Singapore-based #dltledgers, a blockchain-powered cross-border trade digitisation startup, has secured US$8.5 million in a Series B funding round of financing.

The investors are the family office of TATA group and Centrum.

The capital will help #dltledgers execute its plans for North American expansion while scaling its engineering and growth teams further. 

The Series B financing brings #dltledgers’s valuation to above US$100 million, the company said in a statement. It plans to extend the round to US$15 million and close it at the end of October. 

The latest round comes more than a year after it closed US$7 million Series A round, led by Regis & Savoy Capital (Bengaluru), with participation from Vittal Investments, Walden International and various veteran industry leaders. The startup had raised US$2.5 million in pre-Series A round from Walden in July 2019.

#dltledgers was founded in 2017 by serial technopreneur Samir Neji. It is a global blockchain-based multi-enterprise supply chain business network (MESCBN) platform. Its subscription and transaction-based platform enable multi-party transactions across enterprises.

Also Read: #dltledgers lands US$7M Series A to grow its blockchain-based cross-border trade digitisation platform

The platform helps corporates and banks to build on a connected supply chain. They can run end-to-end contract compliance and authenticate their commercial documents, subcontracts, logistics, reverse logistics, claims, financing and bank interactions. This enables them to automate multi-party transactions, streamline processes, and reduce costs.

The startup’s network participants include buyers, sellers, trading companies, banks and alternative lenders, carriers, logistics partners, insurers, ports, and various certifying bodies and government agencies.

#dltledgers’s customers include Wipro Consumer Goods, Mondelez, Tata Motors, ANZ bank, Shiseido, OCP, and Stockland.

“We provide a technology that allows enterprises to jump-start, connect and collaborate with their supply chain partners dynamically and in real-time, accelerating mission-critical supply chain process by ten folds. Our low code metaverse platform will enable enterprises to build their own network easily and seamlessly invite their partners to work together and collaborate like never before,” said Founder Samir Neji.  

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It’s no secret that digital transformation can be a bit of a minefield. There are a lot of things that can go wrong, and it’s often hard to know where to start. In this article, we’ll explore some of the most common problems that arise during digital transformation and how you can avoid them.

Lack of governance model and standards

One of the most common problems that organisations face when attempting to carry out a digital transformation is the lack of a governance model and standards. Without these in place, it can be difficult to ensure that everyone is working towards the same goals and that the transformation is proceeding as planned.

Without governance, it can be difficult to decide which technologies to use or how to implement them. This can lead to frustration among employees and managers alike, as well as a feeling that the transformation is not proceeding smoothly.

Standards are also important in ensuring that the transformation is successful. Without standards, different teams may be using different technologies or following different processes, making it difficult to integrate data and systems. This can lead to delays and frustration as teams attempt to figure out how to work together.

The lack of a governance model and standards can derail a digital transformation and lead to frustration and delays. Organisations should put these in place before beginning any transformation effort.

Lack of an architecture or integration roadmap

Digital transformations are often hampered by a lack of an architecture or integration roadmap. This can lead to several problems, including:

• Lack of alignment between business and IT goals
• Inadequate understanding of dependencies
• Limited visibility into the overall transformation landscape
• Difficulty making mid-course corrections

An architecture or integration roadmap provides a clear and concise view of the digital transformation journey, helping to ensure that all stakeholders are aligned on the goals and objectives. It also makes it easier to identify potential risks and issues and to make course corrections when necessary.

Lack of an innovation culture

One of the most common problems that can derail a digital transformation is a lack of an innovation culture. To successfully undergo a digital transformation, it’s important to have a culture that supports and encourages innovation.

Without this type of culture, employees may resist change and new ideas, which can ultimately lead to the transformation failing. To create an innovation culture, organisations need to encourage creativity and risk-taking, provide resources for employees to experiment with new ideas, and create an environment where failure is seen as an opportunity to learn.

Lack of leadership commitment and ownership

One of the most common problems that derail digital transformations is a lack of leadership commitment and ownership. Too often, digital transformations are seen as projects that can be delegated to lower-level staff or consultants when in reality, they require senior-level buy-in and oversight to be successful. Without leadership commitment, digital transformations often stall out or fail to live up to their potential.

Defining the value proposition too narrowly

One of the most common problems derailing a digital transformation is defining the value proposition too narrowly. When this happens, organisations can miss out on opportunities to improve efficiency and effectiveness across the board.

