“Zero Friction Future”, reports results from a Boston Consulting Group (BCG) survey of 1,200 Thai consumers who purchased products or services either online or offline in key verticals such as e-commerce, retail and financial services. It found 90 per cent of consumer respondents encounter friction at each phase of their journey, and 50 per cent of them drop off once they encounter it.

The report estimates the annual opportunity cost of friction in Asia-Pacific at $325 billion, including $14 billion for Thailand.

The study shows that key industries like e-commerce, retail and financial services could grow their annual revenue by $2.63 billion, $2.08 billion and $127 million respectively if the problems were removed.

The report recommends that businesses embrace digital technologies and introduce a circular framework that is closer to a customer’s real-life experience.

John Wagner, country director of Facebook Thailand, said that it is common for businesses today to advertise their products and services online. The challenge is how businesses can evolve their digital practices to catch consumers’ ever-changing needs and expectations.

Thai businesses should create an omnichannel experience for their consumers’ purchase journeys, using tools such as News Feed personalisation, dynamic and collaborative advertisements, Instagram and its Stories feature, and Messenger for continued customer conversations, said the Facebook manager.

The problem of friction at each stage of the sales cycle highlights the significant role that solutions from Facebook could play in facilitating a seamless consumer purchase journey in Thailand, he said.

“We are determined to help business in Thailand to overcome these challenges. The insights from our “Zero Friction Future” report will help Thai businesses design more relevant marketing strategies, which can help them reduce friction in consumers’ paths to purchase and consequently increase sales,” said Wagner.

By 2020, over half of the connected world will be making purchases online and 85 per cent of customer interactions will be handled without a human. In 2017, around 4 per cent of Thailand’s GDP was derived from digital products and services created directly through the use of digital technologies, and digital transformation will add an estimated $9 billion (Bt282 billion) to Thailand’s GDP by 2021.

He highlighted the 3 million businesses advertising on Stories across Facebook, Instagram and Messenger every month. In-stream video advertising remains a promising asset for Thai brands, he said. Facebook Watch continues to grow locally, with Thailand a leading country for watch times on the service.

Mark Roughley, chief customer officer of Tesco Lotus Thailand, said that retail is changing rapidly, and constantly. Customers are shopping in multiple channels and the more seamless the experience they get with the brand, the more likely they are going to shop with it, he said.

“At Tesco, we provide customers with a range of online-offline solutions ranging from a bar code scanner to mobile app to make the journey as simple as possible. Solutions from Facebook help us reach more of our target audience and provide them relevant experiences that answer their needs with speed,” said Roughley.

The initiative is a component in the collaboration between Asean Foundation and Microsoft Asia-Pacific, which aims to enhance the technological skills of teachers and educators as part of preparing Thais for the digital-economy era.

The teacher-training event was also attended by volunteers from Coder Dojo, a club for young computing programmers. They provided in-class support and advice to the teachers.

Dhanawat Suthumpun, managing director for Microsoft (Thailand), said the tech giant believes technology can be a force for social and economic inclusion. Equipping young people with digital skills increases their economic opportunities, while also addressing the talent shortage faced by industries as they digitally transform.

Microsoft Thailand contributes to the regional Asean Digital Innovation’ programme dedicated to driving the economic growth of the Asean bloc.

Chailerd Pichitpornchai, director of the Institute for Innovative Learning at Mahidol University, said that one of the key roles of his body is to provide academic and knowledge management services for society, in order to improve the capabilities of teachers in developing and managing a more effective curriculum.

The Python Programming session reflects the Institute’s mission, he said.

“This training will both equip teachers with the digital skills and extend the boundaries of their imagination, which can be developed and leveraged for the benefit of Thai youth in the future,” said Chailerd.

By the end of 2019, Microsoft is committed to organising digital training sessions for 500 teachers and 50,000 students across Thailand, in a drive to enhance their potential for creativity and critical thinking along with their digital skills.

Wuttichai Kanhar, a participant teacher from Banphaeowittaya (Teetong) School in Samut Sakhon province, is concerned that traditional computer science education focuses on teaching children to remember theories and learn only from books. That approach can lead to an inefficient thinking process that makes for a poor fit for what they will learn in future careers.

