TechTouch Asia

Infor , a global provider of business cloud software specialised by industry, has partnered with DBS Bank , Southeast Asia’s largest bank, to integrate digital trade financing capabilities into the Infor Nexus global network of more than 68,000 businesses. The two companies’ first joint programme is now live with one of the world’s largest global apparel companies, providing faster and more cost-efficient digital trade financing to suppliers in the apparel company’s supply chain ecosystem. Most of these suppliers are small-to-medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). “This is an important relationship for Infor, where a common vision of data-driven financing bonds us and presses us forward,” said Gary Schneider, VP of Sales for Infor Financial Supply Chain Management. “DBS is a digital bank, based in Asia, focused on supplier funding and liquidity. Its pursuit of digital innovation and delivering greater value to supply chains, combined with our cloud-based platform and local support tea...

By Andy Watson, SVP and GM, Asia Pacific Japan and Greater China, SAP Concur With the unprecedented number of people working from home, 2020 has turned out to be a watershed year for companies to manage employee productivity. While we marvel at the maturity of cloud services and digital technologies that have enabled this massive migration of work from office to home, many business processes and policies remain old world and manual, especially administrative and finance ones. The bane of office workers’ lives, these administrative and finance processes, mainly expense claims, are mandatory but take up plenty of time better used to deliver meaningful work. This inflicts significant costs on businesses and the economy and causes employee frustration. The vexation that Asia Pacific employees are reportedly feeling stems from the fact that most expense claims systems are not supportive of their usual practices in their daily lives, such as making cashless transactions with mobile wallets a...

Six weeks ago Juniper announced several strategic solutions to support contact tracing and social distancing in the AI-driven enterprise . These features assist enterprises with various workplace business continuity safety tasks like proximity-tracing, journey-mapping and hot-zone-alerting. The company has announced a new partner to its ecosystem, ServiceNow. Together, Juniper and ServiceNow are making it even easier to implement worker safety with an automated solution for proximity tracing case management. If a person self-reports as a potential risk, the Juniper solution helps to identify all individuals that have come in contact with that person across an enterprise domain, how long the exposures occurred and where they physically occurred within a building. Rudimentary proximity alerting can happen by correlating which clients were connected to a Juniper Access Point using Wi-Fi; more advanced zone-based location is possible using Juniper Mist vBLE in conjunction with 3...

Businesses have had to transform themselves to cope with lockdowns during the COVID-19 pandemic. In Singapore, these companies went into uncharted territory to reinvent themselves: Audio House Source: Audio House. The Audio House showroom. Audio House is known for selling TVs, washers, fridges, kitchen appliances, air-conditioning units and similar appliances. The company traditionally relies on its showroom and face-to-face interactions with customers to bring in revenues. When the showroom had to close during Singapore's circuit breaker (lockdown), Audio House was forced to find alternative ways to operate. In order to keep their sales team employed and to help them to gain new job skills, Audio House launched:  - An Online Concierge service to help their sales people to maintain salaries and commissions, regardless of the actual sales. - New services like weekly Facebook Live sessions, where their sales team learned how to handle sessions, from admin to operation...

- HP study says Asia-Pacific (APAC) small and medium-sized business (SMB) owners remain optimistic - Bouncing back will require innovation in work processes, flexible work options and customised products and services - Indonesia, India, Vietnam, Australia, and Thailand SMBs are the most confident of their ability to be innovative HP Inc. ’s latest study* on SMBs in Asia-Pacific, Survival to Revival, revealed that over 50% of SMB owners expect not just to survive but thrive following the pandemic, and feel that digital transformation will be a key part of this revival. Some 60% of respondents see digital transformation as key with innovation in work processes, flexible work options and customised products and services identified as future strategies. However, cost-effective solutions are required given that cashflow remains top of mind and SMBs are unclear where to look, or even what suitable solutions are available. This is especially key where only four in 10 SMBs have a depar...

By John Jeremiah, Product Marketing Leader and Anthony McMahon, Regional Director, APAC, GitLab The adoption of new technology has escalated even further during the COVID-19 crisis and shown how transformation can reshape how we work and live, at a speed that few had imagined. Source: GitLab. McMahon. Local businesses adapting to the rapid changes brought about by the crisis need to understand that a key cornerstone to effective transformation lies in understanding the potential of the organisation’s capability to make the most of its technology investments and deliver value faster to customers. How can technology leaders capitalise the cloud-native, open-compliant, mobile-first, agile-enriched, artificial intelligence (AI)-fuelled, bot-filled world of coding and how do these forces now come together to enable them to be ten times faster to market and remain competitive? Side by side vs step by step Source: GitLab. Jeremiah. The hallmark of traditional software projects ...

