A rundown on PLDT Smart SME Nation’s TechIsland 3.0
MANILA, Philippines – On April 22, PLDT Smart SME Nation declared “Challenge, Change, Conquer,” at its third annual tech-for-business conference, TechIsland 3.0.
The largest technology conference featuring ICT solutions in the country, TechIsland 3.0, played host to over 1,500 micro, small and medium entrepreneurs to the Hotel Sofitel Philippine Plaza Manila in Pasay City for the full-day event.
The event offered attendees invaluable insights from the full roster of industry heavyweights and visionary entrepreneurs enlisted by PLDT Smart SME Nation to speak for the third iteration of this event.
The first TechIsland was held two years ago in Pico de Loro, Batangas. Attended by over 700 participants, it featured talks from several plenary speakers followed by three breakout sessions—a format it has kept every year since.
Last year, TechIsland 2.0 took place in Subic’s Ocean Adventure Eco Park. A two-day event that time around, TechIsland 2.0 grew from 700 participants to well over a thousand IT managers and business owners.
This year, TechIsland 3.0 eclipsed its predecessors significantly, with over 1,500 participants, featuring plenary speakers from industry-leading companies such as Uber and Facebook. TechIsland’s growth and expansion this year did not just go beyond its numbers in attendance, but also in the scope of its discussions. Where the first two catered exclusively to IT managers and business owners, TechIsland 3.0 expanded its audience to include Marketing, Sales, Operations and Finance, and more in its four breakout sessions aptly entitled The Captain, The Navigator, The Engineer and finally, The Trader.
Finally, this year, PLDT Smart SME Nation opened TechIsland’s doors to the public for the very first time since the creation of the event. As part of SME Nation’s commitment to empowering more and allowing more people to take part in the learnings and experience of the event and widening its reach by broadcasting virtually the entire event live through Facebook’s Live Feed.
Leading the charge: TechIsland 3.0’s plenary offered genuine insight from industry movers
Taking place in the Sofitel Philippine Plaza Manila’s Harbour Tent, the conference kicked off in front of a 1,500-plus-strong crowd with an opening address made by Eric Alberto, PLDT Executive Vice President and ePLDT President and CEO.
PLDT Executive Vice President and ePLDT President and CEO Eric Alberto delivers his opening address“As I look across the room,” Alberto said, “I am in awe with the realization that I am literally in the company of the chief architects of this country’s digital future.”
Alberto challenged those in attendance with stories of how companies—both local and international—have achieved success by harnessing the simple, yet powerful capabilities of digital solutions. He underlined the theme and objective of TechIsland 3.0 to demystify digital and, more importantly, to emphasize and underscore its relevance and importance to their businesses.
To educate and empower the entrepreneurs in attendance on how to solve real-life problems using digital solutions, PLDT Smart SME Nation invited individuals from the fore of thought leadership, representing some of the most well-respected companies from different industries both local and international.
Digital tools of the trade
First of the plenary speakers was Winston Damarillo, Chief Strategy Officer (CSO) of PLDT and the CEO of Talas—the PLDT Group’s Big Data organization. A veteran of Silicon Valley, Damarillo is the Executive Chairman of Amihan Global Strategies, a strategic consulting firm that specializes in digital enterprise transformation and has worked with some of the largest corporations in the ASEAN region.
Winston Damarillo underlines digital disruption and its capacity to help businesses.Damarillo discussed how businesses can go digital through specifically designed technology solutions and it just so happens that Talas just recently launched one such solution: Market Builder.
Market Builder uses big data collected through PLDT and its customers and enables companies who use it to, as the name implies, build their marketing strategies and campaigns according to their unique business objectives. Market Builder is a powerful tool that allows for a complex customization of market building parameters—from different types of media, target demographics and even geographic settings.
“We’re more connected than ever before and as we connect we become more intelligent—social networks, digital presence have made us more intelligent,” Damarillo said. “As we’ve become more intelligent, more informed and more empowered, the way businesses need to engage the emerging young customers, you have to be smart, savvy.”
Damarillo discussed how the Philippines is more mobile than any other place in the world. That and the fact that the country is also full of the innovation of youth presents a slew of opportunities to change the way businesses engage their markets.
“In the Philippines,” he said, “the Filipino spends 520 minutes every day. How many of these minutes do you want to own to inform your market about your product?”
Thumb a ride
If there is any company out there that best epitomizes the way technology can solve real-life problems, it’s Uber.
Uber Technologies Inc. is an American multinational online transportation network company. Headquartered in San Francisco, California, Uber touched down in Manila a little over two years ago.
