The data revolution and the Philippines
DATA has become the new life force that drives the world today. Businesses have always leveraged their company, or customers’ information, to make better, smarter, real time, fact-based decisions—from developing a new product, moving into a new market, or business field, or simply redefining an old process.
The data revolution is creating unprecedented possibilities, not only for businesses, but also for governments and the public sector to inform and transform the society, while driving positive social impact outcomes. There is no question that the Philippines has to take advantage of the opportunities the data revolution has to offer.
The business-process outsourcing (BPO) industry is one segment of the data business that has great chances to further expand; up-skilling of the people is a must though. At the same time, cross-border data f lows have to be managed well with emphasis on data protection. After the Philippines was accepted as another Asia-pacific Economic Co-operation economy that will be allowed to get involved in the Apec Cross-border Privacy Rules (CBPR) system, the BPO industry will want to be Apec CBPR certified and also comply with the requirements of the EU. There will soon be a Philippine-bases Accountability Agent to certify Apec CBPR.
Data science and business analytics will play a decisive role in future. Why? Predictive analytics and data automation have become the hottest topics for business. Predictive analytics will allow business to assess future economic conditions, risk areas, climate trends, infrastructure maintenance and investment needs. It becomes obvious that companies have to train their staff in data analytics so that they can respond to market opportunities faster and, at the same time, avoid disruptive innovation. We are running a series of webinars to cover those topics. The webinars include Advanced Excel and Powerful Data Visualization through MS Power BI.
Working from home—the “new normal”—as we continue to navigate our way through the effects of the global pandemic and hope to get business back on track fast, we are aware that we have no choice but to adjust to the new normal in our working environment. Dataone and European Innovation, Technology, Science Center Foundation (EITSC) organized a webinar wherein our speakers shared their insights about the challenges and actions necessary to keep business sustainable amid prolonged uncertainty and volatility. We identified compliance and security issues that work-fromhome arrangements create, evaluated the technologies available and discussed how they can be deployed to mitigate those risks.
The gig economy is in full swing and offers great opportunities for Filipinos. The gig economy is an environment in which temporary positions are common and organizations around the world contract independent experts for short-term engagements. There are a number of forces behind the rise, for one thing, in this digital age, the work force is increasingly mobile and work can be done from anywhere, so that job and location are decoupled. That means that freelancers can select among temporary jobs and projects around the world, while employers can select the best individuals for specific projects from a larger pool than that available in any given area.
It is obvious that people are needed to unlock the power of data; the significant rise in demand for data specialists is resulting in a talent crunch. It is essential to equip our people with the necessary digital skills for tomorrow, enabling them to design impactful, innovative solutions to manage our data inventory and data analytics, risk assessments, consumer rights requests, privacy notices, sale of data, consent, incident response and more. We offer that training.
In conclusion, given the data revolution, predictive analytics and data automation will be some of the hottest topics for business this year. As companies are realizing the unprecedented opportunities “data mining” creates, there will be a shift to more predictive analytics to assess future economic conditions, risk areas, climate trends, infrastructure maintenance, and investment needs.
It will be essential to tap on all stakeholders—government, private sector, academe and civil society—to turn these challenges into opportunities. It goes without saying that such stakeholder relations must be built on trust; and remember, trust and integrity are two sides of the same coin.