Pulse Secure , the provider of software-defined secure access solutions, has been recognised as a technology leader and among the top three performers for technical excellence in the 2020 network access control (NAC) market report by research firm Quadrant Knowledge Solutions . The SPARKS Matrix™: Network Access Control (NAC), 2020 report by Quadrant Knowledge Solutions determined that the NAC market is expected to grow by 17.2% CAGR from a market size of US$1,580 billion in 2019 to US$4.07 billion by 2025*. “We rated Pulse Secure in the top three NAC vendors that scored the highest overall ratings, and a frontrunner in accommodating on-going and emerging trends – it is highly flexible, competitive and scalable,” said Piyush Dewangan, Industry Research Manager at Quadrant Knowledge Solutions. “With recent enhancements, Pulse Secure is well-positioned to deliver integrated secure access capabilities based on a Zero-Trust Security model for hybrid IT with granular classification, ...

By Paul Churchill, VP and GM, South East Asia, Vertiv Businesses are moving to the cloud, making data centres a critical segment of every organisation, industry, and sector. As data centres get larger, energy consumption has become increasingly important to their operators and owners. Disruptions in their operation can bring businesses and organisations to their knees. Source: Vertiv. Churchill. A data centre’s need for always-on power and its relatively high-power requirements present challenges in the direct use of renewables. While solar technology has made significant strides in efficiency, and both solar and wind energy have become more cost-competitive compared to traditional energy sources, these technologies are still maturing and viewed as risky—and impractical—by many data centre operators. Reducing the industry’s carbon footprint is a high priority, but it can’t come at the expense of reliable power availability. Data professionals across the globe seem to agree w...

Source: Huawei. The HUAWEI MatePad comes in Midnight Grey. Designed for creators, the HUAWEI MatePad delivers Huawei’s signature large display that with ultra-narrow 4.9 mm 1 bezels and the world’s highest tablet screen-to-body ratio at 90% 2 . One of its key features is that it supports wireless and reverse wireless charging, the first of its kind for a tablet. Bluetooth-enabled accessories to elevate the experience with the HUAWEI MatePad series include the HUAWEI M-Pencil 3 for intuitive writing, and the Smart Magnetic Keyboard 3 . Running on the latest Android OS and EMUI 10.1, the new HUAWEI MatePad includes a variety of smart features. It features Multi-Window 4 , Floating Window and App Multiplier 4 for multitasking, for example. The Multi-screen Collaboration 5 function also lets users connect their Huawei smartphone with the HUAWEI MatePad LTE to use two devices at once on a single display. EMUI 10.1 additionally supports HUAWEI MeeTime 6 , Huawei’s ...

The Huawei Consumer Business Group is expanding its laptop lineup in Singapore with the launch of the HUAWEI MateBook X Pro. To celebrate this, consumers will receive attractive gift bundles worth S$250-S$1,200 for the purchase of selected laptops from up to 16 August 2020. The flagship Ultra FullView MateBook X Pro features a metallic unibody with a premium sandblasted finish. It is 14.6 mm thick and weighs 1.33 kg for enhanced mobility. and delivers a borderless experience. Source: Huawei. The HUAWEI MateBook X Pro is a performance machine that also gives an intelligent and interconnected experience with other Huawei devices. With slim bezels on all sides, the Ultra FullView Display in 3K resolution gives an edge-to-edge, expansive viewing experience with a 91% screen-to-body ratio 1 . Huawei has decided on an unconventional 3:2 aspect ratio for the display, which the company says is better for productivity and content creation compared to mainstream widescreens. The sc...

Logistics software-as-a-service (SaaS) company Shippit aims to accelerate the Southeast Asian e-commerce industry with its new Cash On Delivery (COD) service for retailers. By partnering with e-commerce platform Shopify, Shippit now provides instant access to simpler shipping and cash-on-delivery capabilities for Asia’s online retailers. Shippit unifies order fulfilment across sales channels and leverages its proprietary allocation algorithm to connect retailers to the best delivery partner for every single order. Through its partnership with Shopify, Shippit will offer COD as a payment option regardless of order volume or business size. This offering makes Shippit the first end-to-end shipping solution that enables retailers to instantly offer COD as a payment option to merchants and retailers. They need only sign up for a Shippit account and connect their Shopify store. Shopify retailers will not need to negotiate COD rates with their couriers, as this handled by Shippit. ...