“Digital transformation” is the hottest keyword in the media in recent times. But the deployment in Vietnam, based on reports which are provided by third parties, is still cool. Brands Vietnam had a chance to talk with Mr. Nguyen Hai Trieu, the Co-Founder and President of Digital Transformation of YouNet Group, and CEO of YouNet Media about market demand and how the company is involved in this field.
YouNet Group is a business which are providing digital transformation solutions for Marketing. Over 10 years of development from a technology company, YouNet Group understands the importance of applying big data and technology to the marketing field to build a brand. YouNet Group’s member companies ecosystem is based on 3 axes of Data – Technology – Digital Communications. These platforms create YouNet Group’s unique strength in the field of Digital Transformation (DT).
The article is in the category of Digital Transformation of Brands Vietnam, with the desire to convey the spirit, knowledge, motivation and innovative solutions, which is a forum for Leaders, Administrators, Markers, Experts, and Engineers together to connect, share and promote DT into business activities.
In the report “Digital transformation Index of Small and Medium Enterprises in Asia – Pacific” (Cisco) which was conducted on 1,340 enterprises in the region, it is shown that only Singapore is interested in investing and businesses in other countries, including Vietnam, are “indifferent” Could you share your views on this issue YouNet?
In my observation, it is not that Vietnamese enterprises are indifferent to DT.The reception and investment. Applying advanced models in enterprises always has a process from knowing, understanding to preparing, investment … At this moment, I assess that Vietnam’s market is still in the early stages, in addition to some highly innovative enterprises that are investing step by step, many Vietnamese enterprises may not understand. I am not sure about investing in digital conversion.
A simple example to understand DT, every business has different sections such as sales, marketing, customer care, human resources, finance, distribution … DT is the process of digitization (Digitalization), Automation (Automation) and systematize operations of each department and the entire enterprise based on new technologies and data.
DT helps businesses to transform strongly and optimize all activities: Planning – Strategic Planning, Operation Management, Product Innovation, Marketing and Sales. And the ultimate goal is to turn a traditional business into a digital business – a business that can operate entirely on the digital platform.
Specifically, with solutions to manage customer data and operational data, by replacing manual data recording and storage, businesses will create a “talking” data warehouse to help change completely the performance of the operation. In particular, with marketing and business operations, digitalization greatly enhances the customer experience for products and services of the business.
To put it simply, DT in its simplest form is digitizing and standardizing data from multiple (traditional) sources into quality digital data and using that data effectively together with technology solutions for each activities.
So in which parts of the business do YouNet participate in providing DT solutions and why YouNet chose this direction?
We focus primarily on the field of Digital Strategy Consulting for Digital Communications and Marketing and Sales Operation. There are also digital infrastructure, data strategies and solutions (Customer and Marketing Data Solutions), and the implementation of digital marketing services.
However, for DT to complete, businesses need serious investment in infrastructure and people. Honestly, this cost is really not small. It is not easy to persuade businesses to invest in revenue if they do not see the efficiency or a reasonable roadmap, even though investment is necessary. By engaging in marketing and sales, we often design an investment path and deliver results (sales, customers, or increase the efficiency of each division), to justify investments. In addition, the company will be effective (ROI) in each implementation step, thereby motivating them to invest more in the following years.
Digital transformation – Can you give a simple example of the service YouNet provides as well as the company’s competitive advantage?
The main objective of digitizing the marketing and sales department is to increase revenue with optimizing investment and operating costs, as well as building a customer data warehouse for sustainable development.
With the strength of a company with long experience in collecting and analyzing Social Listening and Analytics data, we understand the marketing activities of each industry and consumer behavior on digital channels and social networks. Since then, the strategies of communication and marketing and sales optimization … are based on solid insight from this data source.
We know that consumers are currently very active on social networks in particular and the Internet in general. Public data analysis platforms are playing a core role as the input for data analysis activities for businesses. There are two groups of “knowledge” that assist in business management: (1) Business Intelligence (BI), temporarily called “Business management knowledge”, and (2) Marketing Intelligence (MI) – knowledge base marketing.
– At YouNet Group, we are currently focusing on MI through the platform and services of two member companies, YouNet Media and Buzzmetrics. A new MI system is under construction, temporarily called as “Social & Digital Intelligence Center“, connecting these data sources to other operating systems (such as Marketing Automation, CRM, Contact Center, Content Creative …) to serve the purpose of marketing, business and customer care. The MI platform will support the Marketing and Sales team throughout each stage from planning, budget … to tracking, reporting … and especially analytical evaluation to optimize campaigns that will be worked on later.
– With BI, we coordinate global solutions to advise customers, appropriate to the size and industry.
Throughout the DT process, YouNet plays a role: strategic consultancy, platform deployment, appropriate technology infrastructure investment, implementation of all marketing activities, sales administration … This will be the template for business team, training, and delivery. With this approach, the biggest advantage that we have is to help the Board of Directors and the Board of Management of the business to have a complete and long-term vision of revenue, and commit the growth rate corresponding to the level of investment year by year.
So what are the barriers to implementation, sir?
First, it is the thoughts of leaders whether they really want to invest in DT or not. The second thing is that leaders care about after investing in DT is that the personnel will operate after that.
Many leaders wonder with us that, after two or three years of investing in DT, the system operates smoothly, how is our current team? Do we have to rely solely on suppliers?
* What you said is they are afraid that the business data will fall into the hands of other businesses?
Yes, the essence of business owners is that they want to control their business and do not want to depend on a third party. This is a problem that companies which provide services to the whole market and we need to give advice and solutions.
But in order to create effective privacy data (customer data / operational data), we work with businesses. Because businesses know best about their industry. We provide knowledge and processes, technology systems, strategies and methods of application, depending on size and business needs. We respect the data of businesses, only help them to collect, analyze and apply in technology to be most effective. Data is always under enterprise control. Like the same class, we are coaches, the same lectures but the practical application depends on the learners’ ability and investment.
As for human resources, we must also commit the skills training to the personnel team of businesses to ensure that after about 2 or 3 years of investment, they can deploy campaigns based on their own platform that we provide.
* It is a barrier when deploying to businesses, and for deployments like YouNet, there must be a barrier, too?
We think that the two biggest barriers are understanding the status of the business as well as impacting the head of the company.
As we have shared, DT is a relatively new concept in Vietnam and knocking on door to door to offer services is definitely not effective. Implementing units before meeting must understand clearly what the customers’ goals and priorities are, how they want to grow in the future, be it increasing investment, increasing production or expanding market share. What problems do they face and their desire to solve is the traditional way or technology application.
The second point is to convince the head of the business, if this person disagrees, no matter what the other departments want, DT is still in the future. To do this, in our view, we must prove that business owners see the investment roadmap with effective commitments.
* Thank you for your sharing.
* Source: Brands Vietnam
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