Also Read: ‘Neobanks can create a better digital CX by leveraging AI, blockchain’: banco CEO

To avoid this problem, it’s important to take a holistic view of the organisation and what it wants to achieve with its digital transformation. By doing so, you can ensure that all areas of the business are considered and that the value proposition is defined in a way that will maximise improvements.

Overlooking the people’s side of change

One of the most common problems that derail digital transformations is overlooking the people’s side of change. Too often, organisations focus on the technical aspects of change and fail to consider how their employees will adapt to new ways of working. This can lead to resistance and confusion, which can ultimately hinder the success of your transformation.

To avoid this, it’s important to involve employees in the planning and implementation phases of your transformation. This will help ensure that they understand the changes and are more likely to embrace them. Furthermore, be sure to communicate regularly with employees throughout the process to keep them updated on progress and address any concerns they may have.

Not being customer-centric

One of the most common problems derailing your digital transformation is not being customer-centric. This means that you are not focused on providing a great experience for your customers, and instead, you are focused on other things. For example, you might be focused on technology or process instead of customer needs.

Another problem that can occur is when you try to copy another company’s digital transformation instead of creating your own. This can lead to problems because you are not taking into account your company’s specific needs.

Finally, you might also run into problems if you do not have a clear plan for your digital transformation. Without a plan, it can be difficult to execute your transformation and achieve the desired results.

Implementation failures

One of the most common problems that can derail a digital transformation is an implementation failure. This can happen when a company tries to roll out a new digital platform or system but doesn’t have the right infrastructure in place to support it. Without a strong foundation, the new system can quickly become overloaded and break down.

Also Read: How digital technology can transform the food and beverage industry

Another common issue is a lack of user adoption. Even if a digital transformation is successful from a technical standpoint, it can still fail if employees and customers don’t actually use the new system. This can happen for various reasons, such as a complex user interface or a lack of training.

Finally, many digital transformations are hampered by data silos. When information is spread across different departments or systems, it can be difficult to get a holistic view of the business. This can make it hard to make decisions or take advantage of new opportunities.

IT and line of business silos

One of the most common problems that can derail a digital transformation is when IT and line of business silos fail to communicate and collaborate effectively. This can lead to project delays, misaligned priorities, and ultimately a poor return on investment.

To avoid this problem, it’s important to ensure that there is open communication and collaboration between IT and the line of business from the start. Furthermore, it’s also crucial to have a clear plan and roadmap for the digital transformation so that everyone is on the same page.

Unclear roles and responsibilities

One of the most common problems that derailed digital transformations is the lack of clarity around roles and responsibilities. This can lead to confusion and frustration among employees, as well as a feeling that the transformation is being imposed on them rather than being something they’re buying into.

To avoid this, it’s important to ensure that everyone understands their role in the transformation and what’s expected of them. This can be done through regular communication and training sessions. It’s also crucial to get feedback from employees throughout the process to ensure they feel empowered and engaged.

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My dear Wawa,

Before you arrived, I used to buy every Sims: Pets expansion pack and adopt as many cats and dogs as the game allowed without glitching. The process was always the same: I got excited from purchasing a pet game that would grant me the joy and delight of being a pet owner, but that would quickly dissipate in a matter of hours once I realised there was only so much you could do.

Other alternate pet-like experiences like Pet Society and Tamagotchi had their own limitations; the virtual pets themselves never really grew or developed past what the mechanics allow. So even though I tried to live the life of a pet owner through these games, I knew it would never come close to the real experience.

The joys of owning a pet

You’re sleeping right beside Papa as I’m writing this: your little body hugged close to his leg, limbs in a relaxed stretch. It’s times like these that I’d look at you fondly and think of how you’ve greyed over the 10 years since you came into our lives; while still a spritely, active doggo, we can’t help but see your decline as your face became whiter and your eyes a milky grey in the past years.

We have to use bouncy balls that land with a thud now whenever we play fetch, lest you’d dart off in the wrong direction thinking we’d thrown it there out of habit. It used to be cute, but it slowly dawned on us what it meant.

Also Read: How we designed the future of digital pets in just six weeks

You first came into our lives when you were two years old — scared, skittish, and wary of everyone except my dad. I gotta confess, I didn’t like you because, well, I didn’t like Chihuahuas. As we were left alone during my summer break, however, your quirks grew on me with every walk and feeding. It helped that you loved playing fetch, and I adore pups that play as enthusiastically and tirelessly as you do.

