AIS, Globe and Snowflake: Evolution of Telecommunications in ASEAN: Enterprise Business Strategy & Data Monetisation, Part 2

This week's podcast guests are

• Khun Tanapong, Chief Enterprise Business Officer from AIS
• Warner Tan, Head of Data and Analytics from Globe
• Sanjay Deshmukh, SVP of ASEAN and India from Snowflake

Join them in the second part of this two-parter, with this week's podcast discussing the adoption of data-driven strategies by telecommunication companies in the ASEAN region, how they are helping local enterprises effectively build a data strategy and the highly anticipated discussion around monetisation of enterprise data.

Transcript

0.29
Hello and welcome to the AIBP ASEAN b2b growth podcast where we sit down with individuals who are responsible for driving growth of businesses in the region, specifically within the southeast Asia region. This episode is the second part of the chat I had with our guests, and if you have not listened to the first part, I’d encourage you to listen to the previous episode. Last week, we talked about how enterprises leverage data to differentiate themselves, and specifically with telcos, how they play a key role in driving emerging technologies like generative AI, LLM and AI/ML models together with technology solution providers. As a recap, our podcast guests are 

• Khun Tanapong, Chief Enterprise Business Officer from AIS
• Warner,Head of Data and Analytics from Globe
• Sanjay, SVP of ASEAN and India from Snowflake

We’ll start of part 2 of the podcast by exploring how telcos go about adopting data driven strategies. 

2.04
Yeah, so I think when when McKinsey identified several characteristics, defining the data driven enterprises of 2025, right at the very top of the list, if I remember correctly, it was data embedded in every decision, every interaction and process, we recognize this early on, and actually made this the core of our strategy, which is the democratisation of data for our company. So Sanjay’s point, also, will involve enabling decision making authority from our senior exec executives all the way to the department, heads, managers, and even individual contributors. Doing this, however, was not going to be as easy as it sounds, when you have siloed data generated in many formats from specialised systems, bringing this together, through different formats and types, right. So you're dealing with structured, unstructured, semi structured, is always going to be a challenge. And we recognize that. Another key strategy that we use was to properly build and scale our data and analytics practice, different departments or BUs within the organisation, we believe should have their own data and analytics support, with the proper domain knowledge to serve as dedicated experts within each of the business units. At the same time, it's important to maintain a central data and analytics team to provide the leadership and drive core D&A strategies for the company. So we call this the hub and spoke model. And we've been following it, I guess, to the letter right, within Globe.

3.48
Perfect Khun Tanapong, to extend on that as well. telcos, you know, there's been a lot of evolution in many different forms across the last few years, you know, we spoke about m -to-m IoT, 3g, 4g 5g, you know, it all comes with significant investments in CapEx investments, it's a large capex business, when you speak to your clients now, you know, as in, I believe in AIS, as you call it, you want to be a cognitive telco. Right, when you speak to your clients, and when you talk about solving their problems for them. What are the main pain points that you find being raised by businesses in Thailand, and as you mentioned earlier, you know, the enterprise business or the business unit of AIS has actually grown very, very quickly over the last two, three years?

4.33
What when we do, discuss with the customer, what are the key pain points that the customers are facing basically, you know, are the customer has similar pain is right. We are the large enterprise, small enterprise has been disrupt by the new player,digital will be having to play and make a lot of new combos and also a new services, most of the customer, the first challenge that they're facing is that, you know, how they're going to disrupt themselves and grow for the future, which they need to handling and up here can be like banks you receive a lot of player, and you have to provide loan, micro loaning or whatsoever, even though you're in the retail business you're facing a new player coming online,so on so forth.. So the first area, the customer keep asking on how they disrupt their business, you know, what are the technology that can help them to moving forward right to sustain or even defy the new services for their customer, having the fact that they understood that customer have a lot of changes in their behaviour, and also challenges from the competitor. Second up, you know, challenge they keep asking as you will have, how did they're gonna optimise the cost to serve or the cost to operate, you know, the company, right, if they are, you know, engaging a consumer in like, you know, retail, they will see, they will ask them how how we can leverage digital to lower the cost to serve.  Before it the company that they need to focus very much on the optimisation of the costs, how they improve the process and optimization. Thirdly, it will be, you know, how they can leverage the technology, you know, to enhance their people to empower the people to make the organisation become a more data driven organisation. And also, you know, using, you know, more technology to support that, that will be the key facing area that be facing when we do the workshop with the customer because, like I said, when the starting to do the transformation project with the customer, we are not someone who will be facing the why or essential, you know, we are just the we are focused on the digital infrastructure, but we're going to help them to speed up to move faster to move easier, you know, by leveraging technology to disrupt their business. There will be four key main areas: how do you know, the customer asking as in terms, what we can do to support their business. 

6.01
Sanjay, you cover you speak to telcos obviously, but you also speak to different enterprises, you cover, I believe, the ASEAN region as well as India, right. Do you find similar things when you speak to different companies or enterprises, when it comes to their confusion around how to, as Khun Tanapong mentioned, how to disrupt themselves?

7.07
Yeah, absolutely. I think we are. Firstly, we are seeing a lot of interest. I will not say I mean confusion, of course, but I will say there's a lot of interest and everybody wants to know, what's the right way to harness this technology and get value for the business right. And we are spending a lot of time in educating the customer, particularly in the area of generative AI and machine learning and LLM because that has caught the attention of the world , courtesy of what happened with ChatGPt, it has completely democratised and commoditize I would say, this whole concept of AI and LLM, right, so if you if you look at our strategy in terms of how we are helping customers in this particular area, our number one goal is to help customers get value out of generative AI and LLM and machine learning technology and help them build AI driven applications on their proprietary data in a secured way, I would say secure being the most critical word here. So while we have seen all exciting applications in the consumer space, as an enterprise, one needs to understand that the customers have entrusted them on the with the with the trust of their PII data, and it is the responsibility of the enterprise to make sure that they don't compromise that trust. And that's the reason secure or security is the key word here. And that's our number one focus that how can we bring all the innovation, whether it is LLM, all these models are generative AI to the data. Right. And by that ensuring that the data remains secured and we don't compromise the trust that the customers have entrusted us with. So that has been our focus and with that intention in mind, we have partnered with Nvidia, we have announced our partnership with Nvidia where we will leverage the Nvidia GPU technology. And we will let our customers use the GPU technology within the snowflake deployments in order to train their models, machine learning models, we have also partnered with Nvidia to bring in their LLM models that large language models that they built so that the customers can bring these large language models and run it on top of the data that they have, which is their proprietary data and get the value that they're expecting. So that is one partnership that we've announced. But at the same time, we are also giving the customers the flexibility to choose the environment of their choice. So we announced a partnership with Microsoft, where we will strengthen the capabilities of Microsoft machine learning capabilities to run on top of Snowflake. And we've also been in partnership with AWS for many years, where we support all the innovation that AWS brings in the space of AI and machine learning to be run effectively on top of Snowflake. So that has been our focus. How do we help our customers innovate by helping them build AI driven applications and bring generative AI and LLM to the data and build these applications securely? So that has been our focus with the telcos. And that's helped them drive innovation.

 I also want to touch base on a very interesting sort of dimension of our partnership with telcos I will say and that is of helping them, you know, helping them in growing their business with enterprises. So all of all that we talked about so far was more in terms of telcos leveraging these technologies to unlock the value of data and serve the customer better or to find cost optimization or roll out the network, 5g networks better. That's just one aspect of the business. But if you look at telcos and and rightfully so, right, Tanapong is in this meeting, he heads the enterprise business for, you know, for AIS. And in one, you know, in our role, we also partnered with telcos to help them serve their enterprise customers better, right. And in that area, the key things that we focus on is data collaboration and data monetization. Telcos have a, I would say wonderful opportunity to work with their enterprise customers, and help them monetize data. Right. And that is, that is, I would say, an interesting and exciting dimension of our partnership with telcos, we've had an opportunity once again, to work with Globe. And globe is a partner of snowflake, they are not only a customer of snowflake, but also they are a partner of snowflake, where they are taking the telco Data Cloud solution of snowflake to their customers, in order to help their customers not only unlock the value of the data, but more importantly, help them with data collaboration and data monetization.

11.46
Sanjay, would you mind just walking us quickly through how this would work? 

11.51
Yes, so the way it works is that you know today, as I say, telcos are transitioning from becoming from being a telcos to tech cos. So now, instead of just providing connectivity, they're also providing solutions to the customers, right? I mean, the solutions would mean, it could be for modernizing their infrastructure. It could be for building innovative business application. As part of that conversation. We are we are working with all the telco partners. And we are helping them take the snowflake telco Data Cloud solution to their customers. So as part of that, the one area of interest becomes data monetization. So which means that if you look at telcos, they do have rich data. I mean, today, AIS has more than 40 plus million subscribers in Thailand, and they have a rich datasets of their customers. Now, there are customers in other segments, whether it is financial services, or airlines, and they would have other dimensions or other attributes of similar customers. Because these customers are either buying financial products from them, or, you know, engaging in a travel or other other services. There is an opportunity for a telco like AIS or Globe for that matter, to go to these enterprises, and set up what we call as data cleaning solutions, and help them do data monetization, right? So this is a unique opportunity that telcos have, because of the fact that they have such rich data about that about their customers, and they can collaborate with other industry players in terms of monetizing the data. And the objective of this will be to understand more about the customer. So an airline would be interested in knowing which of these loyalty customers that they have. They traveled outside of Thailand, but not on their network on somebody else's network. Now that information of roaming might be available with a telco but not to the airline. But by being able to collaborate and do this data collaboration, they will be able to get their additional attributes of Who are these customers that they're losing business from, and then they can target them with specific campaigns and trying to and try to win their business. Right. So this concept of data collaboration and data monetization is really exciting and it can add a lot of value for business. telcos particularly are in a great place to offer these solutions to the customer, because they themselves carry a lot of rich data about their customers. But the key in all of this is I would say is, we, you know, is to protect the customer's personal identity. And that is core to snowflake. So while we, on one hand, talk about democratization of data, building all this in an innovative business application and data collaboration and monetization, but we do that in a way where the customers, PII information stays protected, and it is not compromised. And there are multiple innovations that we have done, which allowed that. So so the so the customers trust is protected customers, PII information is protected. And yet you can derive insights and business value from that data.

14.43
That's very interesting. So what you're saying is effectively, a telco can add value to its enterprise customers by providing data sets, which are currently not available to them,

14.52
right? Absolutely, absolutely. They can do that from their own data sets. And they can also help other companies monetize the data by by collaborating with them.

15.00
Perfect. Back to you,Warner. You mentioned, you know, just now you you were quoting the McKinsey report, and you're following certain playbooks to the tee. I'm sure you look at other telcos, you know, outside of Southeast Asia as well. And, you know, Sanjay was mentioning quite a full host of names in video, Microsoft, AWS, they all present in this part of the world. But obviously, the needs of Filipinos are the needs of the ASEAN population, it's a little bit different from the more developed countries. When you look at external telcos, when you look at telcos outside of Southeast Asia, what kind of innovative solutions or services do you think that you look up to, you know, coming from the opposition? And what what do you see happening overseas that you think can and should be replicated in this part of the world.

15.45
And there's one telco that comes to my mind, is this telco from New Zealand, which I've had the pleasure of meeting during the recently concluded snowflake Summit, they've actually increased their b2b revenues by embracing data monetization or productization, across their organization. And this, I think, led to operational efficiency, and that was able to generate new revenue streams for them, as well as optimize their mobile network. So I think that specific telco utilize snowflake very, very well and very efficiently. So that's one, one telco that I actually admire.

16.26
Khun Tanapong, same question to you, you know, when you look at what the other telcos are doing and maybe more developed markets, are there certain case studies, or certain solutions that you find interesting or innovative?

16.38
I believe that in Thailand, we see you have a lot of opportunity to grow in this technology and also leveraging give you example, we successfully launched unmanned mining with SCG, which is a big, you know, a Thai company

And the customer which we'll see how they differentiated that, that cement business, you know, you can get cement from brand A and brand B which one you choose, it's very difficult, right? So what they're doing they build the brand or the sustainability according to the cement, you know, that disrupt themselves, you know, in their mind, they're using EV trucks to  it, you know, so using 5g to control and manage the whole the whole mining, you know, with unmanned you know, they can improve the safety for the employees and building this as a new brand of cement to become the green cement to the market which they can demand even you know, high price, they just want just one example or how they bring 5G in. And with this they can do a lot of data analysis. Can you imagine that the EV track when they're running on the on the road in the mine, they can track all those status and the quality of  the road in the mine, and come back with when they should do the maintenance,when they should improve the quality or you know using the data you know, from from that mine, you know, to analyze, you know, that will be one of the area that apply 5G to the data. And so data monetization, so excited. So it's actually in the 5G for manufacturing, how to improve this and using a data lake for for ot . Part of my career, you see a big, big gap and opportunity in the operation technology, like, like in China is the energy side, that can bring data to become the insight and shift the way they focus, and currently all the large corporates they're talking a lot in theory about sustainability as well. While we can apply the data and data monetisation to support in initiative, moving forward to become more sustainable business.

18.55
I think there's been a lot of interest recently, especially in the Philippines, surprisingly enough, in around like ESG, and sustainability goals, UN SDGs. In Thailand as well, I think we've seen quite a few companies embark on quite a few projects across conglomerates, across different large enterprises. So I think that's something that will definitely take off. I think we are running out of time. So I'll just have one final question. And this is a standard question that we ask all guests on our podcast. Maybe we can start with you, Kum Tanapong looking forward with we've spoken about the evolution of data evolution of telcos, how are you helping your customers looking forward across the next maybe three, four or five years? What actually excites you within Thailand? Where do you think growth will come from? Obviously, as b2b revenues are increasing, very healthily. But where do you think growth will come for AIS? And what? What do you think Thai enterprises will be focusing on in the next three to five years Horizon?

19.55
Yeah, that's a great question. Actually, right now, we are not patient about digital transformation in Thailand, but matter of time right. Currently, a lot of industry, really active in terms of this, you know, technology can disrupt and make them, we believe that more than 40% of the GDP will, you know, produced by the digital technology, which will be a big number.You know, our key highlight for me, I would like to say if the on the EC is an economic corridor area that Thailand has built this, you know, to become the heart of the, the economy for Thailand. AIS we also invest a lot in this EC and provide 5G coverage is 100%. To support, and we build Innovation Center, and the platform that we can prepare for these spaces, you know, at the end, the customer looking for the solution and the application, you know, that they can use it, and also can be able to disrupt the business. So we see this as an opportunity in Thailand, and we also driving the concept of the ecosystem partner that we work together with both local and also international player to coming in to co create the solution.

21.13
Sounds sounds like a lot of work for you,Khun Tanapong.  we speak to digital economy promotion agency DEPA, as well as the ministry of digital economy and society. And you're right, they're not that easy, what they're what they're doing around there. It's actually a lot of opportunities. They're doing a lot to attract investments into Thailand as well. So hopefully, you know, that continues to drive the growth of AISs b2b business. Warner, same same question to, you know, where do you think growth areas are within the next three to five years and what's actually going to shift significantly in the Philippines?

21.48
For me, I am actually personally excited about data collaboration and the potential around that. I think, I think the ability to launch to be able to launch data applications right and products while seamlessly. being able to access third party data through tools such as the snowflake marketplaces, is going to be unprecedented. Certainly, with the scale that it offers its customers, right? As one of the biggest customers of snowflake in the region, I think globe is uniquely positioned to lead enterprise customers in this area. Right? I feel that customers who do not embrace this capability are missing out on the opportunity to maximize the power of data. So specifically, within, within my group, within the globe b2b group, we see data and analytics as a core and growth area, right data is reshaping many aspects of our lives. And its impact is felt across all industries, at least for the Philippines. As a market leader, we want to be able to harness our experience and our expertise, and be able to use this and help and support our customers in their data and analytics journey. So I'm very, very excited about this.

23.05
And Philippines is, outside of the usual markets, Philippines is the fastest growing economy in Southeast Asia with the youngest, I believe, median age. So you're set up very, very nicely as as a country for growth across the next few years. Rounding us up. Sanjay, you have a unique view, you sit out of Singapore, am I right? Yeah, because you've covered the ASEAN region, as well as in India as well. What are you excited about?

23.33
I mean, you will agree that we are in this exciting phase of, you know, leveraging technologies like Gen AI and LLM. And if you look at it, all of these in this, this entire AI revolution is powered by data. I would say in that sense, we are very fortunate to be in a place where snowflake is right at the center of this data and AI revolution. So I would say this is an exciting time for us. And with all the innovations that we have announced in terms of the partnership with Nvidia to bring GPU and LLM to the to the data to the propriety data of the customers and help them build these AI driven applications in a minute in a very secured manner or with the, or the partnership that we announced with Microsoft to leverage their, you know, AI and ML frameworks, or the partnership that we have with AWS, with all the innovations that we have done and all with the partnership that we announced. And also including acquisitions that we've done, we acquired companies who have built LLM and natural query language model kind of techniques, to to interact with the data, we acquired document, AI companies, right. So with all the innovations that we are doing, the acquisitions that we've done, the partnership that we're building, we are truly excited that you know, to be able to partner with our customers and help them become data driven companies help them unlock true value of data. We are already seeing that, by the way, if you look at the examples that we have, that have come out in the past few months, we have seen a company based in Singapore, unravel carbon, solve the sustainability and ESG problem.
We are we are particularly excited with the opportunity that we have to partner with telcos and accelerate the journey of becoming telcos and helping them, you know, helping them, you know, build partnerships around data collaboration and data monetization. Right? This is a, this is an area which will add directly to their top line and bottom line, where they will be able to monetize the data that they have built over the past many years. Right. And they will be able to do that in a very secure manner. Right. So I would say there are lots of exciting opportunities ahead for us. And we really looking forward to partnering with our customers and partners and helping them unlock the true value of data.

25.48
Perfect. Thank you. I think everybody's fairly optimistic about growth here in the ASEAN region. Thank you Khun Tanapong, thank you Warner. Thank you, Sanjay. We'll definitely see a lot more of you going forward. And thank you once again for being here with us today.