Trusted media will be in greater demand by consumers in the future with the increasingly blurred lines between real and fake news, especially in social media, he said, noting also that PR consultants need to layer on top of their public relations skills the ability to understand the real business dynamics of their clients.

Basar said that he co-established the consultancy in 1995, only two years before Thailand sank into a financial crisis that quickly spread throughout the region.

“In a way, we were fortunate to be hit by the crisis so early in the company’s life. It forced us to set up a business system and structure that is very flexible and lean, and an organisation that is flat and focused on quality,” he said. “These are all the things essential for survival today, some 25 years later, and they helped us weather the multiple political and natural crises that we all suffered, especially in the last ten years.”

Basar said that every staff member at Bangkok PR has cross-functional capability, from decision making, to execution and consultancy services.

“Our flat organisation keeps our staff numbers low, helping us work better and faster,” he noted, adding that in today’s business environment, quality and speed is critical to success.

“From the beginning, we were committed to working for a limited number of clients, doing a lot for them, and staying with them a long-time. We’ve served some clients for 25 and 22 years. It allows us to emphasise higher-end services such as strategy and the execution of plans that require sensitivity and good judgment,” Basar said, adding that when Bangkok PR first started, it almost exclusively served multinational companies.

Basar said that Bangkok PR currently has around 18 staff, which is similar to 24 years ago when he set up the company. However, the company has posted annual revenue five times higher.

“That has been possible because we’ve moved up the value chain and after 24 years of experience, all our staff are still hands on with clients and share the benefit of that long experience with them on a day-to-day basis and at every level, handling the most challenging tasks. Almost half them have worked with me for 20 years, or more.”

“Our organization culture is ‘boundaryless’, whether between responsibility or seniority,” said Basar, however, noting that confidentiality of client information is as strict as in a legal practice.

“When we recruit new staff, we don’t test their public relations knowledge, but rather their ability to think clearly, and analyse and solve problems that have multiple parametres,” said Basar.

“Our staff retention is built on taking care of our people emotionally – fulfilment of important assignments, physically – working in a good, spacious office, and financially. Of course, salary and bonuses are important, but, in the consultancy business, the ability to be exposed to big challenges and to work with experienced people is the best way to learn and increase one’s own capabilities and earning capacity,” he said.

Basar said PR consultancies need to understand media channels, their particular behaviours, mixing and matching their content and their style to suit the particular requirements of each channel, and also still maintaining a relationship of trust with those channels that are moderated, or curated, such as traditional news channels.

“The birth of social media allows consumers access to a huge volume of information, disinformation, and non-information, which we have to accept in the context of ‘enriching’ what traditional media such as television and newspapers provide, through digital and other platforms. Far from weakening traditional media, I personally believe social media has made the trusted editor a far more important player,” he said.

Companies serving only as brokers for accessing media will decline as a service, while the ability to correctly anticipate public mood as well as formulate effective messaging will gain in importance.

“At Bangkok PR, we allocate around half of our efforts to the creation of strategic PR plans for our clients and the other half to executing them effectively on their behalf,” said Basar. He said that, today, almost 100 per cent of the company’s clients are Thai firms, which have grown to regional and global scale in their public relations.

According to a report by the Thailand Investment Board, the Thailand Ministry of Digital Economy and Society said that economic digitalisation will spur growth in every industrial sector in  the country and is estimated to contribute 25 per cent  to Thailand’s GDP by 2027.

Every organisation has its reason for embarking on a cloud transformation journey. Some want to consolidate their data assets. Others want to respond faster to the changing needs of their customers while some are seeking a platform that will help them launch new ventures, and explore local, and global market opportunities.

Since 2006, Amazon Web Services (AWS) has helped thousands of organisations of all sizes across Asia Pacific launch their journeys into the cloud. And over that time, one of the things I have discovered, is that while each transformation is unique in its own way, the most successful ones have four distinctive traits in common.

1.  visionary leadership

Visionary leaders are constantly reinventing their customer experience because if they don’t, someone else will and they risk being disrupted. These leaders inspire teams by painting a picture of what the future state of their organisation will look like, and the benefits from it. By establishing a clear sense of the organisation’s purpose, and effectively communicating how the organisation’s cloud strategy will fulfil that purpose, the leadership team can align employees throughout the company, to a common goal.