Laurence Cua, General Manager of Uber Manila talked about the Uber experience and what has driven its phenomenal success across the globe. It lies in the simplicity, he said. Uber has taken something—the process of getting private transportation—and through the power of technology, turned into a process that takes all of three taps on your mobile device.
Uber Manila General Manager Laurence Cua on technology's ever-increasing role in solving real-life problems“You open the app, you tap a button and book a car. It’s that simple,” Cua said.
Uber’s ability to solve real-life problems through technology takes an even more significant form when applied to the Philippines specifically. Private car ownership in the Philippines has spiked significantly in the last three years, congesting Metro Manila more and more while our roads are not getting wider.
“Metro Manila is the worst traffic on Earth according to the Waze Driver Satisfaction Index from October 2015,” he said. “Traffic costs the Philippines P2.4 Billion per day, according to the Japan International Cooperation Agency and the National Economic Development Authority as of March 2014.”
This means that divided by the 15 million people in Metro Manila, each person loses about P200 per day because of traffic.
Uber Manila’s answer to the Metro Manila traffic equation is finding a way to get more people into fewer cars. That insight gave birth to Uber Hop.
Uber Hop is a modified version of Uber Pool, a service which allows a rider to share an Uber car with another rider that has a destination along the same route, allowing riders to split the cost. Uber Hop allows up to six riders to share one Uber car, based on a pre-defined similar destination. Riders pay less, drivers earn more, and traffic is lessened along with petrol consumption, time wasted and many more other factors affected by the congestion of Metro Manila.
The hard sell and the heart sell
In what had been a morning full of technology jargon and digital analyses, the tempo of the forum was changed as Merlee Jayme, Chief Executive Officer, Chief Creative Officer, Chairman of DENTSU Jayme Syfu, or The Chairmom, stepped onto the TechIsland 3.0 stage.
The Chairmom Merlee Jayme of DENSTSU Jayme Syfu softens the mood with her emotional addressA stalwart in the advertising industry, Jayme touched on the importance of emotional and relevant messaging—what she refers to as “heart sell”—when it comes to both marketing a business and building a brand.
“In the business of selling, all we do is convince and persuade our consumers into buying our product, product features, our visions, our ideals, and our promises—everyday,” she said. “But more often than not, in my 25 years in advertising, the emotional wins over the rational.”
Digital innovation is in full swing across the world and new things are being developed every minute that gives people the power to reach their audiences in ways that have never been done before. But Jayme believes that the best way to achieve your brand’s marketing objectives is through heart sell rather than hard sell. This is because while technology and innovation affect constant change, the ability to connect and engage your market through an emotional message leaves a stronger, more lasting impression and it builds your brand.
“Does heart sell still work in the digital age? Definitely,” Jayme said. “Technology and innovation are not enough, we have to make it relevant to our consumers—genuine relevance.”
Mobile first
A last minute addition to TechIsland’s lineup of speakers is Alfredo Tan, Interim Country Director of Facebook Philippines and Group Director of Global Marketing Solutions, Facebook Canada.
Alfredo Tan of Facebook Philippines on the dominance of mobile media in the worldTan discussed different media trends, both historical and current, that are relevant to marketing businesses as well digital disruption. In particular,Tan touched on the power of mobile.
The number of mobile-connected devices is growing five times faster than the growth of human population on a global scale. In fact, there are already more mobile-connected devices than there are people in the world today—7.5 billion mobile devices versus 7.1 human beings.
The Philippines is one of over a hundred countries in the world today in which there are more mobile devices than there are people.
“The Philippines uses mobile devices more than the rest of the world,” Tan said. “We have grown into a mobile-first model faster than the more developed countries of the world.”
This is put into clearer perspective through Facebook’s own metrics. More precisely, in the Philippines, of the 49 million people who have Facebook, 44 million access it through a mobile device.
Tan underlined the potential this represents. According to him, to be able to see genuine and significant impact through marketing, businesses must address three things: identity, discovery and mobile.
Mobile offers the opportunity to create a genuine, recognizable identity. Technology now allows companies to tailor-fit their messaging more precisely than ever depending on their targets. Mobile also offers a new form of discovery.
With the rise of mobile device usage, search entries are becoming less and less relevant as the world is shifting towards the new medium. Mobile has given people the luxury of receiving information that is specific to their interests. This allows businesses to be in the right place and puts emphasis on the relevance of their story—their identity.
