In this excerpt from his A Connected ASEAN essay, our Group Managing Director of International and Global Services, David Burns, discusses Australia’s role in defining future technological growth within the Southeast Asian region’s digital economy.

If ASEAN successfully harnesses the benefits of disruptive technologies, it is set to become a major force in the global digital economy. Australia can play a pivotal role.

The inaugural ASEAN-Australia Special Summit marks an important milestone for Australia and Southeast Asia this year, coinciding with a time of global change that will shape our collective future. As the world enters an era defined by digitisation and connectivity, no other region is more poised to benefit than ASEAN.

Counting among its 10 member states some of the world’s fastest growing economies, like Philippines and Vietnam, the World Economic Forum predicts ASEAN will become the world’s fifth largest economy by 2020. Google notes that the region’s internet economy hit US$50 billion in 2017 alone, making it the third largest global region for internet users.

Southeast Asia’s large and growing population is young and enthusiastically taking up new technologies in its cities, while its rural areas are increasingly being connected through the improved internet and mobile infrastructure. The latest data from global social media agency, We Are Social, shows that while just 58% of Southeast Asia’s population is online today, countries such as Indonesia and Vietnam are recording some of the world’s biggest jumps in social media user numbers – at year-on-year growth rates of 23 percent and 20 percent, respectively.

In the one-year period leading to January 2018, Indonesia saw its active social media user base grow by 24 million – a number equivalent to the Australian population. With a population of 265 million, it is incredible to think that Indonesia has 416 million mobile connections and 130 million individuals active on social media. Indonesian consumers spend on average nearly nine hours online every day. With an e-commerce penetration rate of just 11%, Indonesia’s online consumer goods market is worth US$7 billion and growing at more than 20 percent year-on-year.

A recent study by ATKearney found that the implementation of a radical digital agenda could add US$1 trillion to ASEAN’s GDP over the next decade. The question now is how can Australia and Australian companies help their ASEAN counterparts capture this enormous opportunity. This is a question that Telstra has already considered and is working to address in a variety of ways.

_{You can read David Burns’ full essay, A Connected ASEAN, on the Asia Society website.}

In the fast-paced landscape enterprises operate in, there is little room or time for human error when it comes to network service delivery.

Knowing this, we at telkomtelstra, Telstra’s Indonesian joint venture, alongside Jawdat Technology, wanted to improve the network experience for enterprise customers through the use of digital technology. We relied on artificial intelligence (AI) to develop a service called Delivery Bots or ‘Dbots’. Dbots are a new approach to service delivery, using software to replicate human interaction within network devices.

It is the intricate technology behind Dbots that makes them so effective in improving network delivery services. The software Dbots use replicates human interaction within networks. This allows Dbots to manage processes such as device staging, testing and configuration, which are all automated. By employing AI technology, Dbots have reduced the occurrence of human error. This has made service delivery seamless, efficient and cost effective. In fact, Dbots have been found to reduce the time of Customer Premises Equipment (CPE) activation by 83 per cent. Overall efficiency has risen by 82 per cent for list of activities, and a further 82 per cent on time consuming per-device. Additionally, to support efficiency, Dbots have a large capacity of 2304 for device migration per 24-hour day.

Currently, Dbots are integrated in telkomtelstra’s cloud platform. Here, they automate service delivery for Manager Network Services (MNS) customers. By using cloud technology, Dbots boost enterprise productivity and efficiency. It does this through the automated approach, which reduces complexity and project resources while increasing delivery time. Dbots currently sit in borderless cloud, giving the technology the potential to serve companies not just in Indonesia, but all over the world.

Dbot technologies improvement to service delivery for enterprise customers has not been unnoticed and we are extremely proud of this. Telkomtelstra was recently awarded the Best Innovation Award for our delivery robots at the Asia Communication Award. The Award recognised Dbots for their revolutionary approach to managed network services and impact improving business efficiency.

We believe this is only just a starting point for us, and look forward to more innovative technologies to serve our customers better. Who knows, in the future, our communication with customers could be as simple as “beam me up” Telstra.