PwC’s Global Consumer Insights survey released on Tuesday assessed the shopping behaviour, habits and expectations of 22,000 consumers in 27 territories.

It found that 10 per cent of respondents already own artificial intelligence (AI) devices, such as robots and automated personal assistants like Amazon Echo or Google Home, and 32 per cent said they planned to buy one.

Interest in the devices is strongest amongst consumers in emerging economies, including China, Vietnam, Indonesia and Thailand.

Uber is among a number of technology and car companies racing toward what some contend is an inevitable future in which vehicles drive themselves.

Uber’s aspirations had included self-driving trucks, with the smartphone-summoned-ride service revving that effort with the purchase of startup Otto two years ago.

“We’ve decided to stop development on our self-driving truck program and move forward exclusively with cars,” Eric Meyhofer, head of Uber advanced technologies group, said in an email response to an AFP inquiry.

“We recently took the important step of returning to public roads in Pittsburgh, and as we look to continue that momentum, we believe having our entire team’s energy and expertise focused on this effort is the best path forward.”

San Francisco-based Uber had suspended its self-driving car program after a crash that killed a woman pushing a bicycle in a street in Arizona in March of this year.

Uber has a version of the ride service that matches truck drivers with loads in need of hauling.

In the absence of an urgent need for self-driving trucks to keep Uber Freight competitive, members of that team will work on autonomous cars or be offered spots elsewhere in the company.

Uber Freight has become a national operation since launching in May of 2017.

Otto co-founder Lior Ron left Uber in the weeks after the fatal accident in Arizona, according to media reports.

Ron and co-founders including Anthony Levandowski, started Otto in early 2016. The startup was bought by Uber nine months later in a deal valued at more than $500 million.

Levandowski was a central figure in a blockbuster federal lawsuit filed by Waymo against Uber claiming trade secrets were stolen from the self-driving car project where he worked before leaving to start Otto.

A trial was taking place when Waymo and Uber in February announced a surprise agreement to resolve the legal clash.

The four conflict materials include gold, coltan, tin and tungsten. These minerals are known as conflict minerals because much of the supply is sourced from the Democratic Republic of the Congo and neighboring countries where a decadeslong civil war is being waged.

LG Chem said in a 2017 sustainability report published Monday that it banned the purchase of the four conflict minerals from last year.

With increased public attention on social responsibility, the company said it will continue to focus on ethical purchases of minerals to establish a validated, conflict-free supply chain.

“As part of our society, we will continue to conduct activities that can go beyond ‘contribution,’ but to ‘coexist’ in society,” said LG Chem Vice President Park Jin-soo.

In the US, legislation that compels US companies to audit their supply chains to ensure they are not using conflict minerals was signed by President Barack Obama in 2010. The law aimed to weaken Congo militias by cutting off their mining profits.

According to Strategy Analytics Inc., 47.7 per cent of smartphones sold on the global market will be equipped with some kind of on-device AI assistant, up from 36.6 per cent last year.

The report further finds that on-device AI is growing fast among smartphone vendors and by 2023, 89.9 per cent of smartphones will have a built-in AI assistant.

In 2017, Google Assistant rose to be the top AI assistant with a 46.7 per cent market share, followed by Apple’s Siri with 40.1 per cent, it said.

The report said the market share of Google’s AI assistant is expected to climb to 51.3 per cent this year and 60.6 per cent by 2023.

It recommends using the cash to finance school classes on “digital literacy”, teach public awareness around the issue and better fund data watchdog the Information Commissioners Office.

The proposal is one of many made in the House of Commons committee paper as it rounds on tech giants including Facebook, Twitter and Google.

Such firms act “irresponsibly” over data collection, “influencing what we see” in an unregulated social media landscape akin to the “wild west”, the report claims.

“We are facing nothing less than a crisis in our democracy — based on the systematic manipulation of data to support the relentless targeting of citizens, without their consent, by campaigns of disinformation and messages of hate,” said Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee chairman Damian Collins.