Mobile, however, also offers the challenge of fighting for reach in a society where everyone is on a mobile device. There are insights, though, that make this equation easier to solve. One of those insights is attention—people are focused on mobile. According to Tan, 52 percent of time spent on all digital is spent on an app and on average, despite any number of apps an individual can have, majority of their time is only spent on four to five apps.
Mobile has become the dominant medium, according to Tan, and it is important that businesses veer away from traditional thinking and practices and embrace this shift.
“We’ve always made this classic mistake. When the new dominant technology or medium comes into play, we apply the old methodologies to it,” Tan said. “People apply the way they work with existing media to the new medium.”
The rise of digital game-changers
The Captain: Going global
The growing online market continues to challenge MSMEs to adapt to the emerging digital disruptive culture in business. However, amid technological advancement and approximately 47 million internet users in the Philippines alone, business owners still remain apprehensive to make the shift.
With only a fraction of small businesses that are online and have fully transactional websites, CEOs and business owners in the breakout session were urged to champion their company’s transition into the technological territory.
Today, there is no excuse not to be digital. As the market changes, businesses should be able to adapt to new consumer taste and establish their online image and presence to stay relevant.
“The thing about digital for CEOs is that it’s just not about marketing or social networking,” said Bossing Laura Verallo De Bertotto, CEO and Creative Director of VMV Hypoallergenics. “It’s a question of productivity. You can’t give up that [digital] edge to your competitors.”
The company’s digital space serves as another business card or catalogue. It is both a cost-efficient marketing tool and a highly controllable space, enabling businesses to adapt to the modern workplace, which promotes a collaborative culture in the workforce and higher morale among employees.
Participants were given information on available business tools and solutions that allow MSMEs not only to leverage on data but also compete on the same playing field as larger enterprises with the support of existing big data solutions previously unavailable to small businesses.
The Navigator: Extra mile
Sales and marketing form the core of any enterprise at any stage of the business, whether it is a startup or already established. According to Mario Barta, Founder and CEO of FlySpaces.com, any sales-driven business is a successful one. Without sales, you are not a business.
Practitioners in the breakout session were brought back to the basics on the effectiveness of knowing the customer, but even more so today in the digital age where points of contact with the consumer have multiplied. From face-to-face, we now take on different channels on the online platform in the form of websites, social media, and email, among others.
As enablers of the company, sales and marketing specialists should be able to understand, assist and monitor customers’ needs quickly and efficiently. To meet the demands of the online market that requires a rapid response from the service or product provider, technology must play a central role in the business.
It is important to keep in mind that alongside the shift to the digital platform, specialists ought to also shift from the mindset of hard-sell product marketing to the bigger perspective of relationship marketing. The data-driven consumer looks for added value to entice them to avail of the product and service.
With the latest technology tools made available to MSMEs, businesses have the capability to understand the consumers’ decision-making process by studying and targeting their markets. Through leveraging on mobile marketing, practitioners can go the extra mile to market their business and stay relevant to their customer.
The Trader: Sustainable growth
With MSMEs comprising of approximately two thirds of the country’s workforce, it is no doubt that they play a central role in the new, more holistic type of economic development in the form of inclusive economic growth.
However, despite these statistics, traditional brick-and-mortar businesses have been known to face big challenges against larger enterprises due to the issues of lack of scale and proper documentation, making it difficult for banks to issue loans to help the business thrive.
Finance and procurement practitioners in the session were called upon to take the leap and leverage on disruptive innovation in the financial world. This disruption comes in the form of the digital platform to address the chronic problem of access to finances for the MSME sector.
Lito Villanueva, Managing Director of Fintech, shared that one of the top 20 challenges of an SME is that banks are particularly wary of lending to small businesses because not only it is costly but also a huge proportion of MSMEs are still not “e-ready.”
Participants were also given insight on the importance of customer relationship management as a business strategy and how technology gives businesses the power to meet their customer’s needs and improve operational productivity by graduating from traditional transactions and admin work, especially significant now at the onset of the country’s ASEAN integration.
Providing digital solutions that allow MSMEs the opportunity to harness technology not only efficiently streamlines systems but also maximizes financial resources. PLDT and its partners continue to support the drive for sustained economic development and financial inclusivity for all sectors in business.
The Engineer: Real-life challenges
Security and mobility are vital factors in keeping a business up and running. More than just troubleshooting, IT and engineering professionals play a central part in the way an enterprise operates. To be revolutionaries in their respective fields, they have to take initiative to create solutions to real-life problems.
With their knowledge on systems and services that serve as the backbone of the enterprise, IT practitioners and engineers have the capacity to be leading decision-makers for the future of the business.
