OK Allan really great to talk to you, maybe just a little bit before we start.
Can you just introduce a little bit about yourself and what you do at AirAsia?
My name is Allan Phang.
I'm from AirAsia People and Culture,
and currently handling employee engagement and internal branding
also known as All Stars engagement. So, my role is to ensure all our twenty four thousand
employees are on the same page when we launch a campaign and communicate a
message. That's my role. And so it happened that ESports is something that we just started
to do it and I'm driving it in AirAsia. OK, great Allan and we will
talk about ESports in more detail a little bit later, can you tell me just
what AirAsia All-stars are? Because I don't think all of my readers or viewers
know about it. What is the concept of All-stars?
Ah, OK. So, back then when we first started, back in 2001 Tony Fernandes our
group CEO and co-founder wanted AirAsia, our employees not to be called a staff or
employees just like any normal company. He wanted them to be known as All Stars.
So he wants everyone to be like a star.
And encourages all our AirAsia staff just to be known as All-stars
and wants us to fly high. There is the reason for All Stars and not employee or staff.
I understand. Now that you mentioned your CEO Tony Fernandes, one of the things
that I really wanted to talk about today is basically digital transformation.
Because I at Diggintravel I'm really interested in all digital about
airlines. He said that he wants AirAsia to become digital airline. How do
you see this transformation and your role as people and culture to fit in this transformation?
Number one is that, just an example in US a company as big
as Amazon, a very e-commerce company, they're now buying planes for their
business,to operate their e-commerce. So, Tony Fernandes says we are doing the
reverse engineering, we are doing the opposite. We have the planes, we have over 200
planes and up to 500 planes in order and now we just need to reverse engineer and
come up with a good system and we can connect the e-commerce portion of it
without planes and ready half of the cargo and belly space. And this is a big
impact, a big impact. And right now we're going through a
transformation where by all the sister companies like Redbox which is a
cargo division and also AirAsia cargo. As well as digital companies like
and Vidi which is like, is like a user-generated content as well and like an
online travel agent. So you can book your travel itineraries or special torus after
booking your flight. For my role, you see that we introduced Workplace by Facebook.
It looks like Facebook but its for a workplace. And it's
for all our 24,000 employees to communicate with each other in the group.
We used Google+ but it was not working so well for us, so instead we changed to Workplace.
Have you had a Workplace before? Yeah, I was just reading basically, good that you
mentioned it - Workplace, one of the things your CEO said that he won't to use
email anymore because it's old-fashioned. That he'll just use Workplace Facebook.
Is this true?
Yes, it's true. He talked about to minimise (email) as much as possible where we can,
and put all important announcements or major announcements on the Workplace instead of
sending massive tons of email, so we are going through that transformation as well. To use
more Workplace and open more groups, collaborative project groups and even we
are using bots right now for our operations, we are in beta testing and
also trying out various applications that can be used together in the Workplace.
That's just one of it, the other one is also for Workday. Have you
heard of Workday? No, not heard about that one.
OK, Workday is like a HR system solution and it's used by a lot of big
companies in the world, like Netflix, like Grab and even by Walmart. Because we're a very
big company, grew from 200 staff to 24,000 staff now, and there's a lot of people.
And right now we're using our legacy system. This is a very old, 15 years old so it's
time to change and using Workday is something very user-friendly as well.
The user interface is great and it makes our company go paperless, we spend less paper for approvals
and passing this piece of paper to five different layers of management or HoD.
So we're eliminating that process and putting it all digital and approvals
can be done at the click of a button, instead of chop and sign.
You can even do use a mobile app to do it.
You don't need to be in front of a laptop, you can even apply your leave.
I understand, one of the things that you said in one of your prior YouTube
interviews is that the vision for AirAsia is to be like a giant startup.
How difficult is to establish let's say startup culture in a company with 20,000
employees like you said, we're usually especially for airlines there is like
usually traditional hierarchical and silo organization?