2. Innovators at heart

Time and time again, we see that the most successful cloud transformation leaders are innovators. They take the building blocks offered by cloud providers and assemble them in unique ways, creating new platforms, products, and services that enhance their operations and provide them with launching pads for new business strategies.

These companies would also invest in their own organisational capabilities by hiring and re-training worked needed to move forward. They know that by building and retaining knowledge within their organisations, they are creating an evolving resource that will help them maintain their competitive edge well into the future.

3. Think big, but start small

Cloud transformation leaders know the world is changing, and they are determined to change with it. So they get started. They learn through the process of doing, and adapt accordingly when their increasing knowledge and experience tell them this is necessary. They become highly adaptable, not just in response to changing market conditions, but also to what the new insights tell them.

The only way to truly learn how to execute a successful cloud transformation programme is to start one.

4.  Excite and enable everyone

The most successful cloud transformation leaders excite staff about the future state of the company and what the transformation will bring, while also giving them the skills to make the most of the future.

Every department of an organisation will be impacted by cloud transformation, including product development, marketing, finance, and the legal team. Hence, informing and including employees from across the organisation ensure that they can get the most benefits from the changes as they happen, and gives the project a greater chance of success. The benefits they receive are directly connected to how quickly and deeply leaders and teams begin thinking about how to empower their staff with the opportunity and tools they need to innovate for their customers.

Bringing it all together

One of the best examples of these four traits in action is the Central Group, one of the largest conglomerates in Thailand with businesses spanning from retail, shopping malls, real estate to hotels. Central  is adopting a cloud-first strategy, choosing to run data lake architecture on AWS, and at the same time rebuilding its mobile applications and e-commerce capabilities. By leveraging the elasticity, agility, and cost benefits of AWS, Central Group aims to offer more innovative services not only to digitally-savvy customers, but also to connect with the legacy systems such as ERP and the  business units in different countries, support OMNI channel and the unified commerce platform in order to become more operationally efficient.

Organisations will exhibit these four attributes in different ways, but experience has shown that any successful transformation relies to some extent on all four.

Leadership sets the vision and inspires and steer the organisation towards its goal by themselves. They trust in their purpose and vision and then work to ensure that all of their people understand that vision, make it happen, and maximise its value as it is delivered.

Contributed by Ed Lenta, Managing Director, Asia Pacific, Amazon Web Services

“With machines and humans being more and more interconnected, Thai consumers and businesses will continue to experience change,” Alexandra Reich, chief executive officer of Total Access Communication (DTAC), said.

“Mobile communication has had a substantially positive impact on the economic and social development of Thailand and we are optimistic that it will continue to improve our well-being as a nation,” said Reich.

Artificial intelligence (AI) in a data-rich and connected world will continue to stimulate innovation and product development with new usage and monetisation, she added.

There are still many untapped opportunities for business, especially SMEs, to digitalise their business and operations using the cloud, machine learning, internet of things (IoT) connectivity and mobile applications, she said.

“This will not only drive productivity but also enrich offerings and improve customers’ experiences. Consumers will be able to embrace new experiences with augmented and virtual realities, have access to billions of people seeing their content, and live through shared experiences across borders with low latency networks and simultaneous translation.”

Reich said connectivity is the core enabler for these innovations and the demand for quality services will increase as they become critical for people and businesses.

However, there is danger if the human touch gets lost in this fast-paced digital development.

The threats are real but telecom operators, government and businesses can work together to mitigate them, she said.

“We need to be careful about how many hours we watch our mobile phones and how we value privacy. We need to be conscious that a connected world can amplify the good voices but also the bad.

“We need to protect our citizens against cyberattacks and identity theft. Most importantly, we need a well-managed transition, as the digital economy also comes with a change in job profiles and capabilities. Also, we need to not only continuously educate our kids, but also the adult population,” she said.

Benefits of the 5G wireless broadband will take a number of years before being fully exploited.

