SCG Sets Course to Become an AI-First Organization

Every 10 years, a technology emerges that changes the world. AI took just over a year to achieve mass adoption. Many think AI will disrupt everything humans do. Even SCG, a 112-year-old organization with innovation in its DNA and a focus on innovation, has had to rouse itself to make the organization aware but not alarmed, and is working to make SCG an AI-first organization.

SCG is prioritizing this and developing a medium-term AI plan as one of its main issues. SCG knows that if it doesn’t prepare adequately, there will certainly be problems in the future.

Recently, The Story Thailand had the opportunity to observe SCG’s employee preparation through the “AI Day: Game Changer of the Decade” event held at the headquarters, with 1,000 SCG people participating both online and offline. The event included a full-day seminar and showcased AI works from various SCG departments for employees to experience and recognize the organization’s progress and modernity.

The AI Day event is the starting point of a series of activities SCG has planned. It’s an event to open up the topic, allowing everyone to understand, feel, and experience AI without fear, but daring to jump in and experiment. The organization assures that it will support various aspects including policies, budgets, technology, and other facilities. SCG recognizes that what it has had over others all along is “quality people”. If these quality people can be empowered by AI, SCG believes it can survive for another 100 years.

In the next 3 years, SCG will be seen as a tiger with wings. SCG is enhancing AI capabilities in its personnel at all 3 levels, from executives to super users and mass users. It will create a foundation, inspire, and prepare tools for use because AI isn’t replacing people, but people need to know how to use AI.

Thammasak Sethaudom, President and CEO of SCG

Thammasak Sethaudom, President and CEO of SCG, said that in the past, SCG talked about Decarbonization, Green Growth, Inclusive Green Growth because SCG is an industrialist. However, looking around the world, there’s another very important “D” that will change the world – Digitalization, especially AI. It’s not just Decarbonization that’s impacting; it’s the broader picture of doing business, but there’s also Digitalization, especially AI. Therefore, for SCG, AI is important.

“I’ve been randomly experimenting and testing AI for a while to see how powerful it is and how much it will change the way we work. From attending the World Economic Forum, I found that AI is a main topic that world leaders are discussing, both in terms of changing work methods, changing the business competition landscape, and the potential dangers.”

Thammasak gave an example of trade and sales, especially Customer Service and Call Centers that want to upsell. The problem with using Call Centers alone is that they can’t scale because they require people. If AI is used, it can greatly increase work efficiency. Conversely, if AI is not used, it will not only not increase efficiency but will reduce the business’s competitiveness.

“Don’t be afraid of AI, but be afraid of people who know how to use AI. Because people who know how to use AI will work much more efficiently than those who don’t. AI will change every job, from trade and sales to factory production, including administrative work.”

SCG’s policy towards AI is that SCG recognizes that AI will increase capabilities, helping to do the same things better and helping to open up new business models. It helps create new ways of doing business that will create new markets and new businesses for SCG in the future.

The best way to learn is to experiment, use, and then exchange experiences. It doesn’t have to be successful; failures can be shared too. This is the policy that SCG wants to support to create new capabilities, new opportunities, new business models, and new businesses.

“I want to use the startup process more – dare to think, dare to try, try small. If it works, tell us what resources you need more of. Try new things. The chances of success are small, but every time we get a failed project, that’s learning. Don’t worry. The path to AI-enabled Business isn’t paved with rose petals, but it will be a path of ups and downs, problems, learning, exchanging, adjusting. The faster we adjust, the greater the chance of success. But the more we don’t adjust, the more we’ll be stuck in the mud.”

SCG knows AI is important. The company’s policy is to be ready to support, promote learning, and experiment with creating and using AI at small scales. There’s a team looking at the organization’s infrastructure system, a team overseeing investments, and opportunities for every SCG employee to spark ideas about using AI. This opens up possibilities for enhancing the potential of SCG’s quality people, opens opportunities for new business models, and includes opportunities for new SCG businesses in the future.

“When organizing AI Day, we thought no more than 400 people would attend, and we thought the use cases might not be prominent. But 1,000 people actually came both online and offline, showing that SCG people are very alert.”

Each SCG BU Prepares to Implement AI

Surasak Ammawarttana, Technology and Digital Platform Director of SCGP, said that SCG people are determined to adapt and bring AI and new technologies into their work to make it more convenient and efficient, to deliver products to customers quickly and accurately.

SCG has been using AI for about 1-2 years, starting from the manufacturing side, whether in production, maintenance, and procurement management. For example, in maintenance, they’ve done KM (Knowledge Management) by inputting data. Previously, this relied on the skills of skilled workers with experience to write as KM, which wasn’t read when actually used. But now they input data and use ChatGPT as a maintenance technician assistant by inputting data and helping with analysis including recommending maintenance methods from the KM database accumulated over many years. Now they’re expanding to sales forecasting, which uses a lot of data, allowing them to manage production, manage raw materials, and do lean factory.

However, there are still many gaps in using AI effectively. The central unit is trying to find and develop AI tool sets for employees to use. But in SCG’s business groups, there are differences, with changes in business models, work processes, and new businesses emerging. For example, SCGP ranges from upstream pulp to packaging and healthcare, making it difficult to find a single platform or tool set that can answer the work needs of all SCG businesses.

To use AI effectively in business organizations, you need to start with Data Management to create a single data source for use. This will make work more efficient, making use of existing data beneficial, and must upskill people to have the ability to use data for analysis to increase work efficiency and to better answer customer needs. For example, Customer Support can be used to respond to customers quickly, accurately, and more precisely, which has already begun to be used in CRM.

