“It’s our pleasure to work with SACEOS for technological advancement in the MICE Industry” – Dr. Derek Wang
Face To Face with M Q Syed @ Singapore MICE Forum 2019
M Q Syed (Editor-In-Chief, TradeFairTimes) in exclusive talks with Dr. Derek Wang – General Manager, Alibaba Cloud and Aloysius Arlando – President, SACEOS during Singapore MICE Forum 2019 at Resorts World Sentosa Convention Centre in Singapore.
MQS – What is the Cloud Based Technology Service on offering for MICE Sector by Alibaba Group?
DW – Firstly, it’s our pleasure to have this MOU signing with SACEOS to work together for technological advancement in the MICE Industry. We want to serve largest number of consumers in real-time with low cost and also to provide personalised service to the consumers. All these things are needed to be driven by technology. That is why we have so many Chinese consumers and some consumers from South East Nations.
MQS – What is the key to this service for the MICE sector?
DW – The key is digitalization and customized service to the consumers.
MQS – When you say consumer, do you mean the direct end-user or MICE sector as a whole since MICE sector is more B2B?
DW – Yes. I feel it’s more for the end user.
MQS – With this MOU would you like to go on different nations or would you like to restrict yourself to Asia?
DW – For this MOU with SACEOS we can provide cloud and media services. As SACEOS is well known to provide good service with MICE industry events.
MQS – It is an enticing prospect to see two of the biggest organisations coming on one platform especially a big name from MICE sector and the other a technology giant to provide a much needed service for the MICE sector. What’s your take on this?
AA – We are indeed very honoured to have partnered with Alibaba and to look at how the MICE industry can be digitally improved. Why it’s important is because our focus through business events on customers’ centricity as customer’s demands get way more exacting and it evolves we will need to be pre-active where we dedicate them with our service and solutions. Technology is going to play a critical part for us to understand our customers so well and we therefore need at a price systems, cloud based services such as Alibaba to see how we can configure solutions for different organisers and players in the MICE industry so that they can simply be customer centric and customer focussed. And, that’s something which we believe through this partnership we will uncover a lot of opportunities but we are putting how can we best realise those opportunities. As I mentioned in my opening remarks, we want to use this MOU to zoom in on specific initiatives that can be adopted by the players in the MICE industry. Many of whom are SME’s. There’s a solution that’s going to be cost-effective as it’s a cloud based system anyways and that’s something we want to see how we can make sure the customer at the end of the day is going to benefit immensely from the services being provided whether it’s for an event or even enjoying a destination. I would like to add that the partnership that we have through the MOU with Alibaba stems from the one which we signed with Alibaba and the Singapore Tourism Board to move on additionally enabled destination play that something which we take guidance from and we want to ensure that we are able to roll that out in MICE industry.
MQS – During which timeline do you think this MOU will be executed?
AA – I think we want to calibrate the different needs and dig over the next few months to sit down and see which the specific areas are. Then we’ll be able to identify what are the key areas or prototypes we can use to roll them out. So, I think we’ll take such a process and I think that at the end of the day it’s how can we be scalable. So I think only by prototyping and test running with few interested companies and where it works, I owe the things which typically will be the case whenever we look at the price systems and applications to Industry, we hope to roll it out to Industry at launch.
MQS – If you talk about SMF 2020, do you think this MOU will be having a way forward and will have some execution already on the way?
AA – We certainly want to aim for some good show pieces and case studies by 2020.