So one of the ways is we employ all sorts of people, not just airline people,
because we truly believe in a group of dynamic people coming
together from different backgrounds, also of life, non-traditional
backgrounds, not just airlines. Of course we have airline people to handle the need for
airline business. But for like marketing or branding we hire from other industries
to give fresh and new ideas and perspective.
And we are always looking for ways to innovate
and we even set up, I believe we setup a company to look up for other startups in Silicon Valley.
No, we didn't setup, we work together with a company
to work together with other new startups in Silicon Valley
to ensure we are ahead of the curve and get the latest innovative platforms on board with us.
That's one of the ways we're looking at, and also, Tony is always
open to new ideas. We've been exploring things like blockchain
crypto currencies, Bitcoin, BIG CUN for the hedge accounting program. It's still
in exploration stages. Nothing is confirmed yet. But we're moving in this direction.
We don't want to miss the boat. So always exploring and never say no.
Was this also why you did last year this first ever AirAsia hackathon that you worked on?
What was that experience like?
It was interesting because usually other companies, they do it locally, with local people from the same country.
But we flew in different people from around Asia to fly over to our headquarters, the RedQ in Kualalumpur.
They stayed overnight, and they had a limited amount of time
to come up with a great app that will be viable and meaningful in the market.
It was interesting to know that there are a lot of talented youngsters out there, who are very gifted
in coding especially and we managed to see that happen
throughout the hackathon. And we were very excited about it and that part allowed
to find talent who have different, non-traditional methods.
One of the things that you mentioned before that was very interesting to me
is like you want to be more like an e-commerce company like an Amazon.
One of the things that let's say I cover and write about is also ancillary revenue and this
digital merchandising. I saw in your bio that you worked before in your early
days in AirAsia also in ancillary. What was, what do you think is the key
challenge of to become real this digital merchandiser, or
retailer or good at ancillary revenue?
I think it's all about having the
seamless experience, from the moment you purchase a product,
and being able to collect it, whether on board on the plane,
or after you leave the plane.
We're still working on it, we just launched a POS system, to capture data.
And also take customers order on the plane.
We're trying to go digital also in that sense.
It's a learning process because actually, we were a small startup from 200 employees and
now we're 24,000. And some of the systems are changing, so it's a learning process.
But the good part is, we have a flat organization structure, that helps a lot compared to
other legacy, the other legacy companies.
We have just like an executive manager and HoD (head of deparment) level. Only three layers.
In other companies you maybe have five or six or seven layers.
So, we try to keep it flat and even people like us, we can just go up to Tony
Fernandes desk and it's OK. You don't have to go like through three or four people.
Okay great. Now, let's talk about your passion, the ESports. Before we go
really into it it, can you just explain to some of the people out there who
still don't know what the ESports are?
ESports is what we used to think it is,
of a young kid playing in the basement, eating pizza and the mom is asking him to go get a real job.
It's an industry, by itself it's pretty massive. If you don't know what it is, better start googling about it.
So, it's like playing video games, but there are
millionaires who make money out of doing ESports. And it's no longer just a fad or
just game wasting time, is actually a career and there are many case studies out there that
prove that you can make a living, a career of ESports. And of course you have to work
hard for it. And the industry is booming out right now, not just in front of the
camera but also production, doing talent management, being a professional player.
Or being a show caster, or broadcaster, or even being an influencer.
There are many verticals in ESports.
It's really booming right now and the market projection is going to go up, year on year.
OK, so I mentioned before that AirAsia sponsors one of the Dota 2
teams who won of the major recent tournaments. How do you fit ESports
in this bigger AirAsia digital culture that you were talking about before?
What is your vision behind investing in ESports?
Interestingly enough you realise that the market order,
the next generation. They're no longer reading physical newspapers.
They hardly watch television and the screen. They're online on either the PC or laptop or
mobile device. So we realise that majority of these Millenials and Generation Z, the digital natives.
