Philam Life wins 2020 Digital Transformer at the 4th IDC Digital Transformation Awards Philippines

IDC announced today the Philippine winners of the IDC Digital Transformation Awards (DXa) 2020, which named Philam Life as the 2020 Digital Transformer for the Philippines. Now on its fourth year, IDC’s DX Awards celebrates the tech-enabled resilience of enterprises as they reimagine their business in the new normal. This year’s best-in-class enterprises were chosen as DX champions for being able to successfully implement digital initiatives that address the CEO’s new agenda on meeting new customer requirements, developing new capabilities, ensuring new critical infrastructure, and participating in new industry ecosystems.

Other winners include Asian Development Bank, JG Summit Holdings, Robinsons Bank, and Union Bank of the Philippines, which all distinguished themselves with notable and measurable success in the execution of their respective organization’s digital transformation (DX) initiatives across the five DX masteries, and significant efforts to transform or disrupt the market.

With a prolonged pandemic impacting ASEAN businesses, IDC is noting a heightened acceleration of DX initiatives across all countries. More than 40% of ASEAN businesses are moving toward targeted investments by the end of 2020, and this is expected to help them re-organize technology goals to intersect with business requirements in 2021,” says Sudev Bangah, Managing Director for IDC ASEAN.

These are the winners of the 2020 Philippines IDC Digital Transformation Awards and the outstanding digital transformation initiatives that distinguished them:

• Fusion by Philam Life named as 2020 Digital Transformer and Information Visionary for Philippines:

Philam Life’s digital transformation strategy emphasizes improving customer experiences and enabling them to access products and services across multiple platforms at any given time. At the core of the groupwide strategy is TDA, or Technology, Digital, and Analytics/AI. The Technology ensures cybersecurity as a top priority, Digital refers to equipping customers and agents with the best user-centric digital tools, and Analytics/AI are innovative technologies that leverage vast amounts of data to challenge the status quo. The first of its kind, Fusion learns simple underwriting decisions so human underwriters can focus on more complex cases that require deep expertise. Fusion’s machine learning capabilities bring further uplift to automation rates. It measures customer-level underwriting reason codes, by which underwriters have transparent statistics to allow for further machine learning enhancements to increase customer analytical and processing rates. Philam Life reaped tremendous benefits including millions in technology cost savings, near-complete automation of incoming cases, and skills upgrade of IT offices through artificial intelligence (AI).

• Edwin Bautista of Union Bank of the Philippines named as 2020 DX CEO for Philippines:

Edwin Bautista is among the few leaders in the country bold enough to transform the organization immediately when he started as UnionBank’s CEO starting with strengthening the bank’s IT infrastructure, reinforcing a digital and agile culture. These include critical digital customer touchpoints and the bank’s own fintech company.

• Carlos Santos, Group CIO and Corporate Shared Services Leader of JG Summit Holdings, named as 2020 DX Leader for Philippines:

As the Group CIO and Corporate IT (CIT) Shared Services Leader, Carlos Santos leads the overall strategy, implementation, and operations of the Corporate IT (CIT) group. His digital vision of transformation had successfully started with adaption and migration to a cloud platform and Microsoft 0365, as well as integration of SAP S4/HANA in certain business units.

• Digital Innovation Sandbox Program by Asian Development Bank named as 2020 DX Gamechanger for the Philippines:

Launched in 2019, the Digital Innovation Sandbox Program is the transformative driver for ADB’s DX strategy. It was instituted to catalyze the infusion of new technologies to improve operations, accelerate growth, and transform its culture. Under this program, ADB has started to use emerging digital technologies, such as cognitive search, robotic process automation, and machine learning.

• RBank Sign Up by Robinsons Bank Corporation named as 2020 Omni-Experience Innovator for Philippines:

Robinsons Bank introduced the RBank Sign Up, an online application platform that promises an all-digital process of opening an account with the bank. With RBank Sign Up, clients can open a bank account just by using a mobile phone, internet connection, and one valid ID. The application enables real-time ID detection, and a facial recognition feature allows instant completion of the application process.

• Real-Time IT Monitoring and Anomaly Detection System by Asian Development Bank named as 2020 Operating Model Master for Philippines:

To modernize and consolidate its IT monitoring processes, Asian Development Bank (ADB) created a real-time IT monitoring and anomaly detection system. Through internal crowdsourcing and gamification, ADB has successfully deployed a new operating model for infrastructure and application performance monitoring.

• People Tech - People at the Core, Technology at the Fore by Union Bank of the Philippines named as 2020 Talent Accelerator for Philippines:

People Tech focused on workforce transformation through UBP Xcellerator Program. A learning resource website that offers a variety of on-demand learning content and pathways to allow learners, educators, and career-shifters to gain basic, intermediate, and advanced knowledge in blockchain, data science, artificial intelligences, robotics, and other emerging technologies. Participants receive firsthand coaching from experts and the opportunity to work on use cases related to the field they intend to learn. Externally, it also trains individuals through a learning portal where they can receive structured mentoring by online channels.

• Real-Time ADB (RTA) IT Reforms: Enabling COVID-19 Response through IT by Asian Development Bank named as the recipient of the 2020 Special Awards for Resiliency for Philippines:

To continue its operations and resiliency efforts, ADB rolled out the Real-Time ADB (RTA) IT Reform Program. This enabled its Manila-based headquarters and 23 field offices to continue operating remotely and seamlessly even as the pandemic escalated. Key benefits of RTA include secure and remote access to applications, greater collaboration through productivity tools, stronger cybersecurity measures, and 24/7 IT support.

IDC’s DX Awards follows a two-phased approach to determine country and regional winners. Each nomination is evaluated by a team of local and regional IDC analysts against a standard assessment framework based on IDC’s DX taxonomy. All country winners will qualify for the regional competition to be decided by a panel of judges composed of IDC analysts, industry practitioners, thought leaders, and academia around the globe.

All the winning Philippines digital transformation projects were selected as part of almost 1,300 high-quality entries received from more than 640 end-user organizations across Asia/Pacific*. Country winners will then be pitted against other country winners for the same category to ultimately determine the region’s best of the best.

The regional winners will be announced on the 23^rd of October 2020 in IDC Arena, IDC’s new integrated content hub that takes IDC thought leadership events online, and exclusive analyst essential guidance videos on-demand. To get a preview of this game-changing virtual events platform for the ICT industry, click HERE. For more information on IDC DX Awards, please visit www.idcdxawards.com.

IDC defines Digital Transformation (DX) as the approach in which organizations drive changes in their business models and business ecosystems by leveraging 3rd-Platform technologies (e.g., cloud, mobile, big data/analytics, social and Internet of Things [IoT]) and competencies. IDC’s Asia/Pacific Digital Transformation Strategies research program studies the transformation efforts of organizations across five critical dimensions (leadership, omni-experience, data, operating model, and worksource) in their use of 3rd-Platform technologies. This program examines organizations’ maturity, key market trends, competitive landscape, and end-user buying behavior from an IT and line of business (LOB) standpoint. Users can expect both quantitative data and qualitative insights as well as strategies for revenue growth in the marketplace. By combining both supply and demand perspectives, this research helps vendors identify key areas of growth across countries and industries. To learn more about IDC’s Asia/Pacific Digital Transformation Strategies and research, visit HERE.

For more information about IDC DX Awards, contact Celeste Narvaez cnarvaez@idc.com or Paula Jalosjos pjalosjos@idc.com. For media inquiries, contact Lilibeth Agudo lagudo@idc.com or Alvin Afuang aafuang@idc.com.

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