“Throughout our inquiry these companies have tried to frustrate scrutiny and obfuscated in their answers.”

The paper outlines recommendations for audits of social media security mechanisms and for the introduction of a new category of tech company that bridges the gap between platform and publisher.

The committee hopes to force social media firms into assuming liability for harmful or illegal content on their sites — which they profit from but abdicate responsibility for by claiming they are only a “platform” according to the findings.

“The light of transparency must be allowed to shine on their operations and they must be made responsible, and liable, for the way in which harmful and misleading content is shared on their sites”, said Collins.

It also renewed calls for Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg to appear before the committee to answer “questions to which Facebook has not responded adequately”, after he neglected to appear following the Cambridge Analytica data scandal.

The report was leaked online by Dominic Cummings, a chief official in the Vote Leave movement during the Brexit referendum campaign, who refused to appear before the committee to address concerns over their online efforts in the run-up to the 2016 vote

He branded the report itself “fake news” which “knowingly/incompetently makes false claims” about pro-Brexit organisations.

A government spokeswoman said: “The Government takes disinformation very seriously, as with all types of online manipulation and internet harms.”

“We note the Committee’s report and will consider its final recommendations.”

This launch comes as a response to the growing and diverse monochrome printing needs in the office, graphic arts and critical printing operations market segments, Fuji Xerox said in a press statement.

While executing critical jobs that require massive amounts of data to be printed within a short period, printers need to operate reliably and yield high productivity. Looking at the current printing industry, Fuji Xerox noted that, despite the expansive use of color printing, the demand for monochrome printing is still strong — especially among producers of manuals, statements, books and comics. In order to help the customers meet their evolving needs, Fuji Xerox has revamped its current monochrome high-speed production printer line-up with the new B9 series – on-demand printers that can handle large amounts in a short period, the press statement added.

“Building on the success of its predecessor, which enjoyed long-term consumer trust and top market share for five consecutive years, the newly launched B9 series offers noteworthy enhancements in productivity, reliability, and durability,” said Rojanun Chollampe, Head of Marketing, Fuji Xerox(Thailand) Co., Ltd. “We expect to see strong adoption of this series in Thailand as this market is witnessing robust growth in the key segments for which these printers are designed.”

For both single-sided and duplex printing, the B9 series can achieve continuous printing speeds of up to 136 pages per minute (ppm).This high level of productivity is enabled by pairing Fuji Xerox’s very own EA-Eco LGK toner, which has an excellent low-temperature fusing capability, with the B9 series’ ability to administer a stable supply of heat in order to apply the toner efficiently onto the paper — even when printing at high speeds.

The paper transport system is designed with no sharp curves to ensure smooth paper motion and also a vertically placed paper inversion mechanism for duplex printing so that paper can be sent through at high speeds while minimizing paper jams.

In order to achieve high resolution printouts of 2,400 x 2,400 dots per inch (dpi) while printing at quick speeds, a VCSEL is used as the light source for the ROS – which functions just like the heart of the printer.

Using tiny granules measuring 6.5 μm, the EA-Eco LGK toner enables an elegant reproduction of gradations in photos and images, consistent halftones and clear printing of small letters.

The B9 series also offers a selection of various, different screen settings to ensure high quality printing each time. This includes the Stochastic (or FM) Screen which efficiently aids in moiré reduction, the new Edge Enhancement for fixing jagged edges of thin lines/text outlines, and the Adjust Invert Text/Line Weight setting, which helps improve the visibility of text and lines.

With a proven track record amongst production colour printers, Fuji Xerox’s in-house developed controller, the GX Print Server, is now also being utilized in monochrome production printers for the first time ever. The GX Print Server, combined with the improvements made to the product’s hardware, delivers high-quality images and high raster image processing (RIP) speeds of 600 x 600 dpi at eight bit (256 graduation levels). Fuji Xerox’s original HQ Digital Screen Technology (MACS) then also helps create a high-definition, smooth screen image of 2,400 x 2,400 dpi. These data processing technologies all work in tandem to help deliver top quality printing results.