They also use pop-up blockers, pop-up ads. One of the most effective means to connect with them
is actually through ESports. Even traditional sports are now also looking
to ESports. Because they're seeing the dropping for traditional sports, such as
even American football, baseball and basketball. So yeah, there's a paradigm
shift there. So the market has to catch up, to be relevant.
And we at AirAsia we look into innovative ways to connect with our customers as well as
potential employees. And by raising ESports, there's three verticals for us.
The first vertical is employee engagement.
So our current employees, our All Stars they
can play with each other across the group. We don't have to physically meetup like other
sports, like football, or badminton or soccer. We can actually play online. From the comort of
our home. That's the first one - employee engagement.
Second one is employer branding. If you do ESports in your company and you promote it internally,
it looks good. People want to join a company where cool things are happening.
Imagine today we have a chess club. Doesn't resonate so well, yeah?
Maybe fifty years ago.
So, we need to keep up with the times.
Don't be a Nokia mobile.
We need to be digital, and ESports is a sport of the digital generation.
So whether you like it or not, it's already happening. So that's
why we decided to take a calculated risk and get involved. Because we realise
there is a potential. Of course we started small and we wanted to come to market.
That's why we sponsored Mineski (ESports team) first.
And recently we just acquired a team, called team Saiyan which we will be re-branded as AirAsia Saiyan.
It's a mobile ESports team, and we'll be expanding it in future as well.
And who knows maybe our employees if they're good enough, they can also join the team.
To me as a digital marketeer, what you said is a really interesting and great concept.
Because basically you want to be where your customers are. And like you said
with the pop-up blocker with the physical now all the new generations are
in the digital space and ESport is one of the booming digital environments and
spaces. Did you have any feedback already? From let's say your marketing team about
awareness or the reach that you have through this new platform?
Sorry your first question again?
Did you get any feedback from your marketing
team how this new, how reaching to new consumers work with eSports?
They're very excited, I'm actually having a meeting next week with them.
To discuss where we are on this.
To see how we can integrate our verticals across the group with ESports. And also
you add value to the ESports community by maybe giving our promo codes or
special incentives to fly to certain destinations for ESports events.
Like ESports tourism in future.
And I think an airline, I believe thats how a company like AirAsia,
can add value to the community.
And right now, we're just doing on our side, like baby steps.
But moving forward we'll be able to add value to those who are really passionate about the team.
And we are really aggressive in connecting with the local community.
For example in Malysia, reaching out to them.
Having a lot of coffee chats,
understand what is the community and market like.
And moving forward, we also scale it up to other
different countries that we operate in. Such as Philippines, Indonesia, Thailand, India,
Japan and China. There's a big opportunity there, to scale up.
Since we operate across the region of Asia.
And it's one of the great way to be connecting people by our airline.
OK, I think it's really a great innovation and great concept. So not to
lose too much of your time anymore, one of the things as a digital enthusiast
and I saw you recently subscribed to Diggintravel newsletter as well.
What are the digital concepts that you're the most interested,
or you would like to hear more about in the future?
Keep up the good work, I receive your weekly newsletter, right?
Yeah, good.
I love it, it's very personalised.
It sounds like it's coming from you direct.
It is.
The way how you re-word your sentences, very personalised.
I feel connected, compared to other type of vendor emails.
And I look forward to hearing more what other airlines are doing in this space.
But, you only don't only cover airline? You have non airline as well?
Yeah mostly we focus, on let's say digital for airlines, and general travel.
But mostly airlines. What we started now, and this interview is also part of it,
are Digital Talks. Where we'll just talk with digital leaders.
People from different (travel) companies, we talked with person from Booking.com.
And now it will also be from other airlines, about various digital topics.
OK Allan, thank you very much for your time.
It was really great interview, I think a lot of new insights.
And we'll be in touch!
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