COVID-19 has accelerated digital transformation across all sectors, as well as companies of all sizes and governments. The South-East Asia region alone added 70 million online shoppers since the pandemic began, according to research by Facebook and Bain & Company.

Oracle has been supporting a wide range of companies in the Asia–Pacific on their modernisation journey with its extensive portfolio of cloud services and cloud-native applications. These services and applications support business transformation and help customers manage both their horizontal processes – such as finance, HR, sales, marketing and customer service – and vertical focus including financial services, public sector, utilities and hospitality.

Re-Imagining the Value of Data for Utilities

One of the Philippines’ largest private sector electric distribution utility companies, which serves over seven million customers, has embarked on a journey with Oracle to modernise its operations in response to evolving customer demands.

The crux of its transformation lies in turning data into value with Oracle’s Utilities Customer to Meter (C2M) platform. Utility companies that use this platform to help enhance their technology stack can deliver improved billing and customer service operations with centralised customer insights, streamlined data and connected processes.

The platform also combines meter data management and billing operations on one shared database and infrastructure, which helps utilities improve operational efficiency while lowering costs and improving business sustainability. As a result of C2M platform deployment, utilities can become more agile and create customer satisfaction in tangible ways.

Accelerating Transformations

Financial services is another sector that has been significantly disrupted by the pandemic. A recent IDC Financial Insights report reveals that banks in APAC are accelerating their migration to the cloud and that, besides a growing cloud budget, some 93 per cent of banks expect to operate in hybrid and multicloud environments by 2023.

The Philippines’ Security Bank Corporation, for example, has selected Oracle Fusion Cloud Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) to help institute better management controls around its finance, procurement and reconciliation processes, streamlining these operations and enabling data-driven decision making.

Offerings like Oracle Fusion Cloud ERP run on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI), Oracle’s comprehensive platform to support cloud transformations without trade-offs in scale, data sovereignty, security or control. These are also key considerations for public sector customers that need to safeguard citizens’ data.

To that end, the City Government of Baguio has chosen OCI to develop its registration and tracking system, called Visitor Information and Travel Assistant (VISITA). The OCI-based VISITA application has become a vital tool in the city’s relaunch of local tourism and the economy. Baguio can now regulate entry and monitor a visitor’s mobility through VISITA’s ticketing system, which uses a QR-coded Tourist Pass. The city can also enforce health and safety protocols, from mandated triaging to digital check-ins for contact monitoring, as it opens up to welcome international visitors.

“Since moving to the cloud [OCI], we have saved 55 per cent in IT costs,” Alec Mapalo, Division Head, City Tourism and Special Events Office for the City Government of Baguio, said.

Another public sector customer, Bangladesh Data Center Company Limited (BDCCL), the Bangladesh government-owned data storage and disaster recovery services provider, will be able to run its entire IT portfolio on cloud infrastructure with OCI Dedicated Region Cloud@Customer (DRCC). BDCCL will retain physical control of infrastructure and data, ensuring that government users meet the most demanding data sovereignty requirements.

“[OCI DRCC solutions] can make it easier for government entities to securely move to the next stage of their cloud-enabled transformation. This is a major step toward providing the enhanced performance, security, low latency and cost, and sovereign hosted cloud services needed [by governments], underpinned by simplified deployment,” N M Zeaul Alam PAA, Chair of the BDCCL and the Senior Secretary of its ICT division, said.

Oracle is gearing up to help private and public sector customers further accelerate their cloud journey. “Oracle is ready to partner with forward-looking industries to help realise their ambitions for more resilient operations and sustainable business outcomes. Our customers in the Philippines and beyond will be supported by our industry-leading enterprise cloud solutions to delight their end customers,” Mina Lim, Managing Director of Oracle Philippines, said.