Seated from left: Carol Wang (HPE), Sekar Jaganathan (Kenanga Investment Bank Bhd), Marzida Mohd Noor (Allianz Malaysia Bhd), Robert Lye (HPE), Beh Swan Swan (Magnum Corporation Sdn Bhd), Bahiyah Baharom (AIA Bhd), Nursuriyani Zainol Abidin (AXA Affin General Insurance Bhd), Anthony Teoh (GuocoLand (Malaysia) Bhd)

Standing from left: Khor Kim Leng (HPE), Nasrin Abg Omar (Tenaga Nasional Bhd), Lin Pui Mei (Sunway Medical Centre Sdn Bhd), Devabalan Theyventheran (CIMB Investment Bank Bhd), Alain Boey (Media Prima Bhd), Johnwee Lee (PETRONAS ICT Sdn Bhd), Kishore Modak (HPE), Linus Lai (IDC), Terence Tan (British American Tobacco (M) Bhd), Mohd Pazman Othman (AIROD Sdn Bhd), Dominic Eng (United Overseas Bank (Malaysia) Bhd), Lukman M. Said (KLCC Property Holdings Bhd), Manfred Tong (Mulpha International Berhad), Mikael Tan (Sapura Advanced Systems Sdn Bhd), Peter Tan (CTC Global Sdn Bhd)

CXO Leadership Roundtable SeriesKuala Lumpur, Malaysia, 28th August 2019

On 28th August 2019, IDC and HPE hosted 19 CXOs from organizations across various industries in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, as part of its ongoing

CXO Leadership Roundtable series to discuss what they see as key challenges and priorities of the CXO of the Future. Organizations in

Malaysia are well on their way on their digital transformation journeys. The broad spectrum of attendees at the roundtable that included a board

member and a self-professed disruptor revealed most had a strategyand plans to get digitized.

Let's get digitizedIDC survey shows that the top business goals for technology investment in the Asia/Pacific region are innovation and delivering new products and services, especially digital products. Digital transformation awareness and adoption have enabled businesses across industries in Malaysia to start realizing the desired outcomes such as improved customer experience, better workforce efficiency, new revenue streams and business models. IDC survey shows that two out of three Malaysian organizations are either planning their digital transformation strategies or are actively implementing related projects. And IDC predicts that by 2022, over 66% of Malaysia's gross domestic product will be digitalized, with growth in every industry driven by digitally enhanced offerings, operations, and relationships.

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“We want to move from being a payer to being a partner to our customers, providing beyond insurance and bring innovative products to market. We want to look at providing more value-added services.”

Nursuriyani Zainol AbidinHead

Change Management Transformation OfficeAXA Affin

“From our BAT organization’s perspective, we started our digital transformation since last year, which became more formal this year. This was done in collaboration with IDT, partnering with Global Business Services (GBS) organization and the rest of the business functions.”

Terence TanHead of IT, ASPAC Service Centre, British American Tobacco

Focused on customers, inside and outFocus on the customer experience (CX) has risen to prominence in recent years; in fact, IDC predicts that by 2020, 30% of Asia/Pacific excluding Japan (APEJ) enterprises will exploit AI and advanced customer analytics to suggest innovative CX actions that deliver value from a segment, a persona, or an individual customer perspective. It was no surprise that many at the roundtable spoke of how many of their projects were focused on both external and inhouse customers.

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“We are continuously working on improving customer experience. Customers like to look for information through mobile devices. Last year, we launched our mobile app called SunMed Go. It allows our customers to book appointments and check x-ray results with more features to come. We are also trying to improve our work processes through digital and dashboards.”

Lin Pui MeiAssistant Director

Information & Communication Technologies Sunway Medical Centre

“Last year, at the company’s 50th Anniversary celebration, the company took a new direction in committing to customer centricity. Customer centricity is not just about external customers but also internal ones. So, the digital part of it will be to support this new direction. It will impact not just the business front, but also the organizational work culture, talent and skillsets as well, so one major initiative undertaken is to embrace design thinking methodology in our organization where it will facilitate a new process and mindset change towards problem solving and creating new ideas.”