Passing on knowledge 

“As a teacher in the 4.0 era, I try to always look for ways to gain new knowledge to pass on to my students, and I feel that by learning the modern Python computing language, they will not only be equipped with additional digital skills, but also get to develop their critical thinking and problem-solving skills. If we enable them to truly understand this process at the execution level, they will certainly be able to use the skills in other subjects and their careers in the future,” said Wuttichai.

Kanjana Sittirattanayuenyong, a participant teacher from Prakhonchai Pittayakhon School in  Buri Ram province, said she had no Python programming skills before the course, but with the programming language now incorporated into the curriculum by the Ministry of Education, she realised the importance of developing them.

“I plan to pass on the knowledge I gained from this training to my students, starting from teaching them the basics in Python programming, before enabling them to develop their own projects for a hands-on experience,” said Kanjana.

The Asean Digital Innovation Programme aims to reach 46,000 underserved youth in seven Asean countries – Thailand, Cambodia, Indonesia, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines and Vietnam – and to equip them with digital skills that enable them to thrive in the fourth industrial revolution.

To achieve this objective, local partners from each of the seven countries will be brought in to deliver capacity building workshops for over 500 educators by harnessing specifically developed learning modules.

HEWLETT Packard is among the top tech companies with women and underrepresented minorities in executive positions. Some 30 per cent of HP executives are women.

In Thailand, two women lead the two major business units of HP, including PCs and printers. They are Varanit Athijaratroj, country category manager of print and Pattariya Pattarakorn, country category manager of personal systems.

Pattariya said the company applies mega trends to shed light on the demands of future consumers and employees, and identify future areas of growth – all to help propel businesses into a new era of productivity, innovation and economic opportunity.

The company’s approach is to meet users’ needs through a variety of innovations. Much of these centre on workers’ desire for freedom of movement and to work from wherever they want, whenever they want.

“We are succeeding in our focus on innovation, which is evident by the delivery of continued growth in areas such as PC, print and services, as well as emerging growth areas like VR and 3D printing,” said Pattariya.

The overview of HP’s strategy and PC innovation is focused on three areas – core, growth and future.

“Our innovation strategy is completely aligned with making lives better through technology for everyone, everywhere. It is about developing solutions that are relevant to our customers’ needs and addressing them in an era of constant change,” said Pattariya.

HP’s PC gaming segment is a huge growth area. With its reinvention of the entire Omen portfolio – from design and form-factor to engineering and performance – it aims to help gamers dominate the game, to be the best they can possibly be and to let nothing hold them back from their personal goals. “Designed with security in mind, HP offers hardware enforced, self-healing, manageable solutions to protect, detect and recover from cyberthreats and attacks,” said Pattariya. “These solutions include the HP SureSence, HP Sure Recover and HP Sure Start that provide holistic protection that can help increase security, minimise downtime and prevent costly security breaches.”

The reinvention is “increasing the connected mobile workforce and [attracting the] younger demographics and is also a call-out on design to address the local Thai market needs. HP’s reinvention design is exemplified across our PC’s with an all-premium line-up,” she added.

Meanwhile, both virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) technologies have the potential to grow with commercialisation with boarding width network. HP offers a unified commercial approach for VR, to help businesses reduce concept to production cycle times, improve training procedures and deliver fully immersive customer experiences.

HP workstations are also used in designing 3D models, creating sophisticated CGI and VR models. Workstation-based VR consumption platforms include the new Z VR.

The use cases for VR include military field training and simulation in dangerous environments, design visualisation to shorten development cycles and healthcare, where it could be used during medical procedures to improve realism in critical fields.

Business of transformation

Varanit said the three main priorities for the company’s print business include reigniting the home, disrupting the office, and transforming graphics.

Underpinning the priorities are two main factors that are informing their business plans moving forward – design matters and service business models.

Beginning with Tango, HP has completely upended its approach to designing printers for both the home and the office. They have also fundamentally changed the functionality of printers to become much “smarter” and app-based devices.

