Up to Bt200 million will be used to develop digital-driven logistics for its supply chain system, said managing director Paitoon Jiranantarat yesterday.

With the improvement, the company expects total sales to achieve Bt22 billion at the end of this year, up 12 per cent from Bt19.6 billion last year, he said.

Up to 30 per cent of its revenue this year will come from overseas markets, compared to 70 per cent from local sales.

In the next five years, the company expects overseas sales to contribute 50 per cent of total revenue, mainly from Asean countries – Vietnam, Laos, Myanmar, Cambodia, Indonesia. It plans to expand sales to India this year.

The company also aims to boost sales to customers outside the SCG Group from 23 per cent of total sales last year to 33 per cent this year, before reaching to 50 per cent in the near future, he said.

Orders can now be processed in the US on Sunday and delivered to Asian destinations one day faster than before – boosting both the prospects of Asian businesses that import products from the United States, and Thailand’s continued growth into one of Southeast Asia’s leading logistics hubs.

“Imports from the United States to Thailand totalled almost half a trillion baht in 2018, making the US Thailand’s third-largest import partner,” said Russell Reed, managing director of UPS Thailand.

“Almost 45 per cent of these imports were for the automotive, industrial manufacturing, aviation, and high-tech parts industries, key pillars of the Thai economy.

“UPS’s enhanced Saturday service means businesses in these sectors and others can gain or maintain that competitive edge by leveraging the speed and flexibility they need to get their production lines started earlier and inventory restocked faster,” Reed said. In addition to helping Thai businesses, the new Saturday export pick-up service will benefit US businesses that want to ship exports six days per week or need a rush on weekend orders.

It expands UPS’s existing portfolio of Saturday ground delivery and pick-up services for its US customers, launched in 2017, which was one of the largest time-in-transit improvements in the company’s 110-year history.

Soe Thein, the permanent secretary at the Ministry of Communica-tions and Information Technology who led the Myanmar delegation to MWC19, said all the operators gave impressive demonstrations at the event when he visited the booths of Telenor, Ooredoo and Mytel.

“In Myanmar, the network security system plays a very important role. The devices manufactured by Viettel [which takes the majority of Mytel’s shares] made the biggest impression on me,” he said.

He said the Ministry’s preparations are well underway for Myanmar’s future embrace of 5G, and will continue to support all operators.

“Currently, we are in the process of developing the environment and the legal basis to get ready for the upcoming 5G technology wave,” he said.

The official said the deployment of 5G networks by Myanmar telcos would emerge over the next few years, as all operators vied for the leadership position in 5G technology.

Vikram Sinha, board member of Ooredoo Myanmar, made a presentation on the telco’s commitment to support the nation’s digital transformation journey. “We showcased what we have done at Ooredoo Myanmar, to put Myanmar in the global digital arena on par with developed countries,” he said.

“Our team is geared up to provide more innovative digitalised services and products, combined with the best customer experiences to continue leading as a digital enabler.”

Serving more than 10 million SIM subscribers, Ooredoo Myanmar now covers 92 per cent of Myanmar’s population with its network. Driven by digitalisation and customer centricity, the firm launched many digital-based products and services last year and achieved many milestones in its digital journey, said Sinha.

“Everyone thinks of Myanmar as a Third World country, and so now is the best time for us to showcase Myanmar on track for transformation to a digital country,” he said.

Sharad Mehrotra, chief executive of Telenor Myanmar, took part in the congress along with its chief technology officer, Jai Prakash.

“We understand that MWC is an important arena to engage and collaborate with partners, businesses and authorities from markets in which Telenor operates, as well as those outside our footprint,” said Mehrotra.

He said the Myanmar telco also joined several representatives from Norway’s Telenor Group parent and its business units around the world to participate in the event. Serving more than 18 million customers with 8,300 sites and over 100,000 points-of-sale nationwide, Telenor Myanmar recently introduced a low-cost data-roaming package for its users visiting Thailand.

