Tech company urges businesses to be future-ready

Dell officials Chue Chee Wei, managing director, Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia and Philippines; Christopher Papa, country manager, Philippines; Ng Tian Beng, vice president and managing director, South Asia and Korea; and Gaurav Chand, vice president, enterprise solutions group marketing

Multinational computer technology company Dell adapted the theme “Be Future Ready” in the recently concluded Dell User Forum 2016 held in Manila.

“Be Future Ready” means enabling enterprises with solutions which would define the digital environment in the coming years. Talks of Internet of Things (IoT) have never been this amplified with expectations of billions of connected devices and bytes and bytes of data these will generate.

Ng Tien Beng, vice president and managing director of Dell South Asia and Korea, explained how Dell transformed itself into a future-ready company and allowed enterprises to follow suit.

“Dell is a great example of a company that embraced digital transformation,” Beng said.

In 1984, Dell was just a PC (personal computer) company. When it embraced the changes in technology, the company decided to go public in 1988. As the industry expanded, so did Dell when it entered the server and networking business in 1994 and storage in 1998. It was followed by acquisitions between 2006 and 2010 that led to the increase of its portfolio and transformed into an end-to-end solutions company. In 2013, Dell went private again.

This year, Dell and EMC, another technology solutions company, announced a merger, which is expected to boost both companies’ businesses globally.

“The market is getting competitive,” Beng said. “In a study done by industry analyst IDC, it found that the companies that use technology in digital transformation experience startling stats. They found a 108-percent increase in revenue, 56 percent increase in customer satisfaction ratings and 83-percent increase in employee productivity.”

“The future is technology-driven,” he said. “Try to envision a future where there will be unlimited resources, companies are able to provide extensive customer experience.”

Principles

Beng went through the principles that Dell imparts to enterprises for them to fully understand the necessity of becoming future-ready during a media briefing.

“Technology is at the center of the transformation,” Beng said. “It can allow companies to be more agile, more mobile, more informed and more secure.”

Beng explained that a company that is agile easily enables its data center to be more optimized and converged than before. Being mobile is connecting all devices and tools to the internal workforce and customers. Companies can strengthen internal communications and develop intimate relationships with the customers, which leads to improved satisfaction, which then translates to sales.

“Being informed means how companies manage all the data,” Beng said. “There’s a huge amount of data in social media right now. How would you manage and how do you analyze the data? Because we are able to analyze data well, companies can drive insights and allow them to gain competitive advantage over the competitors.”

“Secure is about protecting and safeguarding data, the organization and devices,” he continued. “In the event of breach of security, companies can react right away.”

Beng added that companies need to pave the way for innovative leadership and “encourage people to be visionaries and take action.”

Companies need to be relevant and should think of new ways to doing business. Beng said this is more evident in the retail business where many traditional companies have gone online where most of the shoppers spend their time.

“eBay and Amazon are examples of companies that thought of new business models,” Beng said.

Beng added the importance of investing in people. “We should encourage companies to keep investing in their employees so they are better equipped and skilled in using new technology. Talking to a lot of technology leaders is difficult so you have to train or find people with this skill set.”

Beng said companies need to rethink their systems and processes. “They must always be open to changes and always think of innovation as a singular project because there is always an opportunity for change.”

Dell User Forum 2016 also served as the venue for the tech company to introduce its future-ready products such as the Dell Storage Operating System 7 and the “industry-first” Dell Hybrid-Cloud System for Microsoft.