Digitise all spheres to reap benefit of new tech: analysts

Companies across the globe should embrace digitisation in all possible spheres to reap the benefit of the advancement in technology, analysts said.

“For any transformation, the people who will get it will turn out as winners and those who will not get it will be losers,” said Fredrik Haren, a global conference speaker.

“It is like globalisation: the people who became part of globalisation became richer and the people who didn't were left behind,” he told The Daily Star in an interview in Dhaka early this month.

Haren, a Swedish national, was in Dhaka to attend the sixth edition of a communication summit at Le Meridien hotel in Dhaka, which was attended by around 350 professionals from the creative communication industry and related sectors.

Bangladesh Brand Forum in association with Cannes Lions and The Daily Star organised the summit -- COMMWARD Excellence in Creative Communication.

Haren is an author and speaker on business creativity. He has delivered more than 2,000 presentations, lectures and workshops in over 60 countries.

He compared digitisation with a typhoon and advised companies to prepare accordingly.

“Companies need to understand that the typhoon is already here and they have to have higher sense of urgency about the issue. We need to change our behaviour.”

In 1995, Haren wrote his first book titled “Internet and Marketing” where he said how things would change by 2000 because of the advancement of technology and the internet.

“But nothing happened. It was not because technology or idea was not there. It was because people were not willing to understand how big the change was. It took 20 years. Now we are ready and that's the big difference,” he said.

“I think we are going to see an absolute explosion of innovation in all areas because we have started to understand the tool that we have been given.”

Haren said people should focus on the transformation part of the digitisation which is much bigger. “We have to develop our creative ability to better understand how we can use all of the possibilities.”

As everything is becoming digital, advertising and communication are becoming part of business, he said.

On the sidelines of the conference, Kaushik Roy, president of brand strategy and marketing communication of India-based Reliance Industries Ltd, also talked about digitisation. He said the internet would be all-pervasive.

“In the old world, electricity moved everything. In the new world, digitisation will be like electricity,” Roy said.

“The future is going to be: from the light bulbs to fans to almost everything we use in our daily life can be controlled by the internet.

“There is no way you can survive without going digital. You have to introduce the power of data in everything you do. You can't manage customers without having a digital interface. So, the old method of doing things physically or in paper is not going to be viable.”

Roy said digitisation should be for the sake of creating jobs and raising growth and prosperity of the common men.

He said because of digitisation a number of jobs will disappear. “So, new jobs will have to be created. That is going to be a key challenge.”  

Roy puts his faith on youths in all South Asian countries.

“They are all the same which is encouraging. What is good about this generation is that they all belong to the digital age and they have embraced a digital life very early in their life and understand how to make the best out of it,” he said.

“When it comes to utilising and making the best of the digital age, today's youth across the world are almost empowered to be able to do that.” Roy is also aware of the digital work taking place in Bangladesh.

“In the backend of the office operations such as software and digital designing, Bangladesh has been doing very well. I know that there are several companies which are engaging with Bangladeshi firms to get their work done.”

Roy also talked about Reliance's launch of 4G mobile services that are expected to shake the Indian market and aim to bring millions of Indians online. Launched on September 5, Reliance Jio network is offering customers three months of free services followed by free calls and data plans the company claims are the cheapest in the world.

“This is perhaps the biggest venture in the telecom sector in the world. Nowhere anything like this has been attempted given its scale as it is aiming to cover the whole geography in one go,” said Roy. 

It is a complete change the way telecom or internet will be seen in the future, at least in India, he said.

He said India stood 155th in terms of broadband penetration, according to the 2014 UN Broadband Commission ranking.

“With Jio we hope to be in the top 10 simply because of the huge number of people in India. If they have access to the internet at the speed with the Jio service, it will make India one of the top ranking countries in the world.”

He said because of poor performance, unaffordable rates and many other such problems, the average consumption rate is in kilobytes. During the trial offer the company has found that there are people who are consuming as much as 25 gigabytes a month. 

“What we are seeing is if the prices are right and experience is good, India will see a phenomenal change in terms of the consumption pattern.”

fazlur.rahman@thedailystar.net