1819T2 Hong Kong/Reflection/Day4

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Day 4

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Reflections

Student Name	Cognizant	Klook	Cordex Intelligence
Ayesha Aziz ALKAFF	It was really insightful to learn more about their business process, that is Digital Business, Digital Operations, Digital Systems. I think they're extremely forward looking, embracing technology in the different industries.	I really enjoyed Klook's hospitality, how humble they were, and how warm they were to us. They hosted us extremely well and really brought across a really exciting idea and business model. The speakers were so nice and passionate about the travel industry. They have their reasons for doing things, such as focusing on a specific demographic or industry.	The speaker was incredibly friendly and open to all of us, they all seemed so Intelligent and passionate about AI and ML! They clearly invest in themselves and in the hardware of the company. An insight I gained was that they don't really focus on marketing efforts, but more on the word of mouth to get their reputation across. They build projects for fun and they bring value across to clients and get references through this. Very fun!
Bernadine LYE Su Hui	As a 25 year old company, it is unique how Cognizant continues to function as a startup, giving employees a certain sense of autonomy. “IT always has opportunities for you no matter crest or trough“. The digital solution approach helps to promote technology as an experience and depends on external products, which gives Cognizant an edge above traditional product-centric companies - to provide unique solutions. The company also sees the importance of localization for growth, which is crucial especially in the globalized world of today.	KLOOK entered the market at the right time and has strategic approaches for B2B and B2C to build relationships and study habits and trends. KLOOK seems to emphasize on building its community - which is a similar trend in technology startups these days.	It was nice to see the different products Cordex developed and how they have improved from their first product. VR, AR and MR has been in the market for quite awhile - Cordex plays a crucial consulting role to apply such technologies in diverse industries. To enter a market, the most important part is showcasing - consumers have to see it to believe it.
CHANG Jia Li	I didn’t know Cognizant has such a strong presence worldwide. I like how they prioritize their customers’ needs first and ensure their product work for their customers.	Despite all the strong competition, they are still doing well and improving their services by meeting their customers’ needs. One of the speakers mentioned about “Build, disrupt, repeat” which motivates me to work harder.	The founder gave a really good speech about his company, his role and his demonstration. He is vey knowledgeable and he knows his team very well which as a PM, it is not easy. He mentioned about the cost balancing in purchasing equipments and liasing with his clients which was impressive and smart.
Chantalle NG	We were privileged to visit a large cooperation such as Cognizant today. 3 speakers all gave different insights into the industry and it provided an idea of how the company is like, as well as working scene in Hong Kong.	The company I had most fun in. It is a young company that is creative and energetic. The employees work	It was interesting to see a small start-up with so many initiatives.
Cheryl KOH Zhi Ying	There’s no point in investing in technology that already exists; instead, focus on stitching together solutions from different businesses.	Following the flywheel effect, find success by first ensuring a good customer experience - with that will you then gain traction from merchants and more customers.	Social sharing is crucial in gaining interest from the masses.
Debbie LEE Shan Ying	Offering services to local clients with local expertise, clients appreciate the fact that these people know what they want because of cultural similarities. Current trends aredigital engineering, enterprise architechture, cybersecurity and domain consulting.	To gain success B2b build relationship, B2C is to find out what consumers want. Important to find out local insights on the market	How to know correct direction your company is moving into is difficult, so first see how much profits you earn and feedback from the public. Tech exhibitions are good to find out how the market is doing
Derrick LEE Ming Yang	Digital consulting firm similar to the likes of Accenture. They focus on digital transformation which I can relate to, as I recently did a course on that	They're like the small Google of the travel industry. Looks very fun to work at and they even attracted alot of talents to work for them.	A tech start-up that is solely dependent on government contracts and external development work. I think this kind of work is not sustainable and will be very tough on the founders.
Gary CHUA Rongjie	Expose yourself to different countries and understand their way of business. Utilise localisation to gain trust with HK customers.	Focus on a lower profit margin first to gain customers. Once you gain traction, ensure a seamless end to end experience which is vital for the travel industry.	Manage cash flow, hardware depreciates. Trust is important in the market. Know your customers and reward your employees
GOH Jin Qiang	"Data is the next oil"	"Build, Disrupt, Repeat"	To be a sustainable business is to manage your finance wisely. Buy what you need, not want.
