Gokongwei Group catapults Philippines into the digital future with cloud

 |   Microsoft Philippines Communications Team

Digital transformation ambitions achieved by migration to cloud, enabled by industry partnerships with ePLDT, Infosys and Microsoft

14 February 2022 Manila, Philippines – The Gokongwei Group is one of the largest and more diversified Filipino conglomerates with operations across Southeast Asia. Composed of JG Summit Holdings, Robinsons Retail Holdings and Summit Media, the organisation is a crucial contributor to the Philippine economy with diversified businesses that include Airlines, Consumer and Consumer-Packaged Goods (CPG), Financial Services, Manufacturing, Petrochemicals, Real Estate, Retail and Media.

They recognized the incredible value and impact cloud computing would have on their businesses, improving their agility, increasing the efficiency of their business processes, building trust, reliability and empowering them to innovate for the future. Their digital transformation journey started in 2018, with a holistic data center modernization project that saw JG Summit Holdings Inc. migrating their main data center in the Philippines to the cloud. In 2019, they announced a strategic partnership with Infosys and Microsoft as part of their digital transformation journey.

“The Gokongwei Group has been a part of the Philippines’ history since our founding in 1957. We’ve served our community for many years, and we endeavour to continue doing so well into the future,” said Carlos G. Santos, Chief Information Office of JG Summit Holdings Inc. “Our vison and purpose have steadfastly remained – an unrelenting commitment to provide our customers with better choices, creating shared success with our stakeholders. We knew that achieving that requires an entrepreneurial mindset, and our ambition needed to be on a foundation of integrity. Which is why when it came to digitalizing the organization, across all companies, we knew it needed to be Microsoft, the industry’s most trusted and comprehensive cloud offering.”

When the pandemic hit, the Gokongwei Group was ahead of the curve. Through easy and secure collaboration powered by Microsoft 365, their hybrid workforce was able to ensure business continuity where needed, stay focused on their customer needs, and provided improved service – all while staying safe.

Research by The Economist shares that 72% of business decision makers across private and public sectors reported an acceleration of their industry’s pace of transformation during the pandemic.

Digital transformation, once an imperative to gain a competition edge, became a key to business resilience and transformation. By migrating to Azure, The Gokongwei Group were able to pivot to become a digital company, future proofing their business groups.

To accomplish their vision, the Gokongwei Group sought technology partners: ePLDT, Infosys and Microsoft to help them achieve their greater digital transformation ambition. They completed their migration  at the end of 2021.

Transformation by the numbers

99%
Systems migrated to
digital platforms
50-60%
Improvement in system
response time
99.9%
Availability at service
cluster level
30-40%
Infrastructure costs savings by moving to Microsoft Azure
65%
Reduction in data center
carbon footprint
30 – 40%
Increase in productivity
expected with AI

ePLDT, the ICT arm of PLDT Enterprise provided the colocation services at its VITRO Data Center, which enables the Gokongwei Group to host their critical IT infrastructure in a world-class data center facility.

“We are thrilled to be a strategic partner in the Gokongwei Group’s drive of constantly innovating its operations to answer the growing and changing demands of the market. On behalf of PLDT Enterprise, we thank the Gokongwei Group for trusting us to be part of their end-to-end digital transformation journey through our VITRO Data Center colocation services. We express our utmost commitment to continuously invest in world-class infrastructure and industry-leading expertise to serve their evolving needs,” said Jojo Gendrano, FVP & Head of PLDT and Smart Enterprise.

Infosys, a global leader in next-generation digital services and consulting, was crucial in both formulating and executing the Gokongwei Group’s transformation strategy. This involved migrating various data centers across multiple business units into a single unified Microsoft Azure-based platform and upgrading the group’s SAP ERP system to SAP S/4 HANA.

“We are delighted to collaborate with the Gokongwei Group in their digital transformation journey. Our expertise in digital technologies backed by decades of experience in navigating the business landscape will definitely bring in a lot of synergy, that will help them realize their vision of long-term digital transformation. We are proud to help the Gokongwei Group enhance their business journey as they seek to positively impact more consumers across the Asia-Pacific region in the future,” said, Karmesh Vaswani, Executive Vice President & Global Head Consumer, Retail & Logistics, Infosys.

The Gokongwei Group is one of only a few organizations in the market to do this and the biggest migration of its kind to the cloud of any Philippine-based company.

“The Gokongwei Group and their industry-defining transformation has elevated them into an enterprise of tomorrow, which is crucial as the digital and traditional economy continue to be on a growth trajectory,” said Sandy Gupta, Vice President of Sales, Marketing and Operations, Microsoft Asia Pacific. “Together, Gokongwei Group and Microsoft are empowering every person and every organization in the Philippines, through innovation and digital transformation to build an inclusive, economic society. Our customers can trust that we will never compete against them. We’re not a search company; we’re not a retailer. We are an enterprise technology company.”

Microsoft Azure is the foundation of Microsoft’s intelligent cloud and intelligent edge strategy, providing startups to enterprises the cloud services, developer tools, scale and security needed – no matter where they are at in their cloud journey. More than 95 percent of the Fortune 500 choose Azure.

Moving forward, the Gokongwei Group is working to use artificial intelligence to drive monitoring and operations control which can increase productivity for the company in the coming years. With their drive to innovate, the company is a step closer to its goal of becoming the first truly digital conglomerate in the Philippines. 

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About Gokongwei Group
The Gokongwei Group is one of the largest and more diversified Filipino conglomerates. It is composed of JG Summit Holdings Inc. which has business interests in food manufacturing (Universal Robina Corporation), air transportation (Cebu Pacific), real estate and property development (Robinsons Land), banking (Robinsons Bank), and petrochemicals (JG Summit Petrochemicals Group); and Robinsons Retail Holdings Inc. (RRHI), its retail affiliate which is comprised of supermarket, department store, and specialty retail brand operations; and the Summit Media Group.

About ePLDT
ePLDT, Inc., the ICT arm of PLDT Enterprise, is the industry-leading enabler of digital business solutions in the Philippines. Since its inception at the turn of the millennium, ePLDT has led the industry in the development of end-to-end technologies for enterprises across the country and the Asia Pacific region.

About Infosys
Infosys is a global leader in next-generation digital services and consulting. We enable clients in 45 countries to navigate their digital transformation. With over three decades of experience in managing the systems and workings of global enterprises, we expertly steer our clients through their digital journey. We do it by enabling the enterprise with an AI-powered core that helps prioritize the execution of change. We also empower the business with agile digital at scale to deliver unprecedented levels of performance and customer delight. Our always-on learning agenda drives their continuous improvement through building and transferring digital skills, expertise, and ideas from our innovation ecosystem.

About Microsoft
Microsoft (Nasdaq “MSFT” @microsoft) enables digital transformation for the era of an intelligent cloud and an intelligent edge. Its mission is to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more.

 

Media contacts:

JG Summit Inc. ePLDT Infosys Microsoft
Red R. Samar
Manager, Corporate Communications
JG Summit Holdings, Inc.
[email protected] 
Eric Ho
Media Relations
Grey Philippines
[email protected] 
[email protected]

 

Joshua Aquino
Communications Manager
Microsoft Philippines
[email protected]