Zaw Min Oo, chief external relations officer at Mytel, said the operator launched the latest solutions and products in four core areas at MWC19 – smart telco, smart cities, network security and smart marine communication.

Having achieved more than 5 million subscribers after only seven months in operation, Mytel plans to double that to 10 million subscribers in Myanmar by year-end, he said.

JKN Global Media Plc (JKN), the leading distributor of international copyright content in Thailand, plans to expand its TV series from India and Philippines to other Asean markets via all broadcast platforms.

It said the Video on Demand channel is highly popular among the new generation. JKN CNBC, an economic news channel, will be launched by mid-year. The programmes are produced and provided to digital TV operators and expected to boost its revenue by 20 per cent by year-end.

Jakkaphong Jakrajutathip, JKN chief executive officer, said the company has allocated an investment budget of Bt800 million for the acquisition of additional copyright content to facilitate its expansion at home and abroad.

It also plans to expand the company’s copyright content distribution to markets overseas, including Vietnam, Malaysia, Brunei and Taiwan.

He said a key company strategy for 2019 is to combine machine intelligence and human intelligence to boost customers’ productivity and efficiency as far as their document solutions are concerned.

A long-established leader in copying and document solutions, Fuji Xerox has turned to the “smart work innovation” concept to help implement the government’s policy for Thailand 4.0 and Asean Industrial 4.0.

In practice, customers can integrate printing and document |management solutions by using AI, cloud and RPA tools in their workflow. For example, RPA is suitable for routine document and other office works, freeing employees to work on more value-added and analytical tasks.

Unlike human workers, RPA works around the clock seven days a week for routine accounting, procurement, human resources and other works – suitable for manufacturing, banking, insurance and other sectors.

Kitikorn said the RPA tool also helps reduce human errors in redundant tasks, with one RPA system capable of replacing 6-8 human workers for routine component of work.

RPA is already used by leading automotive companies in Thailand, resulting in higher productivity and faster turn-around time for many routine tasks including parts procurement, payroll and HR management.

In the automotive industry, RPA for example, can automatically order parts and components from suppliers as soon inventory becomes depleted, which is more efficient than are human workers.

In the insurance sector, RPA is also used in automatically processing hundreds of thousands of claims with fewer errors.

The Thai Revenue Department has also encouraged businesses and industries to upgrade their electronic tax-payment system, but the measure is not yet mandatory.

On a voluntary basis, less than 10 per cent of Thailand’s 400,000 enterprises have so far adopted the e-tax platform. By law, businesses are required to keep their tax records for a period of 5-7 years, resulting in an enormous volume of tax paper records.

The next step is to use the comprehensive e-tax on-cloud platform in which the Revenue Department can access taxpayers’ electronic records, instead of paper records on back tax payments.

Kitikorn said the comprehensive e-tax platform covering e-invoices, original digital copies and other features involving online and offline business transactions should figure prominently in the Thailand 4.0 initiative to digitalise the economy.

He said the Revenue Department should consider making the comprehensive e-tax platform mandatory soon so as to accelerate the digital transformation process.

With secured and affordable cloud-based computing facilities and storage, the challenges of managing and storing countless paper tax records can be tackled effectively.

With original digital copies, Revenue Department’s officials can retrieve the records on screen so it will not be necessary for taxpayers to keep paper records for a period of up to 5-7 years, easing the burden on storage and management.

Electronic Transaction Development Agency should also help boost business awareness about the comprehensive e-tax platform, he said.

Security, user friendliness and availability of sophisticated hardware and software are the pre-requisites for the successful digital transformation process.

Regarding hardware, the latest generation of machines, for example, have multiple functions for scanning, printing, and copying, as well as the optical character recognition (OCR) feature to extract texts, capture and search for specific content.

To prevent unauthorised access, all data on cloud storage facilities are encrypted, he said.