CMA conference to address creating value through digitisation

Value creation is at the heart of every business. In the past, it involved achieving economies of scale and optimising repetitive tasks. 
Today’s digital environment is very different. Up-to-date information on customer needs and behaviour is at our fingertips, allowing new types of value chains, partnerships and ecosystems. Creativity in serving the needs of the customer using digital platforms is the way forward. At the National Management Accounting Conference 2017, hosted by CMA Sri Lanka, experts from a variety of industries demonstrate how digitization can create value for stakeholders.
Lanka IOC Managing Director Shyam Bohra will be the Chairman of the session and will provide an outline of how digitization has affected value creation. His experience in the petroleum sector spans 26 years in different departments of Indian Oil Corporation Ltd, a Fortune 500 company. This gives him a holistic overview of how and where value is created in a business. He will examine how going digital can contribute to streamlining processes and reducing cost, as well as what challenges lie in store for companies attempting digitization.
One of the challenges of the new reality is the requirement for digitally-competent professionals. Without this ability, survival in the business environment becomes difficult. However, it also creates great opportunity for entrepreneurs who can see past the present, to the potential. Rohan Jayaweera, the former representative of Google for Sri Lanka, has a deep understanding of the business ecosystem and the skills it increasingly requires as it evolves. He moved from Google into developing Antyra Solutions (Pvt) Ltd. to fill a gap in the Sri Lankan market. Now the COO of the only boutique and exclusive omni-channel digital experience management company in the country, his thoughts on “innovation and entrepreneurship development in a digital world” will create value for participants who wish to reimagine their professional lives.
Because their businesses now have global access to customers, entrepreneurs and businesspeople in a connected world also need the means for timely delivery of their products. With customers becoming more demanding and requiring greater speeds and more efficient, cost-effective supply chains, it is not surprising that facilitating transportation has undergone significant changes. China Merchant Holdings Information and Technology Co. General Manager Wu Shacong is at the forefront of this field, with 30 years of professional IT experience in an industry where delivery needs to meet the growing needs of today’s customers around the world. His leadership in developing a series of port application systems and implementing them in more than 20 terminals has placed him in a unique position to provide expertise to those with an interest in the digitization of ports, and logistics-related services.
Digitization is about more than just getting connected. It also involves seeing the patterns in the vast amounts of data generated by customers and businesses, and using those insights to deliver more effective services, in any industry. Data, used correctly enables better decisions, improving safety, security and efficiency, and thus creating value. John Keells Holdings Executive Vice President and Group CIO Ramesh Shanmuganathan,  will take the audience on this journey. They will discover how harnessing the crucial ability to leverage big data effectively can grow their business. A member of the Gartner Research Circle, he’s very involved in this rapidly developing area and is actively in steering IT to greater heights within the country through his roles in SLASSCOM, ICTA and the Presidential Task Force on IT. “Leveraging big data and insights for business outcomes in the digital era” is his contribution to the conference.