Here’s how organisations in Asia Pacific are using various technologies to achieve stability in a volatile business environment
NEC helps SingHealth Tower and OCH offer a seamless visitor experience
Photo: NEC Asia Pacific
Visitors to SingHealth Tower and Outram Community Hospital (OCH) can now expect a more seamless visitor experience with the deployment of NEC Asia Pacific’s biometric authentication system.
The system enables visitors to pre-register remotely through a mobile site before their arrival and speedily enter through a security gantry equipped with facial recognition capabilities upon arrival at the hospital.
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The registration process starts with visitors verifying their identity using Singpass Face Verification. Visitors will then take a photograph stored in SingHealth’s facial recognition software for duration of the patient’s admission to complete the online registration.
On the day of the visit, cameras at the gantry will detect the visitor’s face and verify it against the pre-enrolled information before allowing them access. This system is also fitted with temperature detection capabilities to ensure that only physically healthy visitors can enter the wards.
Before this deployment, visitors had to register manually with their physical identity cards or digital identification card in the Singpass app at an on-site kiosk or registration counter. This pilot programme aims to streamline these processes by digitalising them and helps free up resources (such as staffing, consumables like papers and the number of kiosks required to facilitate registrations, for example) so that OCH can redeploy staff to areas that require more attention.
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However, the existing registration methods will remain available for visitors who prefer to register manually.
EtonHouse International to shape the future of education with Tencent Cloud
Photo: Bloomberg
Singapore-based EtonHouse International Education Group will use Tencent Cloud Conference (TCC) to gather its global staff members in a virtual open house.
The virtual gathering is a step towards the daily usage of TCC for EtonHouse’s purposes. For example, EtonHouse will use TCC to create and manage the schools’ official website to provide news and updates for students, parents, the general public and the media.
Additionally, TCC will enable EtonHouse to help schools create and manage online courses and virtual classrooms in one secure cloud-based system. It will also allow memorable gatherings, such as graduations and commencements, to be held as hybrid events with live and pre-recorded ceremonies for extended communities.
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The series of collaborations will culminate with developing a digital campus, which leverages Tencent Cloud’s solutions to build a comprehensive educational system for student development – including academic performance analysis, personalised study plan, health report, capability evaluation and growth plan. The digital campus will also utilise virtual and augmented technologies and educational games to give students an immersive learning experience.
“Tencent Cloud provides a comprehensive one-stop solution for reliable performance across borders and gives us access to high-quality and secure technologies for more progress and innovation. We look forward to making more significant breakthroughs in the future, hand-in-hand with Tencent Cloud,” says John Ang, chief technology officer of EtonHouse International Education Group.
Embed changes the game with the STATS platform
Photo: Bloomberg
Embed — a cashless business management systems and solutions provider — has developed a data visualisation platform on Amazon Web Services (AWS) for family entertainment centres (FECs) like arcades, amusement centres, and theme parks.
Called STATS, the insights platform makes it easier for FECs to understand venue operations and their guests’ behaviour to improve the guest experience.
With Amazon Redshift, Embed prepares venue data — including gaming patterns and customer preferences — to generate business insights on game locations within venues and predict popular gaming periods on STATS.
It also uses Amazon Kinesis Data Streams to stream massive datasets, including game performance figures and projected earnings, in near real-time into STATS.
Embed creates user-friendly, customisable and interactive visual dashboards using Amazon QuickSight to make it easier to understand a vast array of venue data.
Meanwhile, Amazon CloudFront allows operators to access their STATS insights platform on the Internet efficiently.
Embed developed STATS in just 10 weeks with AWS Professional Services supporting the designing, developing, testing, and producing processes. Embed will sell STATS in the customer-preferred pay-as-you-go business model, better serving a growing customer base with lower infrastructure costs, faster software delivery times, and three subscription tier options tailored to varied customer needs and sizes.
“With the launch of STATS on AWS, our customers gain access to our arcade insights platform, giving them insights they didn’t previously have, like guest behaviour, to make visits more enjoyable. By crunching the data so our customers don’t have to, we help them focus on making their venues operate better,” says Embed CEO Renee Welsh.
Meralco harnesses the power of data to drive business success with Cloudera
Photo: Unsplash
The Manila Electric Company (Meralco) has developed a flagship analytics platform with Cloudera’s help to deliver more value to its customers.
The Meralco Data Platform (MDP) has helped improve the turnaround time for the provision of electricity services while raising customer satisfaction levels through analysis of customer concerns and inquiries.
It allows Meralco to implement predictive analytics for improved identification of secondary lines for rehabilitation and overloaded distribution transformers. These predictive models help line offices conduct targeted field verification and facility correction, preventing potential outages to almost 200,000 customers in 2021.
With Cloudera’s support, Meralco can eliminate data silos within the organisation. This provides Meralco with complete visibility of the relevant data they can leverage to know more about its customers’ needs and behaviours, which will uncover more opportunities to improve the customer experience at every touchpoint, improve asset and grid management, and increase operational efficiency.
Meralco has also leveraged MDP to launch M-Wing — a single-source management dashboard accessible online via mobile devices — to report key performance indicators. The business performance reports are presented internally to Meralco and the board and externally to investors and the media.
“By unlocking the value of information to insights and harnessing the connected intelligence across Meralco, we bring to light where and how we can drive exceptional service to our customers, streamline our internal operations and create new opportunities for innovation — fully recognising the power of data as an enabler to business growth,” says Rocky D Bacani, Meralco first vice president and head of information, communication, technology and transformation.