HP has developed a new product called HP Neverstop. Aimed at emerging markets, this is a syringe-based refill device whereby customers can re-fill their own ink and toner at a lower cost, thereby blunting the negative impact of the clone market.

For the SMB market, HP is offering OfficeJet Pro & Jet Advantage with the “Smart Task” feature, aimed to solve the productivity needs of many small businesses.

Then there are the JetAdvantage printers for the enterprise level, and the fact that there are over 200 developers working on apps to improve workflow and other needs of major commercial enterprises.

“We are reinventing our business for new ways to think about printing and to realise the opportunity for print in the future. We are bringing disruptive technologies that enable today’s workforce and capture more printed pages,” said Varanit.

Other potential strategic initiatives and offerings for the commercial and home-user space include managed print services, digitisation opportunities and security.

“We are focused on technologies for home-users that are designed for our mobile, digital and social lives in mind, to reinvent memories that can be shared and held onto,” said Varanit.

Recently, the company launched a marquee project, the HP Print Subscription, in Thailand. It’s the first model of its kind from HP available in Southeast Asia region and follows a simple three-step process.

The project is targeted at procurement managers focused on cost optimisation, office managers driven by always-on efficiency and productivity and business managers keen on long-term, sustainable business investments.

This allows SMBs to get customised, affordable, convenient and flexible access to printing based on their specific business needs without an up-front investment in the cost of an office printer.

And to address lifestyle photography, Varanit points to the launch of the HP Sprocket and Sprocket Plus, which has allowed the company to reinvent what people are capable of creating through personalised printing.

“We’re helping our customers reinvent photo-taking, reinvent connections and reinvent memories. Sprocket app enables our customers to scan, copy, send and print – all straight from a mobile device.

“The app also enables our customers to customise their favourite memories with frames, stickers, phrases and more. We’re constantly pushing new features live to the app, further driving the personalisation features,” said Varanit.

TENCENT, operating in Thailand for the past 20 years, has been busy expanding its service platforms. Three years ago the Chinese technology giant added the music streaming service JOOX and in 2018, the games platform PUBG.

In its latest venture, Tencent Thailand has this year added video steaming, with the aim of soon becoming the market leader.

In China, Tencent’s content features three main digital service platforms – for music, games and video streaming. Tencent Thailand now matches its parent in providing the same portfolios.

Tencent in China first launched its video steaming platform under the name Tencent Video in 2011 and began producing original content the following year. Its content comes from three sources – its own content, hiring content producers to supply the platform, and buying from content service providers.

In China, there are around 500 million active users per month, and around 89 million people pay a subscription fee.

Kanokporn Prachayaset, head of business development and marketing at Tencent (Thailand), said that this is the first country outside China to bring Tencent’s video streaming service to market under the name WeTV. Because of Tencent’s readiness in both content and infrastructure, the local team convinced the company to launch the new service in Thailand.

“We found that Thais spend a lot of their daily time on different digital services, and saw the huge opportunity to offer a video streaming service to fill out our portfolio,” said Kanokporn.

But why Thailand first? Because the two countries have cultural similarities and Chinese content is a favourite of Thai consumers, she said.

Kanokporn said the company boasts a strong local team able to offer mutual support, especially for offering cross-platform services between Sanook as the No 1 portal in Thailand, JOOX as the No 1 music streaming platform in Thailand, and WeTV, which is expected to become the country’s No 1 video streaming platform.

Thailand is also interesting in terms of market size, with over 50 million internet users. Most Thais are early adopters who welcome giving strong feedback to new services.

“Currently, over 30 million users are on Tencent’s content platform,” noted Kanokporn.

She stressed that the goal is to drive WeTV to become the No 1 video-streaming platform, matching the position Tencent enjoys with its other services in Thailand. For 2019, the aim is to push WeTV to the No 3 spot in the local market.

To achieve these goal, Kanokporn said that the company’s marketing strategies include use of social media such as Facebook and Twitter, search engine optimisation (SEO), and YouTube. Tencent Thailand’s promotions will also make use of JOOX and Sanook and key opinion leaders (KOL), or influencers, to promote WeTV in Thailand.