I miss the days when my sister and I could hug and kiss you as we wanted, and you’d have this terrified look that you couldn’t help. We egged you on in your playful tendencies that edged ever so slightly on aggression; laughed amidst poorly-mimicked growls thinking we were only communicating with you. There were even times when we instigated your ‘fight mode’ just to show our friends how crazy you were.

But here’s the real deal

Then one day, you attacked my sister with no warning growl. It was a deep bite for canines as small as yours, enough to mark the beginning of your reign. We didn’t have the heart to hit you or scold you, what with the puppy dog eyes you’d so masterfully pull. We forgave you, again and again, until you had us in the beans of your paw.

This is where we failed you, and no number of what-ifs and amount of chiding can erase my guilt in having a hand. I told myself that I’d treat my next dog differently, so I could give it the life and fullest amount of love it deserves.

But that’s not to be because I’m allergic to the very animal I love.

It’s too late in any way to help you unlearn the bad training and for me to disregard the pain and inconvenience my allergy brings. Regardless, you’ll always be my first dog. If I could somehow give you a second, better life, I would in a heartbeat, so you’d have all the love and affection you rightly deserve.

Also Read: How telemedicine can revolutionise the veterinary world?

I think many of us would like to have that second chance. Any other pet that may come after would be uniquely themselves in different ways, but never be you. There’s a profound sadness about that, like how a lover lost would never be found in another again.

What about virtual pets in the metaverse?

That said, I recently found a way I could relive you in the metaverse, perhaps even hone a similar personality from before you were mistrained. Even better, the team creating this game allowed me to be part of the development process: to contribute what I know about games and pet (dog) behaviours to help create as realistic and emotionally rewarding a game can be.

Of course, this inevitably brought to question whether another pet game would be able to live up to expectations, but I’m personally heartened by their passion and determination to replicate or even reimagine the concept of pet companionship in the virtual world.

It will benefit so many of us who’d love to have pets but can’t for a variety of reasons, at the same time, provide an avenue for anyone interested to explore the metaverse while forming genuine emotional connections with pets and humans alike. Perhaps this might be a form of respite for the ones who grieve(d) for a beloved animal that’s passed on too. I know I’ll need it when you go.

Wawa. It’s such a silly name that I often chuckle nervously before telling my friends when they coo over your pics and videos. Yet, we always call for you with a soft voice laced with tenderness and affection.

You’re one of the feisty, naughty ones, yes, but you’re still our beloved doggo who’s blessed us with boundless joy, laughter, and spirit. I hope I can recreate the same experience you gave us in the virtual world while still giving you the best of all of us in your remaining years.

With all my love,

Veekiddo

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Web3 will have a massive impact on the way we run our businesses, and this change is closer than we realise.

Web1 consists of read-only information, and Web2 is a digital hierarchy regulated by big businesses. Web3 differs from the previous two by creating a decentralised online space for everyone, fueled by global interest in self-sovereignty. 

The rise of Web3

Web3 has rapidly developed over the past few years, and more people than ever are engaging with the new Web3 technologies.  Namely, over 34,000 developers worked on an open-source Web3 project in 2021, contributing to the blockchain, web token technology, and decentralised social media.

Additionally, cryptocurrency has risen in popularity; over 100 million people worldwide use crypto exchanges, and more than 18,000 global businesses now accept crypto as a payment method.

There is a lot of market potential for the world of Web3.  The current total crypto market cap is worth over US$850 billion, and by 2030, the global metaverse may be worth US$13 trillion.  Over US$4.5 billion has been pledged to Web3 ventures thus far, which will continue to rise as more businesses engage with Web3 technologies. 

As the digital world changes, so do work.  Most importantly, Web3 enables the self-sovereign worker.  Independent work generates more revenue than wage and salaried workers and will help bolster the economy. 

The flexibility of work is sparking new ideas and empowering workers to step forward.  Specifically, 4.3 million people now work remotely, and two in three people will quit their jobs in 2021 because of greater opportunities.

This shift towards self-sovereignty in the workplace is unbalanced in terms of age.  Only 26 per cent of Boomers are participating in the gig economy compared to 81 per cent of Gen Z.  That being said, over 70 per cent of Americans from all generations say they want to be self-employed.  Web3 allows individuals of all ages to reach that goal. 

Web3 technologies enable less reliance on the nine to five, employability from anywhere in the world, long-term job security, and employment perks available outside the office. In 2019, 57 per cent of workers had flexible schedules, which has only risen due to the pandemic and evolving technologies.  There are over 18,000 borderless digital currencies that allow for a permissionless ecosystem, employing people worldwide.

