On 29 May 2020, HKT partnered with Deloitte China to hold a webinar with the theme “Rebound and Thrive: Enhancing Your Cross-border Business with Agile Digital Transformation Solutions”. The webinar shared how the manufacturing industry could utilize innovative ICT solutions effectively to deploy digital transformation and capture emerging opportunities in the Southeast Asia market against the background of global industrialization 4.0 and the new trend of intelligent factories. The webinar attracted more than 100 manufacturers from Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area (“GBA”), the speakers introduced how Deloitte’s digital transformation solutions and HKT’s ICT solutions in GBA, Southeast Asia and worldwide could help manufacturers in threefold: address the challenges due to the pandemic, increase production efficiency and achieve digital transformation.

In recent years, China as the world’s factory has faced challenges including rising salaries and land price, changing government policies, etc., which have increased the production costs of enterprises. More and more multinational companies have adopted a new strategy of “China + 1”, with a view to expanding production lines outside China to increase cost efficiency and diversify operating risks. Southeast Asian governments have been making active efforts to capitalize on the new trend of global industrialization 4.0 recently. With substantial investments in infrastructure and communication technology, and the introduction of preferential policies including taxation and land price, those countries have successfully increased their competitiveness as industrial bases, attracting a number of foreign investors to establish automated production lines and new intelligent factories in Southeast Asia. However, according to research reports, only 13% enterprises have implemented industrialization 4.0 in Southeast Asia successfully. Respondents said that they were subject to limitations such as unstable cross-regional network connections, slow data transmission and lack of technical talents in local. The manufacturing industry tends to face major challenges in respect of communication technology in Southeast Asia.

(Live moments of representatives from HKT)

In light of this, Mr. Tim Lam, Assistant Vice President from Product Department of HKT China and Mr. Ng Tsun (吴峻), Senior Business Development Manager from Strategic Customer Management of PCCW Global, introduced participants the emerging opportunities and challenges in Southeast Asia market. They elaborated HKT’s business presence in Southeast Asia, the strengths of its products and how one-stop ICT solutions including SD-WAN, Premium Internet, IPVPN, Console Connect and IoT Sim, etc. could help enterprises solve network limitations in Southeast Asia and facilitate the development of industrialization 4.0. The two speakers also introduced the underlying technical structure and application scenarios of each solution, giving a vivid picture of how HKT’s ICT solutions could improve the experience of enterprises in cross-border communication, save network development costs in Southeast Asia more effectively, provide local technical support, help enterprises deploy ICT facilities in offices or factories, connect to the business in Southeast Asia seamlessly and achieve inter connectivity.

(Mr. Fan Weijie introducing the application of digital transformation)

Mr. Fan Weijie, partner of information and digitalization risks from Deloitte China, introduced the new trend of global industrialization 4.0, intelligent factories and the application of innovative technologies. He also used Deloitte’s virtual factory to demonstrate how innovative technologies including artificial intelligence, virtual reality and big data analysis were applied into industrial production. In addition, Mr. Fan shared how Deloitte’s digitalized financial management and Intelligent Purchase Manager could help enterprises achieve digital transformation and increase operating efficiency in Southeast Asia.

(Three speakers interacted with the participants)