Fujitsu Philippines has opened its digital innovation hub in Makati City, the first of its kind in Southeast Asia, to help companies and institutions brainstorm solutions for better products or services.

As a global information and infrastructure technology firm that originated in Japan, Fujitsu created the hub to provide clients with digital tools like touchscreen monitors and scanners to easily share and organize their business ideas.

“What we envision is that we become the choice for a partner in digital transformation. There are a lot of ways to achieve that and our way is through co-creation with our clients,” Raul Santiago, Fujitsu Philippines managing director, said.

Instead of listing the ideas of all team members solely on sheets of paper, the Fujitsu tools digitalize them on the screens and allow people to rearrange and connect the ideas so they can quickly come up with solutions and develop a business plan.

Creative ideas move forward

Santiago stressed the hub is a tool of “moving creative ideas forward” also through its co-designing workshops.

Apart from the hub’s hardware, clients undergo workshops where Fujitsu’s technology experts and business professionals force them to clearly spot business challenges, create strategies, and pick the best one through digital voting.

“Digital transformation passes through multiple stages. It’s about creativity, designing things, creating a road map for digital initiatives, and then implementing it,” Santiago explained.

“It’s like training athletes; they do not become better if you don’t give them a good facility,” he added.

Fujitsu Philippines started testing and evaluating the hub’s impact on domestic companies and institutions last year, after opening the same facility in Japan, Australia, and Europe.

Among the first Fujitsu clients were manufacturing firms that wanted to improve monitoring of their assets.

“What happened was we placed RFID on their assets on the production line. They can see on a dashboard where those assets are and monitor them until the entire product is fully created,” Santiago shared.

He expected higher demand both from the public and private sectors as he said the government has launched an aggressive campaign for digitalization.

Fujitsu’s digital innovation hub is located at NEX Tower along Ayala Avenue, Makati City.

Fujitsu plans to set up another digital innovation hub in Vietnam.