Also Read: How Web3 will revolutionise borderless banking in Southeast Asia

Not only do Web3 technologies empower work flexibility, but they also open doors for new jobs.  By 2025, more than 12 million jobs will be created by tech.  New digital roles are in high demand.  For instance, full-stack developers experienced a 141 per cent increase in demand, and technologists experienced a 128 per cent increase in demand. 

Not only will new job roles emerge, but also happiness and overall satisfaction in people’s careers will rise.  In Web2, 85 per cent of people hate their jobs.  On the other hand, 81 per cent of people believe Web3 will improve their happiness and wellbeing.

Preparing for Web3 work

While the world of Web3 may sound exciting, it’s important to prepare yourself for Web3 work.  For those interested in cryptocurrencies, diversifying your digital assets and tracking changing trends is essential. 

Freelancers should find a like-minded community and decentralise payments with crypto.  Those who operate like digital nomads should secure long-term retirement opportunities and upgrade payroll and benefits for sustainability.  Small business owners should join a coalition to defend independent workers and leverage tax tools to remain compliant. 

Now is the best time to transition to sovereign work. The future of work, thanks to Web3 payroll and benefits, is now.

With this work revolution, independent contractors, gig workers, and sole practitioners can source independent employment benefits, access shared business services, and leverage work rewards tokens.

It provides health, dental, and vision insurance throughout the United States at up to 50 per cent less than state premiums, and they are currently the largest Cigna network.  Additionally, you can manage cash flow to easily accommodate vacations and holidays.  Furthermore, there are group 401(k), solo 401(k), and various IRA options available. 

In addition to independent employment benefits, businesses can access payroll compliance, integrated partners with discounts, and automated payroll with semi-monthly USD or crypto.  Also, it provides tax withholdings services to eliminate manual quarterly filings and penalties. 

Web3 values privacy and property rights while ensuring trustworthy interactions between businesses.  Global leaders look favourably to the future of Web3 work. 

Web3 empowers individuals to become workers, investors, shareholders, creators, designers, and more.  Champion Web3 independence without compromise in the Web3 community.

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The pandemic has had a detrimental impact on economic growth, unemployment, inequality and poverty levels in different parts of the world. At the same time, from a financial services perspective, it has acted as a catalyst for financial inclusion and fast digital adoption.

The adoption of digital wallets and online payments has seen exponential growth through the pandemic, and this behavioural shift is likely to stick. At the same time, the rapid digitalisation of consumer businesses and commerce has created unique customer experiences through the creation of ecosystems on social media and other platforms (e-commerce, food delivery, ride-hailing etc.).

These consumer businesses are beginning to offer financial services as part of their customer engagement journeys by offering products/services like payments, wallets, Buy Now Pay Later (BNPL), insurance, investments and others to extend the customer value chain, improve customer engagement and stickiness, enhance the customer value proposition and create new avenues for revenue growth. 

As more non-banking companies are beginning to offer financial services products and services, a new theme is beginning to emerge in the form of Embedded Finance (embedding a financial services product as part of a commerce journey).

Customers leverage these integrated experiences, and traditional financial services firms quickly realise this shift. To meet the rising demand for embedded finance, banks are responding by offering banking as a service (bundled offerings, often white-labelled or co-branded services) that non-banks can use to serve their customers.

For customers, the appeal is simple: ease of use. It provides them with immersive experiences which are holistic, easy and embedded. 

It is also quite an inflection point in the industry from a retail financial services perspective. In a post-pandemic world, along with all the macroeconomic uncertainties and increasing operational cost pressures, retail banks and financial services firms are increasingly looking at new revenue models focused on fully digital distribution while reducing their vast network of brick-and-mortar physical infrastructure.

In this context, enabling partners to distribute banking products can be good news in the form of being a low margin, high volume business for banks. 

Also Read: Healthtech data: The race for new oil in Southeast Asia

In this fast-changing paradigm with intense competition between many players (‘every company wants to be a fintech’), knowing your customer and personalising experiences become critical differentiators. Hyper-personalising experiences that are contextual and relevant to customers is becoming a key aspect of customer engagement and retention. 

In order to create hyper-personalised experiences for customers and appeal to their moment of truth, enterprises are essentially focusing on three aspects: 

• Providing meaningful content: Real-time alerts, tailored web content and personalised advertising and pre-populated applications.
• Tailored products and advice: Real-time product notification and transaction triggers, dynamic pricing and hyper-customised offers, personal finance management alerts.
• Optimised service: Interaction with customers at the right time, through the right channel, contextualised and high-quality responses, and a seamless phygital (physical + digital) experience.