Gwendolyn GOH Wen Hui	Cognizant is a world leading professional services company, transforming client’s business, operating and technology models for the digital era. They operate through 3 channels, digital business,l (how tech is usually used as an enabler/experience), digital operations (automating services), digital systems and technology (building the infrastructure). Focus areas of the future: digital engineering, cyber security, cloud, UIUX. “I am younger than yesterday”. “To be credible, you have to be good looking” “I like to go out and do things, to see and learn new thing Every day”	Klook brings travel products, other than the traditional hotels and flights, to the platform. Since it’s a startup, people have more flexibility in shaping the culture of the company, as well as how things work. Identified the gap in supply within the travel industry and found out that there are very few providers offering travel products relating to in destination activities.	Cordex is the pioneer of AR/VR Technology in Hong Kong. Although the product can be quite costly, the company focuses on its quality in order to justify its prices and relies on word of mouth for its marketing. Started off taking a year creating a product, but as the team grew it takes about 2-3 months to create a new product.
Student Name	Cognizant	Klook	Cordex Intelligence
HO Wei Hong	Marketing is more than just making brochures. You have to go out and actually touch and feel the market.	The travel and tourism industry may seems cluttered but if you break down by their sub industry, you can identify gaps such as for Klook.	Aim for a win-win situation, create wins for all your employees
HOW Zhiteng	The way they conduct their testings is rather interesting. Given such a huge company, it is important that testings are automated and efficient for quick and accurate testings.	Klook has the ability to scale given how they're pretty much dominant in its tourism-tech field.	The way Cordex Intelligence functions seems rather taxing on its resources. It seems that its resources consumption will be heavy when it scales.
LIM Yi Bin	Customers come first and credibility is what will carry the company's name far	Know your competitive edge and keep pushing the lead.	Being at the cutting edge of technology costs financial strain but allows for refinements of product, a balance is required.
Mathilda NG	At cognizant you are the CEO of your own career.	The experience at Klook was very informative and they were able to tap onto a huge potential market for travelers who want a unique experience.	Their huge expertise in AR, VR and MR has allowed them to expand into many industries and remain sustainable.
Mohammad Hazmie Bin JAAFAR	The company is smart in a way that they do not produce in house product as much as other technological company. They do not want to be in a position where they need to continuously refining technological product to meet the needs of the clients. Thus, they are the middle person to suggest what is good for its client and liase with merchant to get the things!	Klook dynamic feels amazing. They are young and energetic. I do wonder how they going to continue to sustain when the idea is pretty easy to be duplicated. Nonetheless, their progress in making the app more "sticky" makes it harder for competition to overtake them.	Their AR technology in the education industry can definitely change the whole learning experience in the future. Once the technology become more widespread, I'm sure education sector will adopt it as part of their learning experience.
Muhammad Hafizuddin Bin ABD RAHIN	I think that it is really cool that an established firm of 25 years behaves like a startup. It shows how efficient a startup operates. Cognizant’s ability to attract big companies is highly impressive and will definitely push them to even greater success.	Klook’s business model is rather interesting, targeting the travel industry. Being a customer myself, Klook’s services do offer competitive prices and that is probably the reason for its success. Klook’s fun and exciting looking office depicts their business culture.	The visit to Cordex Intel was very interesting with entertaining VR/AR demos. Cordex works with clients wanting to preview living/office spaces. I believe that this interactive method is highly efficient and especially useful in Hong Kong where space is hard to come by.
ONG Li Ting	If machines do everything, what is left for us?”. Cognizant taught me to be focus on areas of the future & technology is about creating jobs. Innovation is the key. During the Q&A session I asked the speaker who has been working at Cognizant for more than 10 years, why would he want to join a IT company even though IT was not as popular back then. He said because IT is promising and it will continue to be. That was quite a comforting statement as today, some might feel that IT is being too saturated/“crowded”.	At Klook, value proposition to consumers is their top priority. I learnt that it is essential to craft a compelling value to distinctively differentiate Klook with its competitors. Klook captures the lifetime value of their customers through promoting attractive promotional initiatives. The company did a good job in its marketing efforts and that is what made them a billion dollar company today.	The AR and VR applications made by Cordex Intelligence were really cool. It is amazing how a concept can be recycled into many variety of products. I was amazed with the company rapid prototyping and fast processes. The speaker also mentioned that requirement gathering stage is the most important, we have to brush up our people skills and know how translate IT terms into business terms to ensure effective communication.
