The event started with an opening speech from Microsoft Indonesia’s Corporate Commercial Director, Ms. Vony Tjiu. In her opening speech Ms.Vony Tjiu touches briefly on how Microsoft has been a major technology provider in Indonesia for the past 25 years, and together with their partners such as WIZ.AI is trying to “democratize” AI so that it could be widely available and utilized by everybody. She also mentioned how AI could benefit companies in the form of business automation and efficiency, and how AI also has contributed for humanitarian causes.
The event was then followed by a presentation from Microsoft Indonesia’s very own Mr. FIki Setiyono, the Country Lead of Azure Business Group, who started his presentation with the topic of how Microsoft is taking part in Indonesian Digital Economy empowerment initiatives through Tech & AI innovations, Skilling & Employment, Education, also Sustainability & Social Impact. In addition to that, Fiki also explains how Microsoft is working together with local organizations, including the government to accelerate digital transformation and enable Indonesia’s digital sovereignty.
Mr. Setiyono also highlights how companies could securely Innovate anywhere, with Microsoft cloud platform, Azure. Mr. Fiki stated that Cloud is more than a place to store data, but also a framework that could be utilized to rationalize data centers which is important to support cloud base intelligence infrastructure. That is why Azure was designed to be flexible and could guarantee consistent operations, governance, and security in the cloud platform, including the hybrid and multi-cloud model.
Lastly, Mr. Setiyono talked about how companies could benefit from cloud migration. From a technical perspective, cloud migration opens up the opportunity for companies to innovate while maintaining cost efficiency by optimizing capacity usage of the cloud. Furthermore, from a financial perspective, migrating to cloud platforms allows companies to eliminate on premise infrastructure costs, while at the same time increasing the productivity of DBA and IT resources. In addition to that, by migrating to cloud platforms, companies could reduce repetitive and time consuming tasks, increase the speed of time-to-market, Easy infrastructure adjustments, and also stronger security, higher availability, and better compliance which all in all will give better ROI.
The event continued with a presentation by Mr. Herbert Hadyanata, WIZ.AI’s Country Sales Director. In his presentation, Mr. Hadyanata touched on how AI has been shaping Indonesian digital trends, throughout 2021. According to him, the demand for digital transformation in Indonesia is rapidly increasing. Then, he continued his presentation with several insights on where and how to start applying the use of conversational AI. He stated that Indonesian businesses need to start implementing AI systems to increase business growth, but more importantly because it could significantly reduce operational cost.
Mr. Hadyananta then explains ideas on how humans and AI could collaborate to benefit businesses, especially for sales and customer engagement efforts. He believes that tasks such as profiling, cold callings, leads qualifying, and getting customers’ intent could be done by Talkbots. On the other hand, human agents should focus more on closing deals, which leads to a more efficient and faster sales journey and better return of investments.
Mr. Hadyananta closed his presentation by introducing Mr. Karthik Ganesan, as Executive Director of TMRW by UOB. With his vast experience in the digital banking ecosystem, Mr. Ganesan shared with the audience about the opportunities and concerns in using AI systems like WIZ.AI’s Talkbots for Banking and Financial Service Industry. According to him, the main opportunities of AI Implementation are for Acquiring, Engaging, Grow, and Retain Customers. He also stated that these opportunities are not exclusively beneficial for banking and financial services, but for other industries as well.
Mr. Ganesan then continued his presentation with explaining about Three main points to consider when Implementing AI Talkbots in business, which are the People aspect especially the customers, the end to end process of the implementation, and The technologies that are available. He also stated that one of the biggest concerns in technological integration is what the company is legally permitted to do, including the consent from the customers in regards to sharing their data with partner companies. One last important point that Mr. Ganesan shared how implemented technology such as AI Talkbots should have the ability to maintain scalability.
The last speaker of the events was Professor Tan Kim Seng, an Adjunct professor from National University of Singapore. Professor Tan has over 35 years of experience in fund management, banking, engineering, entrepreneurship and training. In the start of his presentation, Prof. Tan gave his take on the potential of the Indonesian digital economy. According to him, Indonesia has a great potential for digital economy and transformation. This is due to the fact that Indonesia already has proper digital infrastructures such as cloud, 5G, AI, Smart Commerce, and Logistic Technology. However, the greatest potential for Indonesia is the investment climate. Investors are looking for fast growing tech businesses, and Indonesia does have many.
For his second point, Professor Tan talked about the benefits and success factors in Business Digitalization. He believed that the most critical factor to thrive in business digitalization is to have business resilience, especially in the form of flexibility to adjust businesses in response to the market needs at a certain moment or condition, such as pandemic.
To close his session, Professor Tan gave some insights about what to expect in 2022. He started by addressing that the world will be transitioning from epidemic to endemic, which means that businesses that have been well prepared, digitalized, and well engaged will be able to have rapid growth. Professor Tan also touched briefly on how Digital connectivity is changing the global trade and supply chains along with the increase of consumer preference for e-commerce and online experience. Professor Tan then closed his presentation with the hope that with existing supporting infrastructures, voice activation technology could be readily deployed and helped more businesses to bridge the digital gap in order to speed up the growth of the digital economy.
Following the presentation session, the participants were splitted into several groups based on their corresponding industries. In these separate groups, the participants are given a chance to discuss, ask questions, or schedule further meetings with WIZ.AI and Microsoft to talk more about the opportunity in utilizing Conversational AI and Cloud Computing for their business.