“While we are seeing 5G deployments in 2019, most analysts believe that it could take three to five years to build the ecosystems and the new use-cases that will be valued by businesses and consumers,” she explained.

”It will be a learning curve on how to drive value for the respective stakeholders. The biggest change will come as we will see a structural change in a lot of business models leading to a more collaborative approach across industries,” Reich said.

The growing data consumption, especially for processing, as well as virtualisation, will at some point lead to the next generation of network – 6G. 6G will require more spectrum, more energy efficiency and probably work even faster.

The National Broadcasting and Telecommunications Commission (NBTC) has granted 700MHz licences to the three telecom operators – DTAC, Advanced Info Service (AIS), and True Corp for the development of 5G service on this band. Terms of the licence will become valid next October and the NBTC also plans to allocate additional new spectrum bands in preparation for the launch.

(Photo/Ericsson)

Nadine Allen, president and country manager of Ericsson (Thailand) Ltd, said 5G is not just another G.

“Previous [network] generations were centred around consumer and personal communications. With 5G, we are on the threshold of a global technology shift, which will bring about new opportunities, new efficiencies and new business models. 5G will enable consumers to capture the full value of connectivity,” said Allen.

“Consumers in Thailand are already waiting for 5G. According to Ericsson’s ConsumerLab Report, one in two smartphone users will switch mobile operators within six months if their original operator does not provide 5G, providing operators with a first mover advantage.”

According to the report, 5G is a platform for innovation and a game-changer. With ultra-fast connectivity speeds and low latency rates, 5G will transform industries and enable the future of smart cities.

“With game-changing capabilities, we believe that 5G has the potential to enable mobile communications networks to be an important and critical part of national infrastructure,” said the report.

5G-related use cases could range from connected robotics, healthcare and smart manufacturing, to connected homes, and give rise to endless possibilities as well as new opportunities to innovate on a broader scale.

“Beyond 5G, Ericsson is also constantly innovating in the next wave of technologies. For example, we have an Accelerator innovation hub in Canada to focus on R&D in AI and automation as it will be a key trend in the future. In fact, innovation is in Ericsson’s DNA. Today, around 18.5 per cent of Ericsson’s annual global revenues is invested in R&D,” said Allen.

Attractive to foreign investors

For Thailand, 5G will be the enabler for the Digital Thailand 4.0 vision. In a yearly rankings recently released by the Switzerland-based IMD World Competitiveness Centre, Thailand advanced five places to 25th, propelled by an increase in foreign direct investment and productivity. 5G will further enhance the country’s competitiveness and strengthen its attractiveness for foreign investors looking for locations in a digitalised environment, she said.

AIS chief executive officer Somchai Lertsutiwong said the world is on the edge of entering the 5G era.

Moreover, there are nine other key technology trends shaping the future: big data and analytics, the cloud, artificial intelligence, blockchain, cognitive security, quantum computing, robotics, autonomous driving, and fintech. New technologies will change the world in a way that previously could only be seen in science-fiction movies.

“Thais have been called the most intensive Facebook users. We have seen many companies, especially SMEs, reaping benefits from Instagram, Line, and other online networks to grow their businesses, including online payment,” said Somchai. “However, as of today, only 65 per cent of the Thai population can access the internet, leaving more than 20 million out of the loop.”

Looking forward to the next decade, AIS expects more than 90 per cent of Thais will be using one or more telecommunication devices for convenience in life, work and doing business, he added. 5G, together with the above-mentioned technologies, will bring about a new level of applications such as virtual reality everywhere, smart autonomous-driving cars, smart homes, smart manufacturing, smart cities and many more “smarts” enabled by IoT (where everything can be connected). Business will not be the same in the 5G era.

“The major concern now is how we adapt ourselves to the future and how we prepare the next generation to be comfortable with their own future. Replaced by robots, AI and automation, many jobs will become unnecessary; many things we currently teach our children in schools and universities might be out of date,” said Somchai.

“Thailand needs to reskill its workforce and reform the educational system to ensure our competitiveness in the future. It took 10 years for the development of the 5G standard and it will take another decade for 6G. I hope it will take less time for Thailand to prepare for the changes,” he said.