To facilitate such hyper-personalisation and become a data-driven enterprise, it’s important that businesses democratise their data while elevating their digital and data infrastructure.

A study reports that only 24 per cent of businesses claim to have succeeded in creating a data-driven organisation despite the widespread effort. Why is this the case? Of the many challenges, key ones involve data quality issues due to lack of data ownership, data silos because of enormous legacy estate and the overburdened analytical data platform teams.

Over several decades, financial businesses have accrued generations of data warehouses transferred from one employee to another.

A UK report shows that nearly 92 per cent of financial firms rely on legacy tech. How is this a challenge? Fetching data from these legacy data warehouses isn’t easy as the warehouses might not have active vendor support. The capability to query from them is scarce, and so is the capability to move away from them.

In such cases, data discovery and governance are a constant hassle. All the more, in financial services, these legacy data warehouses might be the core banking data warehouses and file systems, so the risk of moving away is high. This debt in terms of effort and cost will continue to accrue until the company finds that most of its data is still in silos that are opaque.

Despite moving away from legacy systems, businesses cannot become data-driven. Why is that so? Some challenges include data quality issues, people and processes not being factored in, and overworked data platform teams. Analytical use cases such as hyper-personalisation are seen purely as a central data platform effort.

From an infrastructure perspective, it makes sense to centralise, but this also has led to the individual business lines or departments not owning their data from a quality, accessibility, discoverability and governance standpoint.

Given that there’s no data ownership, it leaves the value of enormous datasets untapped. “We’re surrounded by data but starved for insights”, it is rightly said!

Centralise data infrastructure, but decentralise data ownership

So, who understands the data assets in businesses the best? The very people who generate the data.

For instance, in retail banking, we are talking about channels, payments, accounts, mortgages, et al. as potential domains. The teams and systems within these domains revolve around the objectives of these business lines.

Also Read: How to unlock possibilities through data privacy enhancing technologies

Similarly, the ownership of data for operational and analytical purposes also should rightfully sit within these domains, with the right roles and responsibilities.

These domains are best placed to identify and deliver use cases that can generate value from the data that they own. The best way is to start with understanding the vision of the domain, the goals that need to be met, and the business use cases that can help achieve these goals.

From there, businesses can then create the data journeys needed to satisfy said use cases. Moving away from legacy data warehouses can be achieved similarly by approaching moving away to a modern data solution as a measure of success of this use case. Therefore, with every business use case, businesses are incrementally reducing the legacy data landscape. 

In order to become a data-driven business, enabling strong data governance consisting of data quality, ownership, metadata management et al. is key. With domains, data governance will also become a federated concern between the enterprise and each individual domain.

Functions such as compliance, domain identification, discovery, and lineage could be centralised, while data ownership, quality, and metadata management can be decentralised to the domains.

Businesses should ensure that they can bake in most of the cross-cutting concerns into the centralised data infrastructure platform and therefore make the most out of the governance functions computational while making it auditable in nature.

When done right, the above-said data mesh paradigm will be a great way to enable the democratisation of data within businesses.

Data is the new oil

But unlike oil, data hasn’t been tapped in the enterprises to the extent of generating value. It sits as crude oil in data lakes, unused. It’s high time businesses start treating data as a product that provides significant value by making it discoverable, accessible, trustworthy and secure.

Also Read: Conservation technology: The role of data and tech in addressing the biodiversity crisis

Businesses can start doing so by creating data products that can be used by end users. On top of that, federated governance and empowering individual domains will also help bring the product ownership needed to innovate, experiment and iterate faster to build data products and drive innovation.

While doing so, businesses should also keep in mind and respect personal data protection policies such as GDPR, PDPA and several others. Consent management should be a key consideration before using customer data for any analytical needs.

Authentication, authorisation and appropriate data anonymisation should be ensured so that customers are protected from any re-identification risk. This is an extremely important aspect of data governance. 

Becoming data-driven is imperative for any business in today’s age and proves to be especially so for financial firms in the post-pandemic world. Apart from investing in modernising the data infrastructure, it is highly important to bring out the organisation-wide cultural and mindset change to start treating data as an asset.

With the aforementioned approach, businesses will not only be transforming the data estate technologically but will also be able to use data literacy to build products that enable hyper-personalisation. Only then, will data generate as much value as oil instead of being untapped in underground wells!

This article is co-authored by Lakshmanan CS, Principal Consultant for Digital Transformation, Financial Services, Thoughtworks

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