The B9 series supports the JDF standards of the printing industry and by connecting the printer with the integrated workflow system for printing operations, it enables the development of a hybrid workflow that utilises both offset printers and digital printers cohesively.

SOCIAL COMMERCE is thriving in Thailand thanks to widespread and increasing use of social media across the country.

According to the Electronics Transaction Development Agency (ETDA), Thais spend on average 3.5 hours per day on social media; the top three social media platforms are YouTube, Facebook, and Line.

Thanawat Malabuppha, the president of Thai E-Commerce Association, said that social commerce is seeing rapid growth and playing an increasingly key role in business-to-consumer (B2C) and consumer-to-consumer (C2C) transactions.

Around 40 per cent of the total B2C and C2C e-commerce transaction values in Thailand in 2017, amounting to about Bt150 billion, came from the social-commerce platform. E-marketplace accounted for 35 per cent and e-retail or branded websites 25 per cent.

“Thailand and SEA [Southeast Asia] are high-growth markets for e-commerce. In 2017, there was 29 per cent growth,” said Thanawat.

Meanwhile, data from PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) shows that 51 per cent of e-commerce in Thailand happens on social channels.

He said that e-commerce in Thailand is continuously growing and it is expected that by 2020 about 84 per cent of Thai population or 59 million people will have access to the Internet. Thais are among the highest users of mobile Internet, averaging 4.3 hours per day.

“The beauty of e-commerce is it helps SMEs [small and medium-sized enterprises] multiply their business by two times and their export revenue as well when compared with SMEs that are not tapping the e-commerce medium,” said Thanawat.

Conversation commerce

John Wagner, managing director of Facebook Thailand, said that according to Facebook’s internal data, messaging is a key driving force in the rise of social commerce in Thailand. Thailand is the top country in the Asia Pacific, and one of the top five countries globally, where people messaged SMEs the most in 2017.

As of April 2018, there were as many as 8 billion messages between people and businesses on Facebook Messenger apps, representing a four-fold growth year on year.

As on May 2018, people shared more than 17 billion photos, and 400 million people use voice and video chat on Facebook. Meanwhile, as of April 2018, more than 150 million Instagrammers were connecting with businesses each month. And one in three of these conversations generally begins with an Instagram story.

The growing popularity of messaging has created opportunities for businesses of all sizes. From using immersive visuals to establishing confidence and trust, messaging has the unique potential to draw people and businesses together into an ongoing conversation, ultimately enabling even more meaningful connections, Wagner said.

He added that Facebook was serving as a discovery platform for Thais to find information, learn and connect.

Thai consumers are at the forefront in terms of digital engagement, while Thai SMEs are leading the world in social commerce and innovation.

Thai SMEs were among the first to develop social commerce businesses, which is helping to fuel Thai economic growth, and becoming a major trend for SMEs in other countries.

“We are fully committed to investing to help businesses of all sizes achieve their goals and to contribute to Thailand’s transformation into a thriving digital economy, through social commerce and innovation,” said Wagner.

Thai businesses are leveraging Facebook tools and resources for all their business needs and in doing so contributing to the country’s goal of becoming a thriving digital economy.

“We are continuously offering new products to help Thai businesses,” says Wagner.

“In August 2017, we launched in Thailand a card payment feature in Messenger, boosting social commerce and giving buyers and sellers a more convenient way to make transactions. “And this June, we expanded this into a bank transfer solution with KBank, giving businesses of all sizes an opportunity to close sales faster, and engage with consumers in a more secure and more efficient way. We will continue to educate businesses on how they can grow on our platform through workshops and education opportunities, and will continue developing products and tools that help them grow and create meaningful connections,” said Wagner.

Another top social media platform in Thailand, Line, is also becoming popular as a social commerce platform. Line is the number one chat platform in Thailand; around 95 per cent of Thailand mobile Internet users are Line users. And Line@ is a crucial tool for businesses and merchants to reach some 42 million people on the platform.

In Thailand, there are around 2 million Line@Accounts and 240 Line Official Accounts.

