Forum: Digitalisation solutions must serve all, not just the service providers
JAN 6, 2023
Digitalisation can help a nation greatly in terms of productivity if applied correctly.
However, such an effort should not be left entirely to the service providers to design and grow without considering the nation’s total productivity.
Banks and stock exchanges, among others, used to send customers paper monthly statements – a full-push method. We could file the statements, or a busy executive could get an assistant to file them.
Post-digitalisation, some of these service providers adopt a time-limited, half-push half-pull method.
They send an SMS to customers to alert them that the statements are ready to be downloaded within a certain time period.
This can make things difficult for someone who is busy and has to perform many such tasks on a regular basis, especially if different service providers have their own unique delivery systems.
Digitalisation should require service providers to think of a full productivity goal, not just one that benefits only themselves.
Engineering teaches us to innovate by manipulating the combination of man, machine and method.
Here, shouldn’t the government machinery step in and come up with one standard method of digital statement delivery that the market would embrace, and which service providers must follow?
One simple suggestion is to require service providers to have no time limits on when statements can be downloaded, fulfilling a full-push responsibility.
After all, providing a small cloud storage space for clients should be seen as good customer service.
Ong Yong Hwee