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Major Filipino conglomerate Gokongwei Group’s diverse business has digitally transformed through a strategic partnership with Microsoft, Infosys and ePLDT.
The group has been taking steps to achieve their goal of becoming the first fully digital conglomerate in the Philippines. Their diverse operations span across multiple sectors, from airlines and manufacturing to petrochemicals, real estate and retail.
The partnership with Microsoft and Indian systems integration expert Infosys dates back to 2019 and was part of their overall digital transformation journey, which started the year before. In 2018, Gokongwei group migrated the main data centre of one of their biggest businesses, JG Summit Holdings Inc., to the cloud.
When the pandemic hit, the group accelerated their digitalisation strategy with the help of the two tech giants, as well as local digital technology firm ePLDT – the ICT arm of PLDT Enterprise.
They completed their migration to Microsoft Azure, for instance, at the end of 2021. Besides tapping on the comprehensive cloud offering, the group relied on Microsoft 365 to ensure business continuity during the crisis and enable a hybrid workforce.
“Our vision and purpose have steadfastly remained – an unrelenting commitment to provide our customers with better choices, creating shared success with our stakeholders,” said Carlos G. Santos, chief information officer of JG Summit Holdings.
"We knew that achieving that requires an entrepreneurial mindset, and our ambition needed to be on a foundation of integrity. Which is why when it came to digitalising the organisation across all companies, we knew it needed to be Microsoft."
Infosys, on the other hand, was crucial in both formulating and executing the group’s transformation strategy. This involved migrating various data centres across multiple business units into a single unified Microsoft Azure-based platform and upgrading the group’s SAP ERP system to SAP S/4 HANA.
ePLDT provided the colocation services at its VITRO Data Centre, which enables the group to host their critical IT infrastructure in a world-class data centre facility.
"We are thrilled to be a strategic partner in the group's drive of constantly innovating its operations to answer the growing and changing demands of the market," said Jojo Gendrano, FVP & Head of PLDT and Smart Enterprise. "We express our utmost commitment to continuously invest in world-class infrastructure and industry-leading expertise to serve their evolving needs."
To continue their momentum, the Gokongwei group has plans to use artificial intelligence to drive monitoring and operations control in hopes of boosting productivity across the business.
