As the Gokongwei Group powers through its digital transformation with significant infrastructure and business investments, it is fully aware that the journey’s end is not merely about achieving large-scale automation through technology. A deeper and more impactful digital transformation involves transforming the group’s ways of working.
To achieve its goal of becoming the leading digital conglomerate in the Philippines, the Gokongwei Group has to scale up in data analytics, digital marketing and strategy, user experience and research, agile ways of working, and product management, among other competencies. Enabling the fulfillment of these needs, the JG Summit Digital Transformation Office (DTO) was created in 2018.
“Basically, our role is to understand what the business units and corporate center units need in terms of digital transformation, whether it’s to build digital products, improve processes or learn new ways of working. We help the teams become digitally fluent, agile, and data-driven so they can create better customer journeys and innovative products,” explained Amina Rillo, Vice President of Digital Transformation, in an earlier interview about her group.
Passionate and creative problem solvers, DTO team members advocate the concepts of design thinking, being lean and agile, and maximizing the use of data in their interaction with various Gokongwei Group business unit counterparts.
In this regard, the DTO team works closely with the various companies or business units (BUs) that make up the conglomerate, imparting its digital expertise and transformation strategy through training, practical application, and dedicated coaching.
Composed of passionate, highly skilled, and creative problem solvers, the DTO team coaches other BUs in the new ways of working. In its interaction with the BUs, DTO advocates Design Thinking (exploring the right problem), being Lean (building the right thing), being Agile (building the thing right), and Growth Hacking (scaling the right way), while ensuring that decisions are enabled by data. By helpfully sharing these insights, the DTO team has already been able to make a substantial impact on the conglomerate’s many diverse operations, despite being a relatively new corporate center unit.
Building Better Choices for Customers
Among the first Gokongwei Group BUs to tap the DTO’s expertise was Robinsons Land for its “lighthouse projects” – the pioneering digitalization initiatives meant improving the customer experience at its Malls and Hotels divisions. At Robinsons Malls, the interactive directories were enhanced to include a product search feature and improve the shopper interaction rate, while at Go Hotels and Summit Hotels, a property management system was set up to eliminate manual processes and drive hotel employees' efficiency.
When Robinsons Land’s residential division, RLC Residences, participated in the first edition of the DTO’s Launchbox program, it was able to optimize its digital channels for condo shopping to condo living. Inspired in part by accelerator programs, Launchbox requires participating business units to “enroll” projects, whether big or small, that would have positive customer and business impact.
Like other things that changed because of the pandemic, the pace of the group’s digital transformation has also picked up, and has become more relevant than ever. As customer preferences quickly evolved, the group’s BUs had to adapt and engage with customers especially through digital channels.
DTO likewise guides Gokongwei Group businesses in the experimentation process to grow their customer base.
With guidance from the DTO, Robinsons Bank was able to introduce several digital innovations that made banking safe and convenient for customers, even at the height of the pandemic. With its Go!Salary online banking product, RBank made the salary loan application process simpler and faster, while RBank QuickR, a QR code facility conceptualized and brought to life through Launchbox, enabled contactless transactions. DTO also guided the bank’s growth hacking experimentation as it sought to widen the RBank Digital App userbase.
The Gokongwei Group’s retail arm, Robinsons Retail Holdings, also saw the rewards of working closely with the DTO. Months before the pandemic, RRHI’s drugstore chain, Southstar Drug, participated in DTO’s Launchbox program with the objective of making the purchase of medicine more convenient. Southstar Drug experimented with the creation of an e-commerce site originally scheduled for public launch in September 2020. However, plans for the website were fast-tracked and evolved to serve customer orders as a result of the public health crisis. As a result, the southstardrug.com.ph site was launched almost six months ahead of schedule in March 2020.
DTO supports Gokongwei Group businesses in enriching the customer experience. The development and growth of the GoRobinsons app is a great example.
Similarly, GoRobinsons, the online store of Robinsons Retail, was conceived and launched during the 2020 lockdown. When it was introduced by the Robinsons Retail and DTO teams in June 2020, GoRobinsons accepted Robinsons Supermarket orders from a limited number of locations. Today, GoRobinsons carries more than 10 Robinsons Retail brands including Robinsons Supermarket, The Marketplace, Shopwise, No Brand, Toys “R” Us, Handyman, and True Value, along with an expanded delivery coverage area.
Enhancing Experiences of Partners and Employees
Other digital transformation initiatives within the group have strengthened its commitment to create shared success with stakeholders. One notable example is URC’s “Project Judith,” which aims to address the cause of payment delays to URC’s suppliers. Project Judith’s cross-functional task force was formed by JG Summit’s Corporate Procurement department and coached by the DTO. It is now reaping the rewards of the new ways of working, which promoted transparency and cross-functional collaboration between the company’s plants and key stakeholders, and improved the plants’ ratings on business and customer metrics.
Also enjoying the benefits of digitalization are the group’s internal customers, its employees. The JG Summit Employee Service Portal was launched by a cross-functional team composed of Aspen Business Solutions, Corporate Human Resources, Corporate Information Technology, and the DTO to improve employee satisfaction by delivering HR services more efficiently. Coached in Design Thinking by the DTO, the JG Summit Employee Experience team was able to discover the behaviors, motivations, and specific needs of its employees and address them accordingly.
Learning Together and Leaving No One Behind
The DTO is actively involved in improving the individual skills of employees as well, especially the conglomerate’s digital practitioners. Apart from the aforementioned Launchbox program, which recently wrapped up its third season, DTO holds Unbox monthly webinars to introduce general industry trends and the Brownbox informal sharing sessions, which encourage a culture of learning and communities of practice within the conglomerate.
In July 2021, the DTO held the inaugural Unbox Extra: the Gokongwei Group Innovation Festival, which brought together 30 speakers from four continents to discuss bold business concepts and innovative ideas. More than 5,000 employees and partners of the Gokongwei Group took part in the event.
While the DTO is proud of the success of these projects, it takes greater satisfaction in having molded the working culture of the Gokongwei Group business units that it has partnered with, introducing a mindset of arriving at data-driven design decisions, and fast, frequent delivery of value to customers.
DTO’s exposure to the multiple industries in the conglomerate allows the team to offer new perspectives and share best practices with colleagues across the group. Faith Euraoba, Information Technology Specialist from Toys “R” Us, who is also a Launchbox graduate, talks about her team’s behavior shift: “From a single department handling a project, to an effective team with one mindset to pursue a project through collaboration of ideas.” Patis Famador, E-Commerce Manager of Robinsons Department Store, shares that she now uses data to think of new initiatives and to measure success, unlike how past initiatives were launched because they’re part of a calendar or just based on assumptions. Providing feedback on how his group changed its ways of working, John Salcedo, Robinsons Bank’s Digital Technology Division Head, shared, “Before, we build the product and then get customer feedback. Now, we interview our customers before the product is built.”
Having contributed to its colleagues’ emerging norms and the BUs’ promising numbers, the DTO’s impact will go far beyond the triumphs of these initial projects; its lasting influence felt as the Gokongwei Group achieves its goal of being an enterprise of tomorrow.