Joshua Wasvit Pas, Chief Operating Officer — Distribution and Retail, SCG, said that in Distribution and Retail, AI is used in order taking to increase speed and accuracy, adjusting according to customer needs. The introduction of AI to help in the process of receiving and completing orders has just begun.

SCG has 5 Taskforce groups: Production, Human Resources, Research and Development, Legal, and Sales/Marketing and Customer Support, looking at customer experience.

The Sales/Marketing and Customer Support department will look at customer experience, which must look at both products, customers, and sales channels (touch points) where customers can buy products. The challenge is how to make it convenient for customers, fast, and provide accurate information.

The factory side might do optimization, which might be more machine learning and has been doing it for longer. But the Sales/Marketing and Customer Support side has just started doing bots to support different customer groups including B2B, B2C, and B2B2C. The B2C bot focuses on Home Online, while the B2B bot focuses on dealers and sub-dealers. The goal is to connect them and use fewer people, so people can focus on the right things and reduce the chance of losing customers from the buying journey. Because the cement and construction products business, or CBM, is quite large, with many similar products, if there’s KM that allows customers to use bots efficiently, it will reduce the chance of losing customers and increase the chance of closing sales more than before.

“From a survey of all SCG employees, only 17% have never used AI, which is very little,” Joshua told SCG employees.

AI is a set of tools. Each person needs to explore and look in their own business to see what gaps there are that can increase efficiency by using AI/ML. Then look at what AI tools to use. While wanting everyone to use ChatGPT or other AI in daily life to practice being good enough to do prompts effectively, be careful about using organizational data in prompts.

“I want you to see AI as a set of tools. Let each department look at what problems they want to solve, then look at the tools, what tools to use and how.”

Sanya Jindaprasert, Enterprise Digital Director, SCGC, said that AI is something that has been around for a long time and SCG has been using it in business all along. But what’s different and is an issue now is that SCG focuses on making SCG people better. There will be Everyday AI, which is the Airy project that will make SCG people better, know how AI is useful, and bring AI into their own work processes.

Next, SCG focuses on if AI is introduced, how to change business models or adjust various work methods. Because it’s impossible to introduce new technology and still work in the old way.

“We focus on these two things in parallel. We need to make our people better, while at the same time looking for ways to change work methods to elevate efficiency. We believe AI can help with both of these things, but it has to start with people.”

Everyone needs to learn AI. Now, 5,000 SCGC employees have learned AI Awareness basics and passed 100%. Everyone has to group in groups of 3 people, think of a 3-month learning project. 99% or about 4,900 people registered, resulting in about 2,700 projects, some difficult, some easy. But everyone learns, whether the project succeeds or fails, it doesn’t matter. Let everyone start from simple things, learn, and understand.

“Start with work you don’t like, boring work, work you think is a waste of effort. Think of this work first, then use AI to help.”

AI will do 2 things: Automation and Augmentation. For Automation, AI will make that work process faster. For Augmentation, AI will make employees move from junior to senior and from senior to expert faster.

Data is the foundation of doing AI. How to make employees know data better, while there’s still data. What data should and can be used, what data is confidential to the organization and what data can be used with public AI, and use with which AI tools.

Turn Crisis into Opportunity, Open to All Possibilities, Towards Becoming an Organization of Opportunity

SCG is another organization that has announced it will be an AI-First Organization. The AI Day activity is arming SCG employees to see the broad picture of AI, creating inspiration.

Metha Prapawekul, Director of SCG’s Central Personnel Office, as the host of the AI Day: Game Changer event, said that AI is not something you can say you’ll do and do immediately. It will have to change culture, mindset, various processes, and the capabilities of people and the organization. And importantly, it must have direction.

“AI is not new and is close at hand. However, the development of AI is getting faster and faster. I want you to see AI as an opportunity to help ourselves, our departments, our organization to work more efficiently. The important thing about using AI is asking questions and having data. If the data is ready, it will make it accurate and precise.”

The role of C-Level in applying AI in the organization to be effective starts from the CEO and CFO who must lay out the AI Strategy that must have a clear Transformation Map and Investment and Return plan. The COO will have to take over in making AI actually used in work processes (AI Integrated Process) under the Operation Governance Policy. The CTO will lead on technology matters whether it’s Data Platform, Data/AI Governance, doing AI/ML OPS, and AI Modelling.

Finally, the most important thing for effective application of AI in the organization is the CPO who will have to do the whole process from Build Awareness, Reskill/UpSkill, Redesign Job, and Build Culture.

Building culture must be done continuously. Organizing activities and ending doesn’t benefit, but must be done continuously. SCG has many programs to create learning and build the culture of an AI-First Organization for creating and enhancing skills for SCG people at all levels. It’s a learning path and increases AI knowledge skills by yourself through online learning programs.

At SCG, there’s a checklist for working and bringing AI into use in the organization, 6P:

1. Position – which jobs can apply AI first
2. Portfolio – opportunities in that job to apply AI
3. Productivity – apply and achieve maximum efficiency, start small, if it doesn’t work, stop
4. Protection – especially data leak
5. Product – our own product used has low risk of data leak
6. People – skills and abilities of people, must start from mindset

AI Day is the starting point where SCG wants every employee to open their mind, starting with themselves. Start by doing unfamiliar things, open your mind to try, and learn new jobs. If it works, it will help make things easier and more convenient. Then expand to the team, then expand to the whole organization. So that the whole organism will be empowered by AI and will ultimately lead SCG to become an AI-First Organization.

Published on: Aug 27, 2024

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