“We will use JOOX as media to offer not only audio and banner ads, but also to offer bundled packages with music and video for VIP subscribers. We will also increase channels on Sanook to facilitate easier access WeTV at wetv.sanook.com,” said Kanokporn.

The business model and revenue streams of WeTV are similar to JOOX, offering freemium and VIP subscription services for users. In this way, it gains revenue comes from advertising under the freemium model and fees under the VIP subscription model.

As the newcomer in the market, it intends to be aggressive in its plan to become No 1 in the future because of its strength in content and in its team.

For content, Tencent Video in China has been strong in original productions. For example, Tencent in China invested the equivalent of around Bt500 million to produce the EverNight series, as original content. The series could gain 5 billion views within a month of launching in China. This kind of content will be exclusive for WeTV users.

Tencent Thailand will use simulcast strategy to bring key content from China to Thai users instantly. For example, it also has variety programs, especially realty TV shows. One popular show is Produce Camp 2019, which Tencent bought under licence from a South Korean company to offer to Tencent Video’s users. Thai users will be able to watch this reality show just one day behind its fans in China.

In terms of teams, Tencent Thailand has strong teams and products in the Thai market, helping it in cross-content and cross-platform activities.

Although Chinese content will be the main fare for WeTV at the beginning, the company aims to go after the mass-market consumers, Kanokporn said

“Therefore, the company will expand to offer many kinds of content, including from Thailand, South Korea and the US,” she said.

“For Thai content, we worked with a local content partner. Now we have at least one official local partner – that is One31, which will offer an exclusive re-run of Thai series. Since early this year there are four titles from One31 on WeTV. We will bring content from Korea and the US to offer on WeTV in May. We have bought content licences and are creating Thai subtitles. We are also bringing premium grade content from Tencent Video to create the Thai sound.”

Initially, the target users of WeTV will be early adopters in Bangkok and in the large cities, with these customers aged between 24 and 40. It will later expand to offer content to cover users aged above 40, with select titles offering Thai sound tracks, Kanokporn said.

She said there are many video streaming service providers in Thailand, and that is a good sign, indicating the readiness of the market.

“The opportunity we see is that there is no significant Chinese content,” she says. “Consumer behaviour is now changing and they have more choices so they will switch between video streaming platforms to follow their favourite content,” she says. “So, stickiness of content is important. Our content includes programs with many episodes and which often run longer than shows in countries.

“Chinese series, on average, have around 40 episodes. More episodes means more chances to catch people’s time spent on screen. Thais on average spend over three hours per day watching video streaming on devices.”

In Thailand, she said, internet users spend an average of 9 hours and 11 minutes online everyday. They watching all kinds of content, including broadcast TV, TV on demand, video streaming, for around three hours and 44 minutes. There is scope to increase the time consumers spend watching content.

WeTV has four content categories: series, variety, anime, and movies. Series account for 80 per cent of the total, but by the end of 2019, they are expected to fall to around 60 per cent. Movies account for 20 to 25 per cent, and variety and anime productions will make up the rest. Chinese content makes up 70 per cent of the total with Thai shows filling out the rest. In May, two more shows will be added, from South Korea and the US. By the end of 2019, Chinese content will drop to around 45 to 50 per cent.

“Next month, we will have around 150 titles and this will increase to 300 titles by the end of this year. WeTV has been available since January this year, but it will be officially launched in June,” said Kanokporn.

She said the beauty of WeTV is that it not only provides video steaming for Thais but will also bring in Thai content.

This content will come from providers who partner with WeTV to distribute on Tencent Video’s platform to capture the huge Chinese market as well.

“This will help create revenue for Thai content owners, brands, and artists,” Kanokporn said.

With initial registered capital of Bt200 million, the short-term investment plans for Thai Digital Energy Development include decentralised distribution in the renewable energy business and digital business for the energy industry. For 2019, the first project to be undertaken is the 12-megawatt Smart University project with Chiang Mai University.

Khemmarat Sartpreecha of Pea Encom said the global transformation of the power business from centralised to decentralised, the use of digital technology, and the introduction of innovations such as blockchain in peer-to-peer energy trading, have made PEA realise the need to change along with the trend.

With the increasing demand for clean energy at both the global and national levels, and the declining cost of renewable energy production, consumers now have more access to renewable energy.

