According to the study on digital maturity of Small and Medium Enterprises in Asia-Pacific by IDC - Cisco in 2020, the majority of Vietnamese enterprises' readiness for digital transformation was at the lowest level among the surveyed countries.

Specifically, Vietnamese businesses were at the Digital Indifferent level (companies focusing on cost-effectiveness, not yet investing in digital transformation; most processes are performed by humans, lack of digital skills).

This study said that due to the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic, Vietnamese businesses were more or less aware of the role of digital technology in their production and business activities. However, the level of awareness and application was very different between businesses, and between industries and regions.

The World Bank has recently published a report on Vietnam's digital transformation. To assess the current state of Vietnam's digital transformation, the World Bank used four pillars: Connect, Harness, Innovate, Protect (CHIP).

The World Bank compared Vietnam with 12 countries, divided in two groups. Group 1 includes middle-income economies that have a similar digital transformation status with Vietnam, such as South Africa, Ivory Coast, Thailand or the Philippines. The second group includes more developed countries like Singapore or South Korea.

According to Jacques Morissette, Chief Economist and Manager of the World Bank's Macroeconomics, Trade and Investment Program in Vietnam, in terms of Connect, Vietnam ranked relatively high because most Vietnamese people have access to digital tools and the Internet.

Jacques Morissette, Chief Economist and Manager of the World Bank's Macroeconomics, Trade and Investment Program in Vietnam.

For the pillar of Harness, which is what can be done with digital tools, Vietnam does not have a very good ranking and needs more digital skills and a regulatory framework to operate in the digital economy.

In terms of Innovation or adaptability to digital technologies, Vietnam has made some progress and ranks in the middle among the countries compared.

In the last pillar of Protect, Vietnam is relatively good in terms of cybersecurity, but for data access, data capabilities and interoperability of operators, Vietnam ranks relatively low compared to other countries.

Tran Huu Quyen, Chairman of Posts and Telecommunications Industry Technology Joint Stock Company (a member of VNPT Group), an expert on digital transformation of small and medium enterprises, said that digital transformation has become a trend that the whole society in recent years has expressed interest in.

This makes it easier for organizations and businesses to access reference information about digital transformation, as well as lessons learned about digital transformation at home and abroad, and on that basis, to build a roadmap and implement appropriate digital transformation plans.

Vietnam has good telecommunications and IT infrastructure. Recently, a number of domestic technology corporations and digital enterprises such as VNPT, FPT, Base.vn have been developing digital transformation platforms to help organizations and enterprises deploy digital transformation easily and quickly.

However, according to Quyen, organizations and businesses are also facing difficulties relating to digital technology capacity, governance capacity, financial capacity, and corporate culture, particularly the culture of sharing and a transparent working environment.

One of the decisive factors in the success of digital transformation in organizations and businesses is the will of leaders. Therefore, among the difficulties when implementing digital transformation in Vietnam, the human barrier is still the biggest one.

Trong Dat

Digital transformation and the future of Vietnamese enterprises

Digital transformation has a failure rate of 70% but without digital transformation, failure is 100%.