Page 90 - myanmar

SPOTLIGHT ON
The role of technology in helping brands entering Myanmar is very significant for Smollan. “While the market and channels are still largely undeveloped from a global retail execution perspective, Smollan has brought a 21st-century field execution and technology solution to the market,” Leas said. “Hand-held technology is giving clients visibility, transparency and enabling fact-based decision making.”
“For consumers, technology and access to information including social media is making a huge difference. The people of Myanmar have only now had the world open up to them – they’re being exposed to people of other cultures, global brands and new technologies.”
The use of technology is also allowing businesses to transform in Myanmar. There’s better immediacy of information, and manual tasks requiring manual intervention have been able to be streamlined, and provide immediacy of results. A good example of this is in order entry, in-field audits and promotional compliance tracking. All these activities rely on
the ability to equip staff with training and tools, communicate the activities to be performed and report on tasks completed and data collected.”
TALENT CONTEST
One of the greatest challenges Smollan faces now is recruitment and retention – a common problem in a newly opened-up and fast-growing market.
“Talent acquisition in Myanmar is very challenging for two reasons – one is capability and one is cost,” said Wasnik. “There’s a small pool of very capable, qualified people and everybody’s chasing each other’s payroll up.”
This requires careful management in a market where the local currency’s value against the US dollar has fluctuated by as much as 30 per cent in one year. “People are educated but lack experience and deep market knowledge, which is understandable in a market that has been largely devoid of international business exposure for several decades. It’s difficult to get people who are experienced in retail solutions, including in-field execution and activation solutions. That’s going to continue to be the case until the modern trade really starts to expand and grow.”
Leas said: “We see it as our responsibility, though, to develop our own home-grown talent. Whilst it’s early days yet, we are seeing great strides being made in capability building.”
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