Businesses often have to choose between foreign platforms and domestic products. If they choose platforms developed by global firms such as Siemens and Schneider, they have to pay higher costs. To customize products to fit Vietnamese conditions, businesses have to pay additional money for human resources and the cost prices will be higher.

With modest budgets, small and medium enterprises (SMEs) should instead use low-cost Vietnam-made platforms and solutions tailored to solve the issues of every business.

Vietnam-made platforms are the answer to digital transformation in Vietnam. 

Nguyen Thien Nghia, deputy head of the Authority of ICT (Information and Communication Technology) Industry, said the biggest problem of Make in Vietnam platform is how to attract customers.

The average cost that foreign platforms have to pay to obtain each customer is $0.5-3 per user. A platform needs many users. The challenge is for developers and investors to have sufficient financial resources to maintain users and attract new users to the platform.

“It is seeking clients, not technology, which most challenges Vietnam’s platform. Therefore, the Ministry of Information and Communications (MIC) is supporting domestic firms with media campaigns to attract more and more users,” Nghia said. 

Seeking customers is also an issue for Base.vn. Its CEO Nguyen Thuong Tuong Minh said that as of early 2023, only 9 percent out of total 800,000 Vietnamese businesses had used SaaS (Software as a service) in their work. He said that this is the biggest difficulty for Base when deploying high technology.

Meanwhile, for Vconnex smart home and IoT (Internet of Things) platform, the biggest problem is the high investment and deployment costs. In addition, the platform developer is facing a serious shortage of high-quality workers.

As a platform recognized as meeting criteria to serve as a digital platform for the public, Coc Coc has joined forces with the National Digital Transformation Agency and other Make in Vietnam platforms to ‘go to every corner and knock on all doors’, organizing training courses on digital transformation.

According to Mai Thi Thanh Oanh of Coc Coc, one of the biggest difficulties of enterprises is the limited awareness and uneven access to high technologies in different regions.

“There is a big gap in digital transformation between rural and urban areas. Older people maintain old habits and old way of thinking, and they hesitate to access new technology. This will take more time to disseminate digital platforms and require bigger efforts from platform developers,” Oanh said.

A representative from Coc Coc mentioned information security on cyberspace. The tricks used by criminals to steal information are getting more and more sophisticated. The challenge for technology firms is to both protect users and make products for convenient use.

VietNamNet, after surveying several big tech firms such as Viettel and VNPT (Vietnam Posts and Telecommunications Group), found that the biggest problem for them is the lack of legal regulations to bring the platforms into use.

“For example, technology firms can develop a diploma authentication platform, but there is no legal framework that recognizes the legality of documents,” a representative of VNPT IT said.

Nguyen Chi Thanh, deputy CEO of Viettel Solutions, said that to create a national digital platform, it is not only necessary to build a technological system but also a legal framework on which the platforms can operate and connect to other platforms and systems.

In general, digital transformation is a long process and there are still many things that need to be done, including policies, human resources, communications and workforce. This is a difficult question that management agencies and businesses must work together to find the answers.

Trong Dat