Attendees of the breakout session got an in-depth look on IT trends in today’s dynamic landscape and were given tips on how to cope with the ongoing merging of the virtual world and the real world. The role of IT, shared Head of Digital Mobility for Smart Communications, Inc. Chet Alviz, is constantly changing, and practitioners need to evolve alongside these trends.
Following the growth of the digital platform, IT and engineering leaders need to evaluate if they are implementing the right solutions and technologies to safeguard their businesses from what the next few years have in store. It is the responsibility of these solution specialists to ensure that the decisions they make take into consideration the new trends around people, mobility, and new data coming in, and how it all works for the benefit of the business.
To address the ongoing challenge of these professionals, participants were made aware of operational hacks to combat the existing cyber trends with solutions that not only improve data security but also give hacks to take advantage of the shift.
By empowering the IT and engineering decision makers to harness security and mobility solutions made available for their business, they can continue to innovate, compete and transform their business and shape the future of their industries.
The heart of the island
TechIsland has remained unchanged in a number of ways since its inception. It provides a wealth of valuable insights to its participants in the form of its visionary speakers who are industry movers and ground shakers. It offers more value still in how it enables and educates its attendees on the best and most relevant technology solutions and business practices. It offers an exceptional experience in terms of the accommodation and hospitality extended to its guests—always at luxurious venues, always at no spared expense.
This year, TechIsland 3.0 was opened to the public for the very first time, where its first two iterations were exclusively for existing clients of PLDT Smart SME Nation. For first-timers as well as the unknowing onlooker, an obvious first question would be, “How much will attending this event cost me?” The answer to that question is another way TechIsland has remained constant. PLDT Smart SME Nation offers the experience of attending this annual conference absolutely for free.
What then is the ultimate goal of TechIsland? And beyond that, what is the ultimate goal of PLDT Smart SME Nation?
In a press conference after the plenary, Alberto referred to PLDT as not simply a telecommunications provider but that it is in fact the largest technology company in the Philippines. As an industry leader, the PLDT Group as a whole believes strongly in its position to affect change and drive growth within the Philippine economy. The ultimate goal then, is nation building.
“It is our primary motivator that after attending TechIsland, MSMEs will be better informed about the multitude of available technologies they can leverage on, by which to improve the way they do business,” said Alberto. “It is our objective to always hold TechIsland annually not so much for our commercial gains, it’s really for us to carry out our social obligation as a leading technology company in the Philippines and a prime mover for enabling MSMEs that they may be truly globally competitive and that if they are successful they also improve the country’s economy.”
The Philippine economy is growing, despite any and all signs indicating otherwise. In fact, all forecasts project that the Philippines will enjoy sustainable growth until the year 2050, emerging as one of the world’s largest economies. As Alberto put it himself earlier this year at PLDT Smart SME Nation’s Kick Off Event: “Today is a rich and vibrant time to be in the enterprise business.”
PLDT Vice President and the new Head of SME Nation, Mitch Locsin, drives it home by saying, “Our ultimate goal really is to educate most of our MSMEs about the new market. Our thrust really is to empower our MSMEs, to provide them real-life digital solutions that allow them to get their reach, make them grow and make it big in their respective industries.”
Conquering another shore, looking beyond existing frontiers
With the hours winding down and the sun setting over Manila Bay, PLDT Smart SME Nation capped off a day filled with learning, exciting opportunities and new partnerships with a celebration.
While TechIsland 3.0 was much like its predecessors, with insights and discoveries led by great entrepreneurial minds and well-respected industry leaders, it was also quite a day for firsts.
Earlier that day, Locsin surprised TechIsland’s 1,500-plus attendees by announcing that PLDT Smart SME Nation had built all of them ready-to-use websites that are absolutely free. An unprecedented undertaking accomplished by PLDT with the help of students from St. Mutien College in Pampanga—30 percent of the websites were made by the students—this was done in response to one of the day’s most striking statistics. That of the 99.6 percent of the industry population in the Philippines made up of MSMEs, only one percent have a presence online, even less with actual fully functional websites.
TechIsland’s after-party featured musical performances from the enchanting Nicole Asensio and actress and rock diva Arci Munoz. The atmosphere was exciting and invigorating, quite appropriate after an all-day conference that highlighted innovation and leadership. Every TechIsland was a winner but quite a lucky few had the chance to take home premium prizes such as Samsung smartphones, tablets and LED TVs.
With another TechIsland in the books, PLDT Smart SME Nation is already looking to the next one, finding ways to make it even bigger, more exciting and more valuable to its attendees than ever before.
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