Skilled workforce key to driving digital growth

Skilled workforce and a more conducive regulatory environment are crucial to driving the digital growth in Bangladesh, said Carrie Chen, digital distribution manager of Telenor Digital.

She said universities in Bangladesh should keep pace with the digital growth and offer digital marketing courses to train a new set of people who are going to join the workforce.

"Regulatory environment is crucial. If we have free and open internet then it is going to encourage this industry and help this industry grow," she told The Daily Star in an interview in the capital on Saturday.

Chen was in Dhaka to attend the second Digital Marketing Summit, organised by Bangladesh Brand Forum, at GP House. She said digital services have to be made relevant to the majority of the people.

"We have already started to see a lot of good ideas and how we can utilise digital channels and mobile internet to come up with the services that are relevant to people."

When asked whether the internet should be made more affordable for the people in South Asia where a lot of people live below the poverty line, she said the internet largely improves the lives of people and makes things such as shopping and banking convenient.

"Something, which is so valuable to consumers, should be made affordable so that more people can enjoy these services."

It is good to see that innovations like mobile health services, mobile payments and mobile banking are coming from emerging markets, said Chen, who studied international relations and economics at Boston University and earned an MBA degree from Wharton business school at the University of Pennsylvania.

"We are already seeing new ideas from places such as Bangladesh. I think, in the future, we will be leading the development of the products that are going to be relevant to majority of the global population."

She said Bangladesh will become one of the countries where companies will look for growth because of the country's huge population.

Chen gave an example of her own company Telenor, which is based in Norway, a country of only five million people.

She said Europe is now experiencing slowdown and the economy is not doing so well.

In order for Telenor to grow, the company earlier decided that it needed to expand in other markets, she said. "Now we are in markets such as Bangladesh, Pakistan and Myanmar, which are the frontier markets." 

Chen said, when it comes to marketing, Bangladesh is still relying on traditional channels such as print, television and radio. "But that's going to be changed when consumers are able to afford cheaper handsets and faster internet."

On digital marketing, she said, as networking technologies offered by operators are improving and more people are coming online and using these services, people's attention is shifting from the traditional media to the online media.

"Then that is going to be a sign for marketers to shift their marketing dollars from offline to online."

In terms of effectiveness of marketing, online campaigns are much easier than doing those offline, she said. "In general, marketing is cheap in the digital media compared to the traditional outlets. This is going to be the trend in Bangladesh."

She said there are a lot of talks for companies going digital, and business leaders know it is important to go digital. "But it is not an easy process to switch from running your business in a traditional manner to digitising your business."

"The intention is there, but how do you execute it? Do we have the right people in place? Are they empowered to run this digital transformation process? You need to address this key question."

She said Telenor recognises the need to move from being just a traditional telecom company to being a digital service provider.

"We are going through a process of coming up with a digital strategy for the years ahead. There is a lot of discussion within the company how we are going to drive that digital transformation."

fazlur.rahman@thedailystar.net