The joint-venture company will promote power production from renewable energy as well as promote digital business through the PEA Hero Platform developed by PEA.

The venture will also promote energy management, along with energy as a service business, among public and private sectors as well as state enterprises. And it will develop total solutions for digital energy products to respond to consumers’ needs.

Investments will be in the power production from renewable energy business, energy saving and energy management systems, and other businesses in digital energy.

“We offer choices in using clean energy for utilising technology to respond to the increasing demand of consumers who are no longer just consumers, but rather prosumers, to create a smart community through innovation.

“They can use applications and smart devices to produce and manage clean energy by themselves,” said Khemmarat.

Bundit Sapianchai, president and chief executive officer of  BCPG, said that BCPG is also focusing on retail business by offering choices to consumers so that they can produce clean energy by themselves at a lower cost.

Solar among options

The joint venture is set to gear to aggregator businesses, especially peer-to-peer energy trading through blockchain technology. That includes smart-city projects, such as the project to install solar rooftop and energy management and energy trading systems among the buildings at Chiang Mai University. Installation of that project has already begun, with total installed capacity of 12 megawatts.

Other projects will involve real estate developers such as Sansiri and SC Asset.

Recently, SC Asset and BCPG launched the “Sun Share Project”, for the first time using blockchain to manage a solar roof system for household consumption and electricity transaction at “Neighbourhood Bangkadi”.

The innovative energy management system is designed to ensure sustainable benefits for customers, and involves Power Ledger as a digital energy partner.

BCPG believes in the democratisation of energy – that everyone has the freedom to use and manage their own energy. In this joint venture, the company will continue working closely with Power Ledger, its digital business partner.

They will together create a business landscape whereby innovation plays a crucial part in a sustainable way for new energy utilisation.

Launched in July last  year, Grab Ventures is Grab’s venture building and venture investments arm.

Through GVV, Grab Ventures offers mentorship and access to the parent company’s vast customer base and technology assets, so that startups can test and scale their services via the Grab ecosystem.

Following the success of its first batch graduates from the GVV programme in January this year, applications for the second intake are open until May 15.

 Thailand has developed around 1,000 local startups and the country expects to have 10,000 of them by 2037.

With GVV, Singapore-based Grab aims to take part in enhancing the incubation ecosystem for Thai startups, connecting them to strategic partners and investors, and forging deals or business matching between startups and Grab.

This aligns with the government’s goal to create a digital hub in Thailand.

The theme for this second batch, which runs from June to August, is “Empowering Micro-Entrepreneurs in Southeast Asia”.

Two programme tracks will open. The first is “Empower Farmers”, which includes innovative solutions that help farmers bring affordable, quality fresh groceries to customers across Southeast Asia.

The Empower Farmers track will select up to five  startups from Southeast Asia that are disrupting the traditional fresh-foods supply chain, which includes meats, fruits and vegetables. Startups supplying fresh groceries to SMEs (restaurants, grocery stores) or end-consumers are welcome to apply.

The second track, “Empower Small Businesses”, strives to discover startups that are pioneering innovative solutions to empower small merchants by lowering their costs, simplifying their operations or increasing their income.

Startups in this track will pilot their solutions with Kudo’s agent network in Indonesia.

Participating startups for both tracks will have the opportunity to pilot their solutions within Grab’s ecosystem.

In addition, startups will also get access to Grab’s internal and external network of C-level advisors and experts.  On the technology front, these startups will leverage GrabPlatform resources, such as cloud APIs, as well as Kudo resources, in order to accelerate their product development.

Tarin Thaniyavarn, country head of Grab Thailand, said that the Kingdom’s startup scene is growing at an interesting pace, particularly in the AgTech space.

The Grab Ventures Velocity (GVV) programme is a great opportunity for Thai startups to scale and test their solutions through the Grab ecosystem, said Tarin.

“By piloting these innovative solutions in our comprehensive and interconnected ecosystem of everyday services ranging from transportation, food delivery, express delivery and financial services, we believe that this will not only allow startups to grow their businesses, but also benefit users and micro-entrepreneurs alike,” he said.