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An automatic production line at Vietnam Dairy Products JSC. Photo: X.Huong

Transform to survive

Taking an example of anti-pandemic work to maintain safe production, Tran Viet Anh, Vice Chairman of HCM City Business Association, General Director of Nam Thai Son Import-Export JSC, said in more than a month of reopening, over 95% of manufacturing enterprises in HCM City have resumed operations.

The challenges facing businesses are testing once a week, tracing and detecting F0 cases within their unit, and ensuring distance between workers in production and business activities. These actions are necessary to be implemented and managed on the basis of information technology application.

Moreover, Vietnamese businesses have faced huge challenges from the process of international economic integration, the 4th industrial revolution, and especially the pandemic. Digital transformation is an important solution and an inevitable trend for businesses to survive, improve competitiveness, production efficiency, and effectively participate in the global value chain.

In addition to investing in machinery and equipment to meet strict requirements on production and export, to control diseases and produce safely at factories, Ho Quoc Luc, Chairman of the Board of Directors of Sao Ta JSC, said that the pandemic was breaking out in some western provinces, businesses could not be subjective, because of the fact that some workers who have had two doses of vaccination for more than two months still get the disease.

Some workers tested negative on the day before, and the next day, the results were positive. Therefore, businesses need to have enough means and conditions for testing and may have to increase the frequency of screening to maintain safety in the factory. Businesses should equip themselves with a Real-time PCR testing machine, because test results through this device are accurate enough to ensure production safety.

At the seminar "Smart corporate governance - what to do when businesses return to operation" recently held in HCM City, hundreds of businesses were interested in management software programs.

Cao Hoang Anh, Deputy General Director of FSI Technology Development and Trading Investment JSC said: “The WEONE solution is a business automation system. Digitizing workflow and monitoring management in the digital space without the limitation of space and time helps administrators capture information to operate effectively. WEONE task management software is used to manage personal and business tasks.”

Amid the Covid-19 pandemic, working remotely has become a new trend. According to Lam Bao Vuong, a technical expert at HiPT Group JSC, there were many solutions to help businesses digitize. “The ‘Cloud Virtual Desktop – VDI’ solution will bring cloud computing to everyone, users can work anytime, anywhere. Besides, the solution will reduce the investment cost of equipment, simplify the operation team and increase the value of the business. It both ensures the health and the smooth operation of the business.”

Difficulties to overcome

Tran Phu Lu, Deputy Director in charge of the Center for Trade and Investment Promotion of HCM City, said that the biggest difficulty in the enterprises’ digital transformation process was the “afraid to change” mindset of the enterprise’s senior managers. To successfully implement digital transformation, enterprises must be transparent in their structure and rearrange the organizational structure appropriately. This will cause initial difficulties for enterprises’ production and business activities and lead to the fear of change of the enterprise’s senior management.

The second difficulty is the shortage of qualified human resources, especially in the field of information technology, to advise, choose solutions, and organize and manage the effective implementation of technology solutions, deploying an appropriate implementation roadmap.

The third difficulty is capital resources for implementation, especially in small and medium-sized enterprises. The number of small and medium-sized enterprises currently accounts for more than 97% of Vietnamese enterprises. Thus, the statistics showed that currently only about 15% of enterprises are participating in digital transformation and this rate, if considered in the small and medium-sized enterprises sector, is even more modest.

“This also leads to the misconception that digital transformation is only for large enterprises, which costs a lot of money to invest and has to be implemented synchronously. Meanwhile, all businesses now have to participate in the digital transformation process to improve their production and business efficiency," said Lu.

In fact, many businesses are participating in the digital transformation process but are not aware that they are doing digital transformation, for example, selling online, selling on e-commerce platforms, and meeting and discussing on online platforms.

Therefore, businesses believe that their digital transformation needs support from the authorities. The fierce competition of the logistics market and the determination of digital transformation from the Government are now two objective factors that force logistics enterprises to quickly catch up with digitalization.

To improve competitiveness, logistics businesses must spend a lot of money and resources to invest in digitizing the service process. Thus, Dao Trong Khoa, Standing Vice Chairman of Vietnam Logistics Service Enterprise Association, General Director of T&M Forwarding, proposed to the Ministry of Information and Communications, relevant ministries and branches support logistics service providers and manufacturing and import-export enterprises in digital transformation for business activities, especially cross-border e-commerce development.

On a larger scale, Tran Phu Lu said, the State needs to develop a legal framework to support businesses in accessing information and actively implementing digital transformation in general and digital commerce in particular; adopt financial support policies (loan support, interest rate support) for small and medium-sized enterprises to invest in infrastructure and apply digital technology solutions; build a legal corridor for e-commerce activities such as quality standards requirements, responsibilities of manufacturers, distributors and e-commerce sites; and handle disputes in e-commerce transactions.

Simultaneously, the State should build a shared database of market information, product lines and trading partners, and digitizing data for easy access by businesses. Develop training programs, support free training for on-site personnel of the enterprise to provide a workforce with expertise and skills to carry out the digital transformation process in general and effectively participate in digital commerce in particular.