by Jan Michael Carpo, Reporter
Fresh from launching a new Local Zones location in Manila last month, which is said to give Filipino customers the ability to deploy applications closer to end users across the city quickly, Amazon Web Services (AWS) is now training its sights on another concern: addressing skills shortage and lack of training among the country’s financial services industry (FSI) workers.
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Speaking to the media during a virtual briefing, Emmanuel Pillai, Head of AWS Training and Certification for ASEAN, said his company sees an opportunity for the Philippines to be more competitive in the global digital economy by providing more training opportunities to meet the growing demand for a digitally-skilled workforce.
“However, to enable the digital transformation of both the public and private sectors in the Philippines and to better serve the Filipinos, there is this requirement for a digitally skilled workforce,” he said. “To fully realize the benefits of cloud adoption, the financial services industry now needs a highly-skilled workforce capable of leveraging cloud technology to its fullest potential in the digital age.”
Emmanuel then provided an overview of the AWS training and certification in the ASEAN before deep diving into a recent Gallup report about building a tech-savvy workforce, which explained how economies and companies can benefit economically with the implementation of training and certification initiatives aiming to upskill digital workers with modern technologies.
The Gallup study commissioned by AWS entitled “Asia Pacific Digital Skills Study: The Economic Benefits of a Tech-Savvy Workforce” reported that FSI workers in the ASEAN face challenges in receiving training. Such problems persist despite companies knowing that for the financial services industry to grow, and be successful, they must first build a tech-savvy workforce.
According to the study, advanced digital skills like cloud architecture and software development add an estimated US$6.3 trillion annually to the global Gross Domestic Product (GDP). Organizations with high levels of digital skill usage have reported generating annual revenues that are approximately 168% higher than companies that don’t use digital skills. Thanks to higher pay, increased job satisfaction, and a strong sense of job security, 98% of individuals who have taken digital skills training in the past say their careers have benefitted.
The report also revealed that more than four in five (85%) financial services workers in the region are very much interested in training in at least one digital skill like cybersecurity and AI, as well as in data analytics. To them, the biggest hurdle is lack of time (to train).
“This is where my team and I here at AWS come in, and work with our customers and partners, and individuals,” Emmanuel said. “I want to highlight how AWS is breaking down barriers to solve the current skills shortage in the ASEAN region. I am also pleased and excited to announce a new milestone — that AWS has trained over a hundred thousand individuals in the Philippines with cloud skills. We are just getting started as we are also seeing some great momentum in the ASEAN region.”
Last May, AWS also announced having reached a milestone of training 1 million individuals in the region since 2017.
Cloud now transforming the industry
According to Emmanuel, the cloud is now transforming the financial services industry.
“To keep up with this unprecedented pace of innovation, we have seen a heightened interest in digital skills training from FSI customers in the Philippines to leverage cloud-based technologies and for FSIs to be able to remove operational barriers and focus on creating cost efficiencies, frictionless customer experiences, especially in large rural populations that remain unbanked in many parts of the Philippines,” the AWS executive said.
He added that to do this, cloud adoption is necessary, followed by digital skills training. These tools can help companies find new ways of meeting the shifting needs of their customers, operate the business more efficiently, and stay ahead of the competition.
Leveraging cloud technology and customized training
So, how does AWS collaborate with its partners as well as FSI customers and enterprises?
“We do this through customized AWS trainings, or by leveraging our well-known programs like the AWS Skill Guild or the AWS Skill Builder, as well as programs like AWS re/Start. Our partner organizations are then able to leverage these programs, collaborate with us, and build a highly skilled workforce to support both their current and future technology roadmaps,” Emmanuel explained.
“By leveraging cloud technologies, FSI businesses and organizations can now remove operational barriers and just focus on creating cost efficiencies as well as frictionless customer experiences, particularly in rural areas that remain underbanked,” Emmanuel added before calling an AWS customer, Michelle Rubio, Chief Human Resource Officer of Union Bank of the Philippines (UBP), to share the company’s experiences with the cloud giant after joining the AWS Skill Guild program and putting up a Center of Cloud Excellence (CCOE).
“At UnionBank, we wanted to be faster and hyper-scale and hyper-personalize our product offerings to customers, so that’s why we adopted cloud,” Michelle began. “The technology you embrace has to be supplemented with new ways of working because roles are evolving in big and small ways. We prepared our people — including HR, audit, and risk — for that change by partnering with AWS to create a learner’s guild program called ULAP. This is to ensure that our employees will be equipped with in-demand cloud skills to support our digital transformation.”
According to Michelle, when the bank first adopted AGILE and agile ways of working, they have already established centers of excellence for cutting-edge technologies to help drive transformational adoption. “We focused on capability-building, experimentation, and exploration within and beyond the banking industry in the country,” she adds. “When we choose a partner, there are actually many factors that we consider. For instance, after the technology has been installed, you’d also need some support, right? AWS has proven to be a great partner — they worked with us right from the onset; they were very customer-centric, were willing to listen, and adjust accordingly.”
When asked if there were any challenges that the bank faced during its digital transformation, Michelle had this to say: “As you know, digital adoption could be a blocker for many organizations because of the resistance to change or fear of change. Generally, employees see automation as a threat to their jobs, but at Union Bank, we think that we should all be digital at the core and not at the fringe. It means that the IT organization in Union Bank should not be the only group that engages in digitalization; rather, it should be the entire group, because organizations that are built to scale come from making everybody digital.”
“Organizations often place too much emphasis, I think, on advanced technologies and not enough on employees or people. What we are doing at Union Bank now is we continue to train our people so they can build innovative banking products so we, in turn, can continue to serve our customers well,” she ends. /JMC