Izah Azahari
Talks of digitalisation started even before the COVID-19 pandemic, but the setting of digitalisation this time around is different due to the pandemic as it affected people’s lives and pushed them to digitalising their organisations and operations quicker.
Highlighting the importance of digitalisation in a presentation yesterday was imagine Sdn Bhd Vice President of Innovation and Technology Joey Heng Yick Fong with his topic ‘#imagineAStrongerNation – Digitalisation in the New Normal’.
The talk was part of the Brunei Mid-Year Conference and Exhibition 2022 (Brunei MYCE 2022) Digital Technology Week at International Convention Centre, Berakas.
Fong touched on imagine’s active role and participation, encouraging digitalisation during the COVID-19 pandemic in the Sultanate, and the aims to explore possibilities of adopting new technologies as people adapt to the new normal that calls for less physical interaction while still delivering quality customer experience in the telecommunications industry.
“There is a need to digitalise companies in the industry now as there are many changes in the pipeline, and especially as government services are digitalising, which means companies or businesses should be in the position in the near future to take advantage of those digitised services,” Fong said.
With the pandemic, “companies or businesses cannot afford to go through another movement restriction, and not being digitalised means that they are not online, and that would hurt their business regardless of which business industry they are in,” he said.
Touching on how imagine Sdn Bhd can help facilitate this, Fong said the company has partners and products that offer an “office-in-a-box” that includes logistics and payroll systems which a company should operate with when they start.
“This will give entrepreneurs the opportunity to start up with a digital platform, solving a lot of issues coming ahead in the future and to be ready for any changes, for instance, when the government comes in with digital integration such as Digital ID,” he said.
Speaking on his expert observation during the pandemic and how businesses changed, Fong said numerous businesses closed down because they were not ready during the height of the pandemic as businesses still relied on customers coming physically into the shops and using physical cash instead of online or digital means.
He proposed customers or organisations in the business industry to visit imagine for a consultation on how to digitise their business.
“We are already partners in life for providing an eco-system, meaning that you can start collecting or accepting digital payments that will actually integrate directly into your inventory in their Electric Point of Sale (EPOS) system, and eventually book it,” Fong said.
He added that these are all taking away from paper to paperless.