Ariya Banomyong, managing director of Line Thailand, said that Line is also the dominant platform in Thailand, with an average 63 minutes of 216 minutes spent on smartphones every day devoted to Line.

Line has positioned itself as a smart portal, with Thailand offering users six groups of services – games, content, online-to-offline (Line Man), business solutions, payments, and other new services.

For Payment, Rabbit Line Pay, a joint venture company between Line Thailand, Advance Info Services (AIS), and Rabbit, aims to become the number one mobile payment in Thailand.

At Line@, merchants and businesses can utilise social commerce with several online features such as broadcast (text, photo, and video), poll, earning points, coupon, keyword reply, and segmented message that facilitate merchants to have more choice in doing social commerce including one-to-one, one-to-few, and one-to-many.

Meanwhile, WeChat, a messaging service of the giant Chinese firm Tencent, is also playing a key role in driving social commerce. In Thailand, Tencent has WeChat Pay, and Tencent Social Ads (TSA) – an ads network service powered by Tencent cloud and big data.

Tencent’s ads network covers many of its online platforms such as QQ, WeChat, QZone, QQ News, QQ Music, Tencent News, and Tencent VDO.

Currently, WeChat has about 1.04 billion accounts; 90 per cent of them use WeChat every day; 85 per cent use WeChat Wallet; and 80 per cent of them follow WeChat Official account. WeChat Pay is the driving force behind the cashless society and social commerce in China.

Easy payment drives success

Patchara Samalapa, president of Kasikornbank or KBank says there are three key driving factors behind the rise of social commerce: increasing access to the Internet for Thais; easy and convenient online payment; and better logistics facilities.

“Social commerce has huge room to grow from the current Bt137 billion, according to ETDA. We offer Pay with K Plus to make social commerce shopping easier for our K Plus users and to offer a seamless payment experience.”

Pay with K Plus is a part of K Plus, the mobile banking of Kaskikorn Bank, which is connected with the bank’s business partner, currently Facebook Messenger. It is a free service for both shoppers and merchants.

“K Plus is our mobile platform that aims to facilitate our customers according to their lifestyle and to let them select our service as priority payment and then leads them to use our other products and services in the future,” said Patchara.

He said that Pay with K Plus will draw more online merchants to use KBank services since it helps them to reach out to 8.4 million K Plus users immediately and it is an easy-to-close sale. Merchants who receive Pay with K Plus have to apply as a Facebook Shop and set the payment as Pay with K Plus.

KBank expects Pay with K Plus to see a 30 per cent increase in transaction numbers to social commerce since it is an easy payment method.

In the next three to six months, KBank will expand Pay with K Plus to more social commerce and lifestyle commerce as well as online shopping.

Suwatt Pathompakawan chief executive officer and co-founder of start-up Skootar, says even his company has benefited from the social commerce boom even though Skootar’s main service is to deliver documents.

Social commerce is now around 20 per cent of total delivery transactions because of increase in deliveries.

“More merchants are entering e-commerce on social media platforms, especially Facebook, Instagram and Line, as social commerce is easy to start and requires low investment, and they can reach many millions of potential customers using the social media platform,” he says.

In 2018, TCELS joined hands with MassChallenge, an expert in grooming start-up entrepreneurs and a business strategy consultant, to conduct “Thailand Life Science Start-up 2018”.

The project began last April with an application process. Forty-two start-up teams were shortlisted and 20 teams joined the training and business capacity development. The 10 highest-scoring teams were each given seed funding of Bt200,000. The top seven teams received in-depth training for international market expansion from MassChallenge.

The seven teams were ACNOC, D&N, KINN, Never Ever, Scubie, Step Sole Lution, and The Possible while the other three teams were Med-Asa, Mee Poom Dee, and Mud-Mue-Chok.

Never Ever is a bed monitoring and alarming system, while ACNOC is a Thai brand offering a full range of skincare complex for acne. ACNOC products are made after extensive research with the best ingredients from exotic fruits to help skin care.

