Philippines CIO: Service is key to innovation

30.01.2006
2005 was another busy year for Globe Telecoms chief information officer Rodell Garcia. Voted one of the two CIOs of the year by the Philippine Computer Society earlier last year, Garcia stands firmly at the helm of Globe's Information Systems Group (ISG) ensuring that his group's every action is aligned with the company's core values: customer commitment.

Garcia's group focused on three major areas in 2005. The first area was to enable and support product innovations, one of which involved the G-Cash payment system. Another key focus for Globe was the strengthening of support systems and infrastructure for customer service. The last key area involved the implementation of process improvements for significant gains towards speed-to-market, quality delivery, and cost efficiency.

'In the area of innovation, we continued with the expansion of our G-Cash service, not only in terms of increasing partnerships, outlets, and subscribers, but also in the type of services,' said Garcia in an interview with Computerworld Philippines. G-Cash is a mobile payment system introduced by Globe which became the first mobile platform to be used for tax payments to the Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR).

Micro-financing was also a significant area for G-Cash in 2005 as Globe's partnerships with rural banks and cooperatives provided a mobile system for the customers of these organizations -- who are Globe and Touch Mobile subscribers -- to pay their loans. G-Cash is now also used as mode of payment for utility bills and insurance premiums, and major department stores have also integrated G-Cash into their point-of-sale systems. 'We have on pilot an automated G-Cash Machine that will go into commercial launch once the regulators grant approval,' said Garcia. G-Cash, like its counterpart Smart Padala, is now also a preferred mode of payment by some online shoppers at online shopping Web sites like ebay.ph.

'G-cash is a source of pride for us, as the service has also gained international recognition,' said Garcia. Two other 'baby projects' of Globe's IS group are G2P and Ask-G. G2P is a service that allows a subscriber to switch from a postpaid subscription to prepaid mode while Ask-G frees subscribers of the need to memorize all access codes and keywords by having them send any query to A-S-K-G (2574) for instructions on all Globe's value-added services. 'From a technology standpoint, G2P is probably the first implementation of what we call a hybrid (postpaid-prepaid) product in a non-convergent billing environment,' said Garcia.

In the second half 2005, Globe also made the news as it conducted the first local telco trials of 3G technology, after getting the approval of the National Telecommunications Commission earlier on.