Beh Swan SwanChief Information Officer, Magnum Corporation

Partners and the ecosystem and blurring linesThe changing face of CXOs is very much the driving force behind the transformation of their organizations. And the future is one where partnership and collaboration across the broader ecosystem will be key. IDC believes that digital transformation is fundamentally changing the idea of channel to one that is much more an interconnected ecosystem, with participants sharing a symbiotic, and often cooperative, relationship with other participants within that ecosystem. Finding and working with the right partners, within or outside one's own industry or ecosystem, including developing and accepting co-opetition situations, will be critical for success. CXOs at the roundtable talked about actively looking for new partners and thinking about innovating with them and those in their ecosystem.

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“The digital projects you run in an organization is to benefit customers. So, one should think from outside-in instead of the other way round. Your pain points have been created by you and you have extended this to your customers. Key performance indicators on digital projects should be on customer satisfaction and not return on investment.”

Sekar JaganathanDirector, Digital Strategy, Kenanga Investment Bank

Mindset transformationWhile deploying new technologies is par for the course in transformation, to truly transform, new mindsets, change in culture and adopting new ways of doing things is also critical. As CXOs at the roundtable pointed out, many of their journeys required them to embrace new thinking, and provide training from the top down to the rank and file to ensure readiness at every level.

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“In BAT, we no longer call ourselves “IT”, but IDT – “D” being digital. IDT will own and support the digital platforms and help drive the application of the right technology to create commercial value and transform the business. GBS has moved from providing the traditional transactional services (Finance, HR, etc.) provided by Shared Services, to a more value-added business partnering organization, that serves as the engine for business simplification, supporting the transformational journey as an effective global integrated enterprise, within areas of simplification, analytics and automation. We have also implemented Digital DNA into our culture, and we have people in change management, design thinking, agile, innovation, storytelling, etc. Being a 100-year old organization, this will be a journey for all of us.”

Terence TanHead of IT, ASPAC Service Centre, British American Tobacco

“An example of one of the pain points we experience is that we have been very compliance driven and we place higher priority to ensure that the retail outlets reduce the cash on their premises in order not to get robbed. As a result, poor customer service was experienced when our winners want to claim their winnings in cash and there is insufficient cash in their outlet. This of course takes away the delight from the customer experience that we want now to change”.

Beh Swan SwanChief Information Officer, Magnum Corporation

The CXO of today faces a rapidly evolving business and technological landscape, and needs to grapple with unprecedented demand to deliver innovation and business value that aligns to the business objectives. Addressing legacy systems evolution and change management issues like entrenched mindsets are more important than before to ensure successful execution of new business strategies. Understanding the importance of data for innovation, and how best to derive value from it and adopt new technologies, will also be critical. The CXO of the future will need to embrace the business side of the organization and play a central role in the success of the enterprise. It is not easy to constantly innovate, but the art of adapting to change, choosing more flexible IT models, and partnering synergistically for business outcomes will define the DNA of the future CXO.

Jointly Organized by:

Parting Thoughts

Data treasure trovesMany organizations are looking to data for many of their innovation projects, and its importance to the future of the enterprise was clear. IDC predicts that by 2020, 60% of large enterprises will create data management or monetization capabilities, thus enhancing enterprise functions, strengthening competitiveness, and creating new sources of revenue in the region. Attendees at the roundtable pointed out that data was often crucial to the business and that they were certainly taking steps to harness it and manage the challenges of regulations.

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“There are 2 types of data that you collect. One that drives and grows your business. You also need to identify new data values that go beyond your business ecosystem and your customers’ needs. You need to look into what you want to do in the next few years and understand the data value that you will need. Once you have that, you need to think about how you are going to engage with future partners that will drive your business so that you can grow together.”

Sekar JaganathanDirector, Digital Strategy, Kenanga Investment Bank

Finding the balance on the journey forwardDigital transformation is an ongoing journey, with many challenges. It is sometimes productive to take a step back to see where you are, and refine or even totally overhaul some of the things you are doing before continuing with the journey.

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“My personal experience of going digital is that while necessary governance and process should be in place to support the digital strategy, the challenge is how to balance the idea generation, innovation and being agile, without creating a lot of digital breadcrumbs and digital assets that we don't need, so we can still drive good commercial value, and improving customer or even employee experience. Sometimes we say we do agile, but we are actually doing WAGILE, waterfall agile. And that is OK, as long we balance and prioritize which initiatives should be agile and which ones are not.”

Terence TanHead of IT, BAT ASPAC Service Centre, British American tobacco

Parting Thoughts