Wilmar’s Information Technology (IT) team continued to be confronted with a host of Covid-19 related challenges, paradigm shifts to adapt to new norms and heightened cybersecurity risks in 2021. Whilst the pandemic has disrupted many aspects of the Group’s operations, it has also accelerated technology adoption and paved the way for more innovation and digital transformation that have enabled us to remain competitive.
SCALING BUSINESS PARTNERSHIPS TO ACCELERATE GLOBAL GROWTH
Leveraging the success achieved in partnering business units to transform business models and drive growth in China, we continue to build partnerships globally through proactive and regular engagements with business teams to achieve digital business maturity. This close engagement aligns priorities, provides governance, drives synergies to increase our business agility and creates sustainable business value through faster delivery of new and innovative business capabilities.
EXPANDING DIGITALISATION IN OUR OPERATIONS
We are deepening our digitalisation effort across all business functions from sales and marketing, sourcing, supply chain planning, production, logistics to finance, amongst other corporate functions. Various innovative business-technology platforms and analytics solutions are being developed to enable new business models and capabilities, enhance operational efficiency and reduce business risks. Successful digitalisation expansion requires strong IT governance and delivery discipline. Our IT delivery teams continue to adopt and refine development, security and operations (DevSecOps) and cloud infrastructure to optimise our delivery governance, efficiency and speed.
MODERNISING SUSTAINABLE PRACTICES
We are also exploring innovative digital solutions to modernise and support our Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) practices. To ensure responsible sourcing and traceability through our supply chain, we leverage insights obtained through satellite technologies, drones and geolocation solutions to monitor our plantation activities. We are adopting Artificial Intelligence (AI)/Machine Learning (ML) and Internet of Things (IOT) solutions to monitor our factory operations and ensure workers’ health and safety. The use of digital workspace collaboration and communication tools as well as the adoption of digital signatures will continue post-pandemic and reduce our carbon footprint further. We are also committed to proper disposal and recycling of e-waste.
ELEVATING DIGITAL SKILLSETS OF OUR PEOPLE
Accelerated digital transformation has allowed us to swiftly tackle business challenges brought about by the pandemic. As we embrace our digital workplace today, our people are upskilled to nimbly pivot along these changes and leverage digital opportunities in their day-to-day work to continuously improve productivity and performance. In 2021, training for a range of topics such as robotic process automation, data visualisation best practices and cloud technologies were conducted to elevate our people’s digital skills. This digital readiness is strengthened with rigorous IT security awareness programmes to build a resilient, confident and future-ready global team.
FORGING AND SUSTAINING A STRONG CYBERSECURITY FRONTIER
As our digital transformation progresses, we work in tandem to enhance the overall security posture. Utilising an industry-leading cybersecurity framework, we are moving towards a security-first mindset. Embedding security controls into business and IT processes help to leverage the full-strength of human firewall to make cybersecurity programmes sustainable. We undertake constant review of security controls to ensure no duplicate or overlaying controls and replace ineffective and/or expensive controls to increase operational efficacy while reducing overall costs. Cybersecurity programmes are outcome-oriented and aligned to our cybersecurity architecture principles to ensure all cyber investments are sustainable.
