UnionBank of the Philippines led the winners of the recently concluded 3rd IDC Digital Transformation Awards (DXa) 2019, which recognizes companies that have successfully digitalized one or multiple areas of their business through the application of digital and disruptive technologies.

Tech industry research firm IDC named UnionBank as the 2019 Digital Transformer of the Year. Other winners include AIDE, Angkas, Maria Edita C. Elicaño of Insular Life, Philippine Airlines, and Philippine Rice Research Institute, who all distinguished themselves for their discernible and measurable excellence in their digital transformation (DX) efforts across the five DX masteries and significant efforts to transform or disrupt the market.

“In our third year of the Digital Transformation Awards in the Philippines, we are very excited to see very impressive progress in the depth and breadth of the submissions in 2019,” said Randy Roberts, head of operations for IDC Philippines. “We are beginning to see real momentum in the development of the digital culture, workforce, business models and ecosystem.”

According to Roberts, based on IDC’s latest survey, 37% of enterprises in the Philippines assessed themselves as being at an advanced level of digital transformation while identifying the biggest challenges to progress as changing the company culture towards transformation and having the commitment from the top levels of leadership.

“The number of industries represented in this year’s submissions, as well as the types of technologies being deployed in the solutions, is a clear indicator that the commitment to digital transformation is spreading quickly across small and large enterprises as they strive to embody the Future Enterprise,” Roberts said.

IDC’s DX Awards follows a two-phased approach to determine the country and regional winners. Each nomination is evaluated by a local and regional IDC analyst against a standard assessment framework based on IDC’s DX taxonomy.

All the winning Philippines digital transformation projects were selected as part of over 1,000 high-quality entries received from end-user organizations across the Asia Pacific. All the country winners will qualify as one of IDC’s finalists for the regional awards, where they will be benchmarked against other winners in the same category to ultimately determine the region’s best of the best.

These are the winners of the 2019 Philippines IDC Digital Transformation Awards and the outstanding digital transformation initiatives that distinguished them:

• UBX: Ushering the Age of Embedded Banking by Union Bank of the Philippines named as 2019 Digital Transformer for the Philippines
• Journey to Beat the Traffic in Metro Manila by ANGKAS named as 2019 Digital Disruptor for the Philippines
• Philippine Rice Information System (PRiSM) by Philippine Rice Research Institute named as 2019 Information Visionary for the Philippines
• Immersive Virtual Reality Cabin Crew Training by Philippine Airlines named as 2019 Talent Accelerator for the Philippines
• Project i2i by Union Bank of the Philippines named as 2019 Operating Model Master for the Philippines
• AIDE app named as 2019 Omni Experience Innovator for the Philippines
• Maria Edita C. Elicaño, executive vice president and head of Insular Life Administrative Operations Group, Insular Life named as 2019 DX Leader for the Philippines
• The regional awarding ceremony will take place during IDC’s Digital Transformation Summit in Singapore happening on Oct. 23-24 at the Raffles City Convention Centre, Singapore.

IDC defines Digital Transformation (DX) as the approach where organizations drive changes in their business models and business ecosystems by leveraging digital technologies (cloud, mobile, big data/analytics, social and IoT) and competencies. Business ecosystems are comprised of customers, partners, competitors and the business itself, along with its business and regulatory environment.