Navin Pieris, Group Chief Officer – Dialog Enterprise, a unit of Dialog Axiata PLC, and Venura Mendis, Head of ICT Business at Dialog Axiata PLC, share insights into the purpose that drives Dialog Enterprise. They advocate for a rapid digital transformation across the economy, from small and medium enterprises to large multinational corporations and state institutions. In this interview, they postulate a firm conviction that digitalization is both a tool and a strategy that unlocks immense benefits, especially in times of crisis.

Confronted with severe economic challenges, why should Sri Lankan companies make digitalization a priority?

We are living amidst unprecedented challenges. However, there is an opportunity to discover untapped potential and reenergize a business – to echo Churchill, never let a good crisis go to waste. As amply demonstrated during the pandemic, digitalization is the best antidote for an economic crisis, enabling work from anywhere, enhancing operational efficiencies and customer experiences, and improving security. Digitalization is also helping companies reduce their toll on the environment by optimizing resources.

There is another reason why digitalization is critical. The world is going through the Fourth Industrial Revolution. Rapid upheavals in digital technology are transforming our lives and forcing businesses to adapt to fast-paced changes in consumer behaviours. Technology such as AI, AR and IoT are impacting every element of our lives and blurring the lines between the real and digital worlds. Lumbering businesses failing to pivot quickly and effectively risk losing market share to more agile competitors or dynamic startups. It is the same for economies. Countries that digitalize their economies can expect better opportunities and competitive advantages.

There is an urgency for Sri Lanka to catch the Fourth Industrial Revolution wave early by creating the necessary infrastructure for enterprises of all forms and sizes to pursue digital transformation strategies. Due to the size of the economy, scaling a business out of Sri Lanka has limits. However, with digital technology, we can enable world-class Sri Lankan companies to reach the pinnacle of global value chains where prospects are potentially limitless. At Dialog Enterprise, our mission is to fulfil a critical enabling function in that journey towards a digital economy.

What is your vision for improving digital inclusiveness and propelling Sri Lanka towards a digital economy?

For us at Dialog Enterprise, the driving purpose is to help SMEs to large corporates in that journey. We offer digital infrastructures that have been tried and tested internally. The services we offer on our platforms and data centres are customized to meet unique client needs, developed using best-of-breed solutions from international markets, delivering our brand promise of The Future Today. We firmly believe that Dialog Enterprise has a facilitatory role in enabling Sri Lanka’s digital transformation. Dialog has gone through multiple years of digital transformation, and we bring that experience and learning to guide our customers on their digital transformation journeys.

Dialog Enterprise has a complete portfolio of ICT services for a company to digitalize. From communications infrastructure enabling Working from Anywhere to the cloud infrastructure, we help companies develop and deploy their applications cost-effectively and accelerate their go-to-market through hyper-scalers like Google, AWS, Azure and our Dialog Cloud offerings. Internet of Things (IoT), analytics services, Dialog Digital Education solutions and our suite of cyber and physical security offerings complete our portfolio.

To highlight a few examples of what we are capable of, we provide solutions to companies to export perishables like strawberries, monitor temperatures and track every mile of the journey. We recently developed a fuel management system – initially deployed to manage our 4000 plus network towers – that is creating incredible cost savings for various enterprises using it, helping them navigate the fuel shortages with little impact on their operations.

Dialog has moved from a dashboard business to AI-ML-supported real-time analytics. We can now help companies build their AI-based real-time analytical programmes driving efficiencies and new revenue opportunities, transforming them into data-driven organizations. That is part of our advisory services to support businesses with the appropriate infrastructure, tooling and training to optimize their technology investments. Another element of our advisory is real-time business intelligence on critical factors such as product and customer behaviour. A successful digital transformation strategy should have a way to monitor how employees adopt and use these systems at work and how customers interact with the digital interfaces of a business, like a website or an app, and that is another service we provide.

How accessible is Dialog Enterprise to SMEs? How can any business, for that matter, avail themselves of your services?

We tell our employees that they have to assume the role of CIOs on behalf of our customers, particularly SMEs. Large corporations have the resources to operate an IT team and conduct their research – a necessity SMEs cannot afford. We are trying to bridge those gaps and empower SMEs with our tech solutions to scale their businesses and even discover new markets overseas by exceeding the expectations of their customers with winning products, services and experiences. We conduct various training sessions and webinars on our social media platforms covering a range of technology verticals, from security to digitalization, cloud, and more. Any business can access our services on our website https://business.dialog.lk/. Moreover, we have introduced a self-service marketplace where companies can download digitalization applications developed by Dialog and other third-party software companies. We are committed to democratizing the adoption of digital technology so users can reach out to us for any assistance they require.