KPMG's Alvin Gan gives rundown of tech's role in digitally emerging economies

Whilst 67% of CIOs face talent shortage, it’s not all doom and gloom, he says.

Alvin Gan, a partner at KPMG’s Malaysia office, specialises in digital transformation that focuses on emerging tech such as advanced analytics, artificial intelligence, blockchain as well as customer experience. He runs the IT-enabled Transformation (ITeT) practice and holds the role of the firm’s head of digital strategy.

With 24 years of experience providing industry-tailored strategies and technology advisory, Alvin has worked closely with many CIOs and technology leaders to harness technology disruption, effectively managing resources to drive agility and improved business performance.

Alvin describes a “Creative CIO” as a transformational business leader and technology strategist, whose role is to enable organisations to move beyond “keeping the lights on” to creating new business values.

“It’s not so much about coloring outside the box as what it used to be 20 years ago, but more about making the box a little bigger each time,” he expressed.

Singapore Business Review caught up with Alvin ahead of the awards to muse over his career after graduating from Murdoch University in Perth, the silent megarounds that happened in Q1, as well as Malaysia’s potential to become a smarter nation, as the country’s startups expedite that sought after “coopetition.”

Which industries, in particular are your main focus? Can you share with us your work experience and backstory that contributed to your professional career?
In order for me to answer this, I have to go back into time, specifically 24 years back! When I started my career, the focus used to be about a particular technology at one given time and the conversations would center on just that. For example, cloud technology was just about having services beyond your local computer but being accessible over the Internet. Fast forward to today, everyone is talking about going digital. To me, the premise has remained largely the same. But the difference is you have a wide variety of digital technologies or disruptors intertwining with each other.

Today, I am a partner at KPMG in Malaysia, heading the IT-enabled Transformation (ITeT) practice and also the firm’s country lead for alliances. I also spearhead the implementation of digital strategy across the firm. In my years of experience in the tech space, I have had the chance to work with many CIOs and CEOs, providing strategy and technology-advisory services to clients across multiple sectors and industries. These included leading large-scale projects across various industries in the fields of technology/digital transformation and innovation, client strategy as well as governance, risk and compliance services. Specifically, working hand-in-hand with technology leaders to harness technology disruption and more effectively manage resources to drive agility and improved business performance.

I cultivate the idea of a “Creative CIO” as a transformational business leader and technology strategist, whose role is to enable organizations to move beyond “keeping the lights on” to creating new business values. As companies evolved in the digital realm, so did the nature of my work. I have had the privilege to assist many organizations in the areas of data governance and business intelligence (BI) through the development of frameworks that focus on enabling the organization to move their decision making from educated guesses to informed and fact-based planning, resulting in better usage of data within the organization.

So, just like the conversations have evolved over the years, my role in the technology industry has also evolved. And today, it’s not so much about coloring outside the box as what it used to be 20 years ago, but more about making the box a little bigger each time.

With BAU and BCPs being tested amidst the circuit breaker. How are enterprises coping in their operations and how are they responding to consumer expectations? Which new products or services do you think would thrive post-crisis?
The repercussions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic has forced business leaders to rethink their future operating strategies. The workings of day-to-day businesses are disrupted, many business owners are focusing on resilience measures, ensuring risks are anticipated and managed for both employees and clients in terms of production in the future.
Both business leaders and owners have had to mobilize quickly and make decisions for the short term, with implications for the long term that they might not fully understand yet. For most companies, they have turned to technology. And in my opinion, rightly so. It is irrefutable that technology has played a significant role in our new normal today.

Based on our observations across industries, companies whose consumer behavior was altered in their favor during the crisis will experience a surge in business prospects. This scenario would apply to companies in these sectors: online retail, technology/media/telecommunications, food delivery, asset management or private equity, life sciences/pharmaceuticals, interaction platforms and streaming media. Investors are likely to sense their potential to lead and provide capital to scale aggressively during recovery.
That does not mean to say that other sectors will not recover. Businesses just need to assess their situation and prepare for the best suited recovery path for their sector, whether they require to modify business-as-usual, transform to re-emerge, or perform a hard reset.

