innovative services and products offered to consumers.
AGILITY POWER
Agility is a key value for organisations to deal with challenges driven by changes in the market, business environment and customer behaviour, Mr Phichet said.
It is vital for organisations to realise failures fast and quickly come up with ways to solve them.
"Never fear stopping a project midway if it doesn't work. We are working in a changing environment, changing market and changing demand. If it seems it doesn't work, we should not hesitate to axe something," Mr Phichet said.
He said the pandemic has disrupted the world and technology could be part of the solution to bring people back to a normal life.
With the pandemic, competition landscape and customer requirements are changing and businesses must realise they need to change and know what to do, he said.
"Whether you decide to change fully or partially, you need to make decisions clear and find the key competitive advantage within your organisation to stay relevant or even to gain an advantage," Mr Phichet said.
According to him, agility is one of the essences for Line that helps the company cope with the pandemic and markedly growing usage.
Line Man, a ride-hailing and food delivery service, adjusted by making it easier for users and drivers to engage with. The platform was fine-tuned with a new interface for easier usage.
Line Official Account, which supports merchants to engage with customers online, gravitated towards identifying the needs of small and medium-sized enterprises and the new interface helps them sell products faster and easier.
According to Mr Phichet, many organisations have faced disruptions and been forced to transform their businesses over the past couple of years.
Line prepared its platforms that serve mass migration from analogue to digital and the pandemic accelerated the fast migration.
In terms of organisation management, Line always uses tech for the ways it works. The company adjusted quickly to be in a better shape fulfilling user requirements, he said.
Mr Phichet said Line has to work towards facilitating its employees working online to make sure they can deliver maximum work capacity while supporting those working offline with comfort.