Vietnam businesses showcase ‘new era of innovation’ with IBM

As business leaders recognise the transformative ability and importance in almost every part of a business, technology is no longer viewed as a mere cost of doing business but as a source of fundamental competitive advantage.

More than half of all GDP created going forward will be because of digital transformation. This is due to the role technology can and must play if we are to solve some of the most enduring challenges that face businesses, governments, and society today.

Today, IBM is announcing five transformative examples that demonstrate its commitment to clients: Sacombank (Vietnam), AMRET (Cambodia), VNPT Group (Vietnam), TPBank (Vietnam) and the University of Management and Technology (Vietnam).

As one of the largest commercial banks in Vietnam, Sacombank has seen increased use of digital channels by millions of its customers and needs to ensure its IT infrastructure can keep up with growing transactions.

IBM LinuxONE has been the core system underpinning Sacombank’s uninterrupted banking services, providing vertical scalability and the highest level of security and compliance without sacrificing the speed of innovation.

The system has brought Sacombank improved system performance, transaction time, and software licensing costs, with many savings over six years. IBM LinuxONE today gives Sacombank the capacity to innovate and quickly introduce new digital financial services that are significant to its customer’s financial health and wellbeing while helping the bank advance towards its sustainability goals.

Le Duc Huy, deputy director of the Digital Transformation Center at Sacombank, said, “IBM LinuxONE is helping us to securely deliver uninterrupted banking services to our customers as our enterprise database infrastructure solution. It provides vertical scalability and the highest level of security and compliance, which is critical for our business, without sacrificing the speed of innovation."

"It allows us to be more efficient in using IT resources and helps us to achieve our sustainability goals. We saw improved system performance and transaction time and an improved experience for our staff and customers.”

Meanwhile, Amret has been devoted to improving financial inclusion by bridging physical distances and making its microfinance banking services available to millions of people and businesses across Cambodia, wherever they are and whenever they need help.

The high availability and reliability of Amret’s microfinance banking services were made possible for years by the underlying sophisticated technological platforms, which include IBM LinuxONE.

The next step in Amret’s digital transformation journey not only requires the bank to be equipped with a highly robust and reliable infrastructure to support its mission-critical operations but also scalable and future-ready platforms at the core to help the bank for sustainable future growth.

Amret’s chief digital and information officer Sajjad Khan said, “We are committed to investing in advanced technologies, providing omnichannel solutions and staying focused on our customers’ needs. Customer experience is critical to us, along with our digital platforms' availability, performance, and security.

"IBM LinuxONE has run our core banking system for many years without disruptions. The high availability and reliability of this strategic platform allow us to serve the needs of our customers in today’s fast-growing and increasingly digital market. We have seen many positive results and improvements in serving our customers and increased internal productivity,” Khan said.

To help accelerate the use of data without sacrificing security and usability, IBM also introduced the IBM Data Lake solution to enable VNPT Group to use data across borders in a secure, automated, and compliant manner.

A VNPT spokesperson said the company was looking for a solution to simplify the landscape by consistently controlling data access, centrally enforcing enterprise data policies, and intelligently moving data for different data users. The capabilities of IBM to build a data lake for analytics and AI essentially made this ideal come true.

“As businesses become increasingly data-driven, they must find suitable solutions to achieve the desired business outcomes while maximising data availability and protection. By working together with VNPT, we helped them to build a data lake for analytics and AI where they can now collect, store, govern and secure raw data from across their businesses anywhere, either on premises or on the cloud,” said Pham Thi Thu Diep, country and technology leader of IBM Vietnam.

TPBank is transforming its critical banking processes with IBM Cloud Pak for Business Automation to achieve faster processes and shorter waiting times to support their internal users and external clients.

The bank accelerated the automation journey with internal processes for IT operations and then expanded the scope to cover the lending processes and further domains in the near future.

According to TPBank, by collaborating with IBM, it has built the platform they need to decrease time to market and lower integration costs while they continue building on and enhancing the bank’s services.

IBM Cloud Paks for Business Automation running on Red Hat OpenShift is expected to enable TPBank to deliver greater customer satisfaction by providing fast and seamless, end-to-end services without queuing and lead time.

At the same time, IBM Vietnam is working with the University of Management and Technology, Ho Chi Minh City (UMT) to provide education and career readiness resources to students, staff, and community members in the southern city.

According to Huynh Thuy Phuong, vice-chairperson of UMT, IBM is UMT’s first partnership with a global technology leader, enabling UMT students, staff, and the community to use all resources in the IBM SkillsBuild platform to reinforce their digital skills.

The cooperation with IBM will help UMT to take the next step to affirm its commitment for students to access the right skills in education so they are ready to become global citizens in today’s dynamic environment.

Students of UMT can acquire the latest digital skills through the online learning and career readiness platform IBM SkillsBuild. When they complete the courses, students will be awarded digital badges by IBM recognised by the IT industry and other employers worldwide.

IBM Vietnam will also offer workplace skills and experience sharing to help students enhance their human-centric, professional skills, such as collaboration, presentation, and problem-solving, nurturing digital-ready talent for Vietnam.

The digital transformation is creating jobs that require new skills, and there is a need to upskill workforces quickly and at scale. By collaborating with UMT through IBM SkillsBuild, IBM is helping to address the skills gap and accelerating the talent pipeline. The tie-up will provide the new generations of workers with the digital skills they need to build a better future for themselves and society.

This collaboration is part of IBM's global pledge to provide 30 million people of all ages, particularly those from under-resourced or traditionally under-represented populations, with the new skills needed for the jobs of tomorrow.

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