What’s your view on Malaysia’s tech entrepreneurs and startup ecosystem? Which industries are ramping up with their digital innovations?
I suppose it would be fair to say 2020 so far has been unlike any year on record. The emergence of the novel coronavirus COVID-19 shattered original expectations for the year. The pandemic created turmoil, economies, and public markets around the world—globally and certainly in Malaysia as well. Despite the impact of COVID-19, based on KPMG’s Venture Pulse Q1 2020, venture capital investment globally remained quite robust in Q1’20, primarily due to the strong pipeline of deals in many jurisdictions around the world. In particular, VC investment in the US and Europe remained strong. Asia, meanwhile, saw VC investment drop significantly, driven by a slowdown in deals activity in China, where the fight against COVID-19 began much earlier than in other jurisdictions. Despite a sharp decline in the number of deals, Asia saw a number of megarounds during Q1’20, including $3 billion raises by Gojek and Kuaishou, and a $1 billion raise by Yuanfudao.

Closer to home, Malaysia is increasingly seeing more collaboration between stakeholders in the startup ecosystem coming together and working in tandem. That is, the policy makers and regulators, players, investors and so on. This is especially true for established organizations. Take the banking sector in Malaysia, for example. One of the reasons this sector has seen tremendous progress is because the banks stopped looking at startups as competitors, but have shifted their mindset to form new collaborations. In recent months, we have seen major banks in Malaysia announcing partnerships with leading startups to allow rapid development of solutions that directly benefit the end customers. It is only with collaboration that Malaysia can sustain the successes to date, and hopefully be a hub for our very own unicorns one day.

For Malaysian startups to be part of this positive wave, there must be a combination of passion for the services and products offered, monetization of data, and a steady stream of talent to enable growth. Having passion is a given. Data will be another key area to look at. Because these startups typically front line with the end customers, they will have large amounts of data. Thus, the challenge is making sense of the data and using it as a springboard to periodically build upon the initial successes and grow.

As for industries ramping up digital innovations, if I were a betting man, my money would be on those sectors which scale post-COVID as consumer behavior that was altered during the crisis is sustained in their favor. For these industries, there is potential to lead and provide capital to scale aggressively during recovery—and a large chunk of that will touch upon digital innovations. I’m looking at online retail, technology/media/telecommunications, food delivery, tele-medicine, asset management/private equity, life sciences/pharmaceuticals, interaction platforms and streaming media.

Aside from doubling down on tech and digital innovations, what do firms need to consider to become more profitable and sustainable in the future?
People, people, people! Of course, there are a myriad of other factors involved to make businesses sustainable and profitable. But I cannot stress this point enough. You have to get the people factor right from the get-go. It is a point often discussed, but a tough nut to crack.

One of the main issues faced by CEOs today is talent shortages. The numbers we see from our CIO survey (Harvey Nash and KPMG CIO Survey, 2019) are telling. Findings show that skills shortages are at an all-time high since 2008 and that these shortages cannot fail to act as a bottleneck to growth. The top 3 scarcest skills are big data/analytics, cyber security and artificial intelligence.

Staying on point, business ought to also think what to do with existing talent. We read many reports saying robots have taken over human labor. This is true—but it is not all doom and gloom. Automation’s impact on jobs, both in terms of partial or full elimination of work roles or, on the flip side, empowering workers with new skills and insights, is already a reality in the market. The reality is automation will eliminate white collar jobs. Organizations need to proactively address this reality. The bigger question is how leaders are handling job displacement. Retraining tops layoffs by a wide margin.

The key challenge for organizations is how to conduct this retraining as well as determine which workers are best suited for this investment. But what’s also required is that business and executive management work with their human resources departments to define the collective workforce of the future and direct retraining and reskilling efforts toward that future. This can mean conditioning staff to understand their jobs are likely to be redesigned. But it can be less painful if managers figure out how staff can be reallocated and retrained in a new era of breakthrough technologies such as augmented reality and artificial intelligence.

So there you go, putting my two cents in. Whilst business leaders are still trying to figure out how to digitally keep up with all these transformations, the people factor should not be overlooked. We might not have all the answers now, we’ll surely get there by putting our heads together and thinking forward!