How Unified Data is Breaking Barriers to AI in ASEAN
Businesses in ASEAN are shifting from data collection to data activation. By unifying data, they’re breaking down silos, powering AI-driven insights, and delivering personalised experiences. Find out how a unified data strategy is transforming industries and driving innovation.
In ASEAN, businesses are moving beyond data collection to unlocking its real value — a critical step as new AI innovations take centre stage. Discover how unified data is breaking down silos and powering AI agents and teams in every department to deliver better customer experiences.
The changing value of data
In the fast-paced, data-driven markets of ASEAN, organisations have shifted their focus from simply accumulating data to unlocking its potential. The question is no longer, “How much data do we have?” but rather, “How do we unlock the value of data?”
The answer lies in unified, harmonised data. A unified data strategy helps businesses gain deeper insights into their customers by understanding how they interact across different systems. They can identify the same person at various touchpoints — and then act on this data by providing more personalised and relevant interactions, whether a customer is engaging with a sales or service representative or an AI agent.
This not only enhances the customer experience but also meets the growing expectations of customers around the value exchange of their data. With the right data and AI solutions, organisations in ASEAN can deliver personalisation on a scale like never before.
Jamie Quek, Director of Technology at The Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf, highlights the importance of this shift: “Our data transformation was the most important aspect of rebuilding our tech stack because, at the end of the day, we are a customer-first brand and are always looking out for our customers and trying to understand what they want. We needed to bring together our data to do that.”
From siloed data to a single source of truth
In the past, businesses struggled with data scattered across countless systems — databases, CRMs, and even physical locations. Consolidating this data into a central warehouse or lake for analysis was a slow, resource-heavy process, often facing challenges like long ETL (Extract, Transform, Load) times, security risks, and incomplete or outdated data.
Even when data was consolidated, unlocking its full value was difficult. Insights were often trapped in these systems, requiring manual extraction to access and act on them.
Today, there’s a better solution: Data Cloud. With zero-copy architecture, it harmonises data from disparate sources — from telemetry and customer transactions to unstructured data like social posts — into a single, reliable platform. This unified view of each customer allows companies to activate data in real time, seamlessly within the flow of work.
One business experiencing the benefits of unified data is Royal Enfield. The cult motorcycle brand transformed its approach to customer engagement by harmonising and consolidating over 80 data streams and 17 million profiles into 9 million unified customer profiles.
With Data Cloud, Royal Enfield has gained an enriched view of customer preferences and interactions, empowering them to deliver personalised, contextually relevant communications. This has led to a 100% boost in customer engagement, a 50% reduction in communication volume, and a 23% improvement in lead conversions.
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Unified data powers smarter, more strategic decisions
One of the greatest benefits of unified data is how it empowers teams across an organisation. When all departments — whether sales, marketing, or service — have access to the same real-time data, they can make faster, smarter decisions. Instead of piecing together information from scattered sources, employees can directly tap into the data they need within their flow of work.
Advantech’s implementation of Salesforce is a good example. When it first introduced Sales Cloud and Marketing Cloud, its teams saw benefits including a 93% reduction in time spent on tasks like creating opportunities and email delivery rates increasing to over 99%. Advantech’s recent rollout of Data Cloud has compounded these improvements by connecting data across sales, marketing, e-commerce, and service. With an end-to-end view of each customer, teams can deliver more personalised interactions and discover new growth opportunities.
“Bringing together consumer behaviour, preferences, and interaction history, we can predict customer needs and provide tailored products and services. This will not only increase customer satisfaction and loyalty but potentially help us expand and grasp new market and revenue opportunities,” says Gary Lee, Global Chief Digital Marketing Officer at Advantech.
Data Cloud also sets the stage for new AI innovations, including autonomous and assistive AI agents. Advantech is exploring how data and AI can work together to deliver increasingly personalised experiences, including solutions like Prompt Builder to automate tasks and boost efficiency.
The secret to autonomous AI? Unified data
For AI to deliver on its promise, it needs a foundation of unified, trusted data. Unified data provides AI with the context and accuracy required to deliver meaningful results. Without it, insights remain fragmented, and AI is limited in its ability to act effectively.
Data Cloud solves this challenge by unifying structured and unstructured data from any source into harmonised customer profiles—which can then be activated with Agentforce.
As the agentic layer of the Salesforce platform, Agentforce empowers businesses to build and deploy autonomous AI agents that seamlessly collaborate with teams, supporting both customers and employees. By combining human expertise with agents, businesses can create a workforce without limits — one that’s powered by unified, high-quality data.
Agents can handle complex, multi-step tasks, such as processing refunds or rescheduling deliveries. It relies on actionable, harmonised data to understand inquiries, determine the next-best actions, and execute those actions autonomously. Unlike traditional chatbots with preprogrammed responses, Agentforce uses insights from Data Cloud to make intelligent decisions and act with confidence.
For example, while a traditional chatbot might respond to a customer with, “Click here to check your order status,” AI agents powered by unified data can go further. They can access a customer’s transaction history, provide status updates in real time, reschedule a delayed delivery, update the estimated arrival time, and notify the support team if further assistance is needed.
Grounded in unified data from Data Cloud, AI agents don’t just respond; they proactively resolve issues, anticipate customer needs, and make informed decisions. This creates a seamless, highly personalised experience that drives satisfaction and builds loyalty at every interaction.
Building a data strategy to unlock AI’s potential
In ASEAN’s rapidly evolving business landscape, AI has become imperative for competitive advantage — and unified data is the essential foundation. By consolidating high-quality, secure data within a unified infrastructure, organisations across the region can unlock the transformative potential of AI agents.
To support your journey, we’ve created the Unlocking Opportunity in the Data and AI Revolution guide. With insights from 15 ASEAN business leaