Asia progress towards becoming a digital economy is moving rapidly. However, for a majority of the countries within the region, finding talent is a huge struggle.
That is why companies are starting to see the implementation of their digital transformation programmes slow down — especially in countries like Malaysia, Indonesia, and the Philippines, where foreign tech talent is sparse in comparison to neighbours like Singapore and Hong Kong, according to a recent report.
Some companies, however, are taking the talent gap in their stride and turning over a new leaf by training existing employees to cope with the growing technology needs of the business, the report noted.
The CTO of a major Malaysian media company runs such a program. He stated that to remain relevant to customers’ increasingly digital lifestyle, the company is reinventing and transforming into a truly digital company by striving for constant innovation and diversifying its business to offer a full suite of digital services.
As a company with employees from diverse backgrounds and skills, the media firm seems to want to leverage all its executives on our digital transformation journey. As a result, it is rethinking the ways of working, reskilling internal talents, and reimagining Astro’s offerings of tomorrow.
A recent study showed that digital skills gap affects 54 per cent of 1,200 global organizations and has forced them to revise their digital transformation plans — which also means they have or will soon lose the competitive advantage that new technologies could bring them.
To avoid this, the firm has accelerated its digital talent programme partnering with a professional services firm in the development of its Certified Innovation Programme (CIP) and Certified Technologist Programme (CTP). It is for these efforts that the company has recently won the IDC Talent Accelerator of the Year award.
The CTO explained that companies that bridge the talent gap will enjoy a competitive edge over those who don’t, especially in an increasingly digital economy. Thus, accessible workplace learning initiatives are a critical strategy component for businesses looking to attract and retain digital talent.
The firm’s CIP has trained more than a thousand employees in new methodologies for innovation. The program has also helped the company identify and certify “innovation champions”, which the company believes will be a crucial step in accelerating its digital transformation.
The CTO testified to seeing the shift that occurred as a result of the training and innovation practices. They went from being driven and ‘pushed’ centrally to now being ‘pulled’ and requested from across the media firm’s businesses to innovate their offerings.
The media company’s Digital Transformation can only succeed if its teams are trained on leading-edge technologies to deliver value to our customers.
To support this, the company has introduced a multi-tier Certified Technologist Programme (CTP) to equip its teams with the new skills required to securely design, build, deploy, and operate the firm’s new offerings in the cloud, and to refactor and migrate existing services to the right technology platform.
To date, more than 200 skillsets have been trained, allowing the company to develop a strong pool of certified architects, developers, and system engineers.
The company is relying on AWS for its digital transformation and hence seems to be training and enabling all its employees to help the company with on its journey.
According to the CTO, every talent from the company, at all levels, is empowered to be a transformation agent, with equal opportunities provided to reskill, upskill, learn, and build their capabilities.
The CTO, at the helm of the company’s technology agenda, understands that to make a real impact on the customer and deliver on their expectations, it’s important to train as many people as possible — to help and support programs within the business.
