Heaptalk, Jakarta — In 2021, the Indonesian Government is targeting the national economic revival by 5,0% to encounter the global pandemic that leaves recession in the major sectors. As we have already known, according to the release by Bappenas, the pandemic slump effect caused loss of income for our society to IDR 374.4 trillion – mainly influenced by the decrease from the industrial and tourism sector as these sectors’ utilization declined from 76.3% to 55.3%.
The first prioritized outline is to stimulate digitalization growth, which has to be evenly distributed among all Indonesian regions. This plan needs a massive establishment of the telecommunication infrastructure in remote areas, focused on the eastern and middle region, including fiber optics, Base Transceiver Station (BTS), and data centers.
Many companies in these industries – both local or global-are qualified and reputable to handle the projects. But somehow, they need the shortest route to be linked with the Government. At this point, Himpunan Pengusaha Nahdliyin (HPN) becomes a strategic bridger to increase the company’s possibility to be designated and then, together with the government plan realizing the digital transformations in those areas.
KH. Abdul Kholik, The Chairman of HPN Nahdlatul Ulama, During the HPN Muktamar event at Uluwatu Bali, 26 March 2021, emphasizes his community positioning as a market determiner as well as the domestic policy from the macro perspective. It means they accommodate Nahdliyin entrepreneurs scattered in each region in Indonesia by having a branch leadership council in each region to speak as or to the influential figures, such as carrying out the infrastructure and digitalization projects in Indonesia.
“We have the market, and we allow our members to collaborate with companies that are interested in building Indonesia’s digital ecosystem,” KH. Abdul Kholik.
According to World Bank, Indonesia reportedly has an infrastructure funding calculation by Rp. 30.5 Trillion to develop information and communication technology in 2021. This funding allotment event includes allocating the funds to set up the digitalization pre-requisites on a village scale.
That is only at the minor scale. How about the national scale? According to the Kominfo research, in aggregate, the average internet speed in Indonesia is considered low. On the other hand, cellular penetration has already reached more than 80% of the population. It means from the total 265.4 million population, and there are 130 million or 59% become active internet users.
Of course, to perform an evenly distributed internet, a serious project to prepare the ecosystem has to take – even in a long time. Whether it needs more resources and funding and should be handled with extra efforts massively and comprehensively – this becomes a genuine prospect for many companies to hinder.
Speaking about partnering with HPN, it can give a lot of benefits in actualizing the digitalization in Indonesia like accessing the digital infrastructure procurement prospects, educating the internet usage to the Medium, Small, and Microenterprises so they can migrate from conventional business to online, and also providing them innovation in the application to support the local businesses for becoming more agile and dynamic.
“We stand our business above the value of Ahlul Sunnah Wal Jamaah. We are not deceiving our partners. Because we uphold the value of Mutsaqqof, which means we are doing business with characters and goodwill,” said KH. Abdul Kholik.
Abdul Kholik also underlines HPN’s position to totally support the Government in doing the digital transformation during the current leadership period. Therefore, they pinpoint important messages like every business should think about transforming into digital – meet all the requirements as possible, especially when facing today’s pandemic. At this point, what is now emerging in society is they are turning their activities into digital. Like in socializing with their friends, they are gradually habituated with the video conference experience. In teaching-learning activities, students and teachers are now habituated to perform distance learning or study from home. Whereas in the business sector, most of them are now migrating from conventional to online, like doing digital marketing, managing inventory with ERP, promoting the product through the OTT technology, coordinating the daily activities remotely or even from home, and many more. In other words, everything is going more dynamic.
“We should perceive it as a prospective business, from the Government, enterprises, and event micro-business. Suppose we do not go digital. We should be left behind,” KH. Abdul Kholik said.
The organization is ready to go digital
Abdul Kholik also mentioned that their internal organization needs digitalization. As we know, HPN members consist of multidimensional businesses – starting from contractors, retail, tourism, suppliers, ICT, healthcare, and more, are united under the association, which began to be formed in 2011. Therefore, partnering with leading ICT players like Huawei, Link Net, DesktopIP, Bhakti Kominfo, APJII, and APJATEL can create a mutual impact.
At this time, the HPN members are enthusiastic about transforming into digital. They are now aware that a business must consider preparing the ecosystem end-to-end to be the leading sector. Therefore the logic must depart from providing adequate telecommunications and technology infrastructure readiness and virtualization as the backbone of any cloud technology. Above that, the application level appears predominantly to interact with the end-user, like the ERP, point of sales, eCommerce, video streaming platform, and more.
A real example is Nahdliyin entrepreneurs can squint into the smart city agenda in some regions in Indonesia. Nearby there are Cirebon, Semarang and Banyuwangi. Both parties can collaborate to support the government.
“When there is adequate telco infrastructure, every business in every region in Indonesia has the same opportunity to compete,” said KH. Abdul Kholik.
Therefore, by this good moment of HPN go digital, held in Uluwatu 26 – 28 March 2021, it should be exploited by both instances, the Nahdliying entrepreneur community and the ICT companies, to make something impactful. The primary vision must be to build the country’s digital ecosystem to create a comfortable climate for stakeholders to revive the country’s economy through digitalization.
