How to bring Cebu back to the top 10

WHILE he remains confident that Cebu could reclaim its spot in Tholons’ Top 10 List of Supercities, Avinash Vashista, chairman and chief executive officer of Tholons Inc., emphasized the need for the City to embrace innovation and digital transformation to rise in the ranking.

“Digital is here and the opportunities are great. The number of jobs which require digital talent is immense,” said Vashistha during the 2018 Transformation Summit organized by the Cebu IT BPM. Organization (CIB.O).

However, he observed that many are “sitting and looking at the picture and worrying about what will happen to our jobs rather than going and grabbing these opportunities.” Cebu City’s rank in Tholons Services Globalization Index (TSGI) 2017 went down to 12th, from eighth in 2016.

The global advisory firm introduced last year “innovation, startup ecosystem and digital transformation” as key components of its index. This year’s list will be released next month.

“We need to see what the other top cities are doing today that made them digitally ready and learn from them,” he said.

The Tholons official said Cebu has to make significant moves in innovation and digital transformation and look closely into adopting RPA (robotic process automation), cloud, data analytics, mobile application testing and digital marketing, which are new things that will define jobs in the future.

“Don’t be afraid of the fact that you will automate those away from revenue base. That’s not what you should be thinking. This is absolutely what is happening that if you don’t do it, you will lose out,” said Vashistha, adding that this new business processes are already being demanded by Fortune 500 companies.

RPA is an emerging form of business process automation technology based on the notion of software robots or artificial intelligence (AI) workers.

Opportunities also abound in analytics, a process that could translate data into significant insights to grow businesses.

Mobile application testing is also another area of growth with rising mobile applications being introduced in the market every day.

Vashistha, likewise, encouraged the industry to explore digital marketing and brand Cebu as a digital supercity.

Vashistha said these new kinds of strategy could help Cebu attract high-value jobs, generate more employment augmented by technology, and force companies to innovate. (KOC/With CNU Intern Jeancy C. Abit)

Trending

No stories found.

Just in

No stories found.

Branded Content

No stories found.
SunStar Publishing Inc.
www.sunstar.com.ph