MANILA, Philippines — Leading industries have turned to technology to survive the economic pivot to the “new normal” with the Philippines’ largest and only integrated telecommunications company PLDT aiding organizations and businesses to adapt and thrive in the current challenges of the pandemic.
Discussed during the second virtual Tech Talks forum streamed in partnership with OneNews, PLDT highlighted key solutions and services that have helped catalyse digital transformations of e-Industries including e-Learning, e-Banking, e-Commerce, e-Government, and e-Health.
“We, at PLDT-Smart, are in the business of nation-building. It is precisely this conviction that fired up the virtue of Malasakit in our every endeavor. The changing Philippine economic landscape has inspired us to reframe our business objectives and strategies. In fact, a big part of our CAPEX is being allocated to improve our services so that these may be accessible and relevant to more Filipinos,” shared Smart President and PLDT Chief Revenue Officer Al Panlilio.
“We are now starting to see how e-Learning is transforming education as we know it, how e-Banking will further enable financial inclusion, how e-Commerce will help revitalize our economy, how e-Government will accelerate our country’s Smart City transformation, and most importantly, how e-Health will allow our nation to combat this pandemic,” he added.
The live forum tackled the challenges of each e-industry and highlighted technological solutions that help rebuild these sectors and move forward.
The education sector has been one of most impacted sector from the changes in the practice of learning and teaching. In helping learners continue their education remotely, the Department of Education’s (DepEd) has implemented a blended learning experience integrating digital, broadcast, and printed module teaching methods for students at home. One of the resource persons for the e-learning segment, DepEd Undersecretary Alain Pascua, shared his insights on the benefits of merging the different platforms to deliver education much better moving forward.
PLDT, together with Smart, has offered several e-Learning solutions to help aid this transition which include opening free access to the DepEd Commons website as an official resource of learning modules for teachers and students. PLDT launched BEYOND FIBER that help address the basic connectivity needs to provide quality education to institutions while Smart launched the Giga Study plans that provide data allocation to learning apps specifically tailored for students and their educational access needs. ePLDT has already provided over 248,000 Microsoft for Education licenses for the academe and students to utilize.
“The current set up has its challenges but what we have in place is changing the landscape of education. We are excited to see how this new set up will allow us to take local education to the next level. We recognize the challenges of making this shift and we at PLDT are committed to make e-Learning a reality for every single student,” said PLDT Enterprise Revenue Group Head Vic Tria.
Electronic banking has gained traction due to the pandemic with payments and digital transactions seeing a surge in the past few months covering the pandemic. Showing growing adoption of e-Banking in the country, Online Bills payment, government transactions, and digital purchase payment have become a necessity rather than a choice.
“Studies have shown that the Philippines is above the global average when it comes to digitally transferring money. PLDT and Smart are fully committed to support the banking industry and believe that we play a key role in sustaining the digital momentum of this industry,” shared PLDT FVP and Head of Enterprise Core Business Solutions Jojo Gendrano.
PLDT covers the importance to have a reliable process automation and integration in place through applications such as Microsoft, SAP or Salesforce, while securing the operations center through ePLDT’s cybersecurity services. Financial institutions also need to look into resilient systems to boost operations through the cloud with SDWAN and Data Center services.
e-Commerce has seen a major boost during the pandemic which has helped sustain the operations of businesses and MSMEs. With transactions and purchases now seeing adoption online, consumers are more discerning hence businesses need to have an Omnichannel approach to better engage with their customers.
PLDT VP and Head of ICT Business Nico Alcoseba points out that consumption behaviors have been irreversibly reshaped and businesses need to focus on three principles to succeed in e-Commerce: make the platform easy to use, establish end-to-end delivery and immediacy, and ensure security as business is always about trust.
Government has also seen digital solutions to help disseminate information, and providing public service. PLDT’s suite of Public Sector Solution solutions give e-Government the technological support it needs to improve Community Engagement and ensure public safety such as Online payments gateway, Citizen IDs, Smart Wifi in public centers, Contact Center Solutions, CCTV Surveillance, and Emergency 911 dispatch systems. It also offers collaboration and operational efficiency to enable work-from-home set ups for government employees while ensuring service availability and cybersecurity to be able to access records securely and easily from anywhere.
On the other hand, eHealth has become central due to the pandemic. PLDT has partnered with various health organizations and hospitals help provide the best solutions to deliver healthcare services and ensure safety of healthcare workers.
PLDT Enterprise Revenue Group Head Mitch Locsin provided the eHealth roadmap that has benefitted the eHealth industry that will support the fight against Covid19 and help improve healthcare. Solutions geared toward providing safer and wider access to e-Health services include online consultation and remote monitoring to help patients and doctors appointment despite their physical presence. Focused solutions on management of healthcare records can better patient outcomes as PLDT’s solutions help innovate new practice and methods for smarter use of Patient data and strategic documentation.
Through technology, PLDT’s cybersecurity, integrated system solutions, and collaborations solutions can help ensure a secure and efficient healthcare system to sustain the delivery of e-Healthcare.
As the country continues to battle and adapt to the changing landscape brought about by the pandemic, businesses, government, and consumers have greatly benefitted from PLDT’s continuous investment in building and further future-proofing its network to deliver the growing digital services and connectivity to better cope and thrive through this crisis.
