Digital transformation will add an estimated US$8 billion to the Philippines by 2021

Have you seen the new season of Black Mirror series on Netflix? Im sure you do, with all the technology and millennial thing happens around us. Im quite disturbed with what it can do to us all, being surrounded with the internet, social media, online shopping, hospitality online booking and banking. What are the security measures being provided besides not losing your mobile unit, your savings and your mind?  But with the way things are going, we should be ready for the digital transformation here in the PH.

Im glad I have attended the Digital Transformation event on Feb 8 at Okada Grand Ballroom Manila and was enlightened with all the information being given by Sir Hans, Andrea and the rest of the Microsoft Philippines officers.

By 2021, digital transformation will add an estimated US$8 billion to the Philippines’ GDP, and increase the growth rate by 0.4% annually, according to a new business study released today. The research, “Unlocking the Economic Impact of Digital Transformation in Asia Pacific ”, was produced by Microsoft in partnership with IDC Asia/Pacific. 

The study predicts a dramatic acceleration in the pace of digital transformation across Asia Pacific economies. In 2017, about 3% of the Philippines’ GDP was derived from digital products and services created directly through the use of digital technologies, such as mobility, cloud, Internet of Things (IoT), and artificial intelligence (AI).

“The Philippines is clearly on the digital transformation fast track. Within the next four years, we expect to see approximately 40% of the Philippines’ GDP to be derived from digital products and services,” said Hans Bayaborda, Managing Director of Microsoft Philippines. “At the same time, organizations in Asia Pacific are increasingly deploying emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence as part of their digital transformation initiatives, and that will accelerate growth even further.”

The survey conducted with 1,560 business decision makers in mid and large-sized organizations across 15 economies in the region highlights the rapid impact and widespread disruption that digital transformation is having on traditional business models.

According to the research findings, organizations are seeing significant and tangible improvements from their digital transformation efforts across these benefits in the range of 6% to 12% today. Business leaders expect to see more than 50% improvements in those key areas by 2020, with the biggest jump expected in profit margin and productivity.

Measuring digital transformation successes: Organizations across Asia Pacific are starting to adopt new key performance indicators (KPI) to better measure their digital transformation initiatives, such as effectiveness of processes, data as a capital, and customer advocacy in the form of Net Promoter Score (NPS). As organizations realize the potential of data as the new oil for the digital economy, Leaders are much more focused on leveraging data to grow revenue and productivity, and to transform business models.

What sets Leaders apart from others are their ability to ride on the digital transformation wave from an organizational culture perspective. The study found that Leaders have these traits:

“There is a pressing need for organizations to adopt a leaders’ mindset to fully build their digital ecosystem—from employees, to customers, to partners—in order to grow their value chain,” said