A national plan is scheduled to be issued this year so as to serve as a basis to engage state agencies, businesses and individuals in digital transformation – a leading factor in growth facilitation and digital economy development.

Illustrative image (Photo: VNA)

Minister of Information and Communications Nguyen Manh Hung said digital transformation and digital society will be a focus of Vietnam in decades to come. Digital transformation will open up great opportunities for the country as it will bring about comprehensive changes to organisations and businesses.

Truong Gia Binh, Chairman of the Vietnam Software and IT Services Association (VINASA), said digital transformation will generate several benefits like cutting down operating expenses, accessing more customers and making faster and more precise decisions, thereby improving businesses’ operational efficiency and organisations’ competitiveness.

According to him, in the IT era, the growth of businesses will largely depend on their digital transformation, without which they will lag behind and be eliminated sooner or later. That means amidst the Fourth Industrial Revolution (Industry 4.0), digital transformation not only helps firms integrate and develop but also is decisive to their survival.

Minister Hung said the core of the digital transformation process in Vietnam is IT enterprises, noting that major telecom firms will invest in basic IT projects and the Government will rent their services.

In the draft national digital transformation plan, Vietnam aims to emerge as one of the top four countries in ASEAN in terms of digitalisation by 2025 with 80,000 digital technology companies.

A 2018 survey of the IDC Group shows that 90 percent of the companies interviewed had carried out digital transformation at different stages, from study to implementation. More than 30 percent of their leaders considered digital transformation as a matter of business survival.

As one of the leading IT groups in Vietnam, the FPT has taken the lead in digital transformation, its representative said, noting that it has provided solutions for the Government to develop an e-cabinet and a digital economy and participated in building smart cities, transport, health care and education.

To help prepare infrastructure for national digital transformation, the CMC Corporation recently debuted an open infrastructure ecosystem named C.OPE2N to provide enterprises and organisations with a platform for connecting with one another and sharing data in the digital environment.

The CMC said in Industry 4.0, Vietnam needs more open infrastructure ecosystems like C.OPE2N to create digital hubs for organisations and enterprises.

Apart from IT firms, companies in many other fields such as Viettel, Vietcombank, VP Bank and EVN have also begun their digital transformation efforts.

This month, the Vietnam ICT Summit 2019 will be organised by VINASA to give experts and businesses an occasion to discuss and share experience in this work.