ONG Lin Sheng	Cognizant was great, the staff shared about their different streams, digital business, digital systems and digital operations. Their brownie was great too!	Indeed a unicorn startup, I was amazed by the company's hospitality and their presentation, generating 183billion is such a short time! Will be applying to Klook when I graduate next year	Great example of AR and VR, interesting demo and explanation of their business plans and strategy
ONG Yan Kai	The productivity of a developer partly depends on its tools. It was fascinating how Cognizant implemented A.I and machine learning into its CI/CD pipeline to automatically generate the best test cases, run them and update their status on their project management software JIRA.	I learnt that there are still many ways a start-up can offer value to established companies to make a deal. When approaching established merchants, Klook offered creative services such as publishing articles on their products to incentivise them on board.	Proptech seems to be the next tech disruption. The founder also believes that property would be the next industry to be disrupted by VR, AR and MR.
Shaun John CHEETHAM	Cognizant is a huge company that provides a lot of different services. Their tremendous growth and increase in value reflects the high level of quality that they provide. Their DevOps is rather impressive integrating ML and AI in order to do automated testing on each build that they deliver.	Klook was a really fun company to visit, they have quite a vibrant and fun working environment. Their dedication to building relationships with vendors and customers has helped them stand out from the competition and become the unicorn that they are. By ensuring that they provide the best service possible they help create a positive flywheel effect that helps them in their expansion into other countries.	Cordex intelligence is one of the startups that embraced the risk of starting something in a new industry. The founder had to balance between creating awareness for his company and doing projects that are very profitable. Overall I think that their company has a lot of potential to create something that has never been done before, and to find a way to bring AR/VR to mainstream consumers.
Student Name	Cognizant	Klook	Cordex Intelligence
SIM Li Jin	by automating the quality assurance, it has help to shorten many hours of testing that is required and also improving each test via machine learning to make it more versatile, and instead of focusing which product that could best fit to solve the client's problem, offer different services instead that best fit to solve the problem. "Technology advance it"	in order to be sustainable, it would require a steady amount of suppliers at all time and making sure that is profitable.	earning trust from projects could foster better relationships and result in more businesses in the long run
Stanley LIN Weijie	Too reliant on machines is bad for the future community	Investing in the right platform during the right time, pays off	AR/VR/MR requires 5G to operate at its optimal! Therefore, too costly at the current moment
SZE Shao Tang	I realised from this talk that pursuing a career in digital business aligns more with my skills and interests.	"Companies like Google and Uber have changed a lot over the years because different stages of development require different management styles. Don't join them if you are looking for real startup culture."	"Treat people well because people are important assets. Think not what they can do for you but what you can do for them."
TAY Wei Xuan	Attitude is very important. You should be the owner for everything you do.	Entering the market at the right time is what made Klook so successful today.	MR now is still too expensive because of the high-end hardware required. More time is required for MR to be more affordable and accessible for commercial use.
TEO Wei Shen	There were many learning points from our visit, but they gave a good advice - that "we can be the CEO of our career."	I like this quote from a slide - "Build. Disrupt. Repeat." It reflects the new way of thinking among our generation.	Quite surprisingly, I found out that rental was not much of an issue despite them having moved for the 3rd time.
TIONG Nai Shi	“We are building local companies with local expertis.”	“If you’re offered a seat on a rocket ship ask no more and just jump on it”	“You must know your people’s skill really well. Your people and your employees are our assets so you have to be nice to them and understand what they need. What you can offer them instead of what they can offer you. ”
YONG Fu Xiang	Talk to others to improve and enhance on communication and social skills. Find a job that gives ownership that results in satisfaction. Make promise delivery to establish credibility. Attitude and values matters. It's crucial to define the objective before planning for digital transformation. Localise experience is key when out reaching to foreign market.	Throughout the years, there's a shift in traveller booking nature. Booking is now driven by events and activities.	People and employee are your assets. Be nice to them.
YUEN Chui Shan	True meaning of marketing: go out and touch and feel how to market a company to potential clients, instead of printing brochures to organizing events for the company.	Klook has one of the largest database reviews of almost 5 million and 61% of the consumers book their in-destination activities while they are in the destination.	Cordex strives to provide digitized products through AR/VR to deliver high quality content in the shortest time.