Patcharaporn Wongsa, the acting director of Industrial Strategy and Investment at TCELS, said that Thailand Life Sciences Start-up would be another platform to incubate start-ups.

TCELS initiated the project in 2017, beginning with the “Mini Life Sciences Mentorship Programme”, in which a great number of start-ups took part.

The platform has been expanded to the “TCELS Life Sciences and MedTech Acceleration Programme” in cooperation with the business and financial sector to incubate, develop systems and invest in start-up companies so as to encourage early and middle stage to market expansion.

Brittany McDonough, the director of Global Partnerships MassChallenge, said that joining Thailand Life Sciences Start-up 2018 is a crucial part of the project process to find bioscience start-up entrepreneur teams with potential to participate in the project and support a non-commitment seed fund.

Both companies  were said to exemplify how Big Data analytics and artificial intelligence are used to impact business operations as part of their overall digital transformation journeys.

Ananda Development and Krungsri Consumer beat out over 20 other nominees to clinch the Enterprise Innovation Awards. The awards are given out to local enterprises that have demonstrated an ability to use Internet of Thing (IoT) technology to enhance business operations.

Ananda Development, a publicly listed property developer, highlighted the utilisation of Big Data and artificial intelligence for construction management, inspection and scheduling, leading to a reduction in construction time and cost. A key focus of their digital transformation project is to create a paradigm shift internally among their staff, which acts as a natural defence against future workforce disruption by technology.

Krungsri Consumer, part of the Bank of Ayudhya, developed a propriety system using a combination of geo-location technology and Big Data analytics, which enabled it to deliver targeted and contextualised marketing messages to their customers. This is the second consecutive year Krungsri Consumer has won the Enterprise Innovation Award.

Endorsed by the Ministry of Digital Economy and Society, the AIBP focuses on Thailand 4.0 initiatives and sheds light on the challenges that local enterprises and public service organisations face in adopting and deploying IoT projects, as well as the latest developments in Thailand’s IoT and information and communications technology industry. The event is co-hosted by the Digital Economy Promotion Agency (DEPA) and supported by Microsoft Thailand,

IoT projects require the coordination of several segments – from installing sensors, selecting connectivity options and using software to aggregate and analyse the data.

While large projects implemented by listed companies usually take the spotlight, DEPA has intentions to provide assistance to local small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) to enable them to compete more effectively locally and in the region.

Nuttapon Nimmanphatcharin, president and chief executive of DEPA, said that working with Asia IOT Business Platform will help these local enterprises obtain more opportunities to open new markets at the regional level.

Providing support

“One of our establishment missions is to promote and support local enterprises in their industries and to help them develop new innovations,” said Nuttapon.

Irza Suprapto, chief executive officer of Asia IoT Business Platform, said that there has been strong interest from local enterprises in Thailand to implement digitisation and IoT projects. This demand creates an ecosystem of innovation locally as it encourages investments by technology startups and established solution providers in Thailand.

“This is further enhanced by initiatives led by DEPA to attract solution providers such as the IoT Institute being built within the Eastern Economic Corridor (EEC).” said Suprapto.

Somsak Mukdavannakorn, small and mid-market solutions and partners lead at Microsoft (Thailand), said that IoT is a collaborative, multi-disciplinary effort that spans cloud development, machine learning, AI, security and privacy, and presents an immense opportunity to not only create operational efficiencies but to enable increasingly sophisticated enterprises.

Digital transformation could add as much as US$387 billion to Asia Pacific’s economy by 2021, and business leaders across the region – including those in Thailand – see IOT as one of the top technological priorities in achieving their digital transformation ambitions.

A recently concluded survey by AIBP found that IoT projects are being implemented across industries in Thailand, with varying levels of success. Companies from the industrials segment have reaped the most benefits, with 10.7 per cent of them having benefited from IoT implementation projects. This compares to 8.2 per cent within financial services, 6.8 per cent within retail, real estate and hospitality and 5.9 per cent within distribution, transport, logistics and freight.

Imagine you’re a CFO on a morning run, listening to your favourite podcast on your phone. Suddenly, you receive an urgent alert:a last-minute competing bid could short-circuit an acquisition your company wants to close on today. You stop in the middle of your run; this could derail everything. A million questions run through your mind: Can we increase our bid? By how much? If we do, will the deal still be profitable?

Machine learning, voice interactions, intelligent automation and more should work with your finance systems to give you the answers you need within minutes—so that the all important deal doesn’t fall apart.

Before you can be this CFO, you need to become the aforementioned change agent.The technology you’ve relied on to date has served your business well. Yet with new technologies and use cases emerging every day, yesterday’s ERP can’t keep up.

The Data Dilemma

Tomorrow’s ERP—built on machine learning—can automate day-to-day operations today, so your team can focus on guiding the business, instead of processing transactions and running reports. As companies produce and receive a seemingly unending amount of data from internal and external sources, it’s finance specialists who are best positioned to radically improve productivity, and connect historical and predictive insights to strategic planning and goals.

Cloud-based ERP applications with built-in machine learning capabilities are critical to this reset of the finance function. Not only do they continuously execute labor-intensive tasks in the background, they learn as they do, continually finding new ways to improve efficiency. At the same time, they feed rapid-fire responses to “what-if” questions posed through chatbots, rich-context dashboards, and other tools at your fingertips.

Getting Ahead of Change

Continuing to do things the same way as yesterday is risky. Uncertainty is the new normal and managing amid uncertainty is a must. It’s no longer enough to be quick-to-change; competitive companies must also have reliable insight into how potential future scenarios could impact performance.

Already, almost half (49%) of agile businesses have evolved their business models. We see organizations moving away from:

A single-target operating model with end-state goals, to the adoption of multiple, simultaneous, dynamic business models.

Labor-intensive transaction processing, to the relentless automation of routine processes—freeing up finance professionals to focus on strategic activities.

Copying agile models, to building agile business systems that enable anticipation of and response to change.

Managing stores of data, to creating and sharing meaningful insights with leadership across the organization.

Siloed, inflexible technology solutions to a single, connected cloud that is always up-to-date, costs less, and is easier to manage.

Think about traditional 12-month sales forecasts that roll over without critical evaluation. Intelligent cloud applications let businesses update their forecasts in real time, drawing on deep contextual data to make smart adjustments daily. This is one of the reasons we are seeing a resurgence in practices like zero-based budgeting, which embed ongoing review and re-adjustment in asset planning and management based on current data.

Equipping Finance Teams for the Future

Yesterday’s ERP often requires expensive and lengthy reimplementation to upgrade—meaning that the organization enjoys the benefit of upgraded software only every two to five years (or more). The cloud eliminates all that with:

– 3.2x higher ROI and 52% lower running costs

– Risk of technology obsolescence totally removed

It’s the last upgrade you will ever need. The cloud is always up-to-date with the latest features, as well as legislative and regulatory requirements in your market. This is truecontinuous innovation, rolling out new modern best practices and capabilities on a regular basis. With a trusted innovation partner acting as your cloud provider (and technology expert), finance teams are unleashed to become the strategic contributors the organization of tomorrow needs. And of course, in the war for top talent—especially in finance—providing opportunities to help mould the future of an organization (rather than just manage numbers) offers a huge advantage.

When finance leaders become change agents, embracing the continuous innovation of cloud ERP, they can:

– Drive greater business insight.

– Better meet regulatory requirements.

– Automate for management-by-exception as a standard practice.

– Use flexible hierarchies, dynamic reporting and scenario analysis/testing.

– Gain greater understanding around investment for agile and robust cost control.

Cloud ERP is the Future of Finance

Technology is driving the next wave of business productivity and finance leaders have a unique opportunity to lead this change. Traditional, on-premises ERP simply no longer equips finance leaders or their teams with the capabilities they need for success—today or tomorrow. Leaders who embrace the right technology are better equipped to anticipate and predict what comes next—becoming the change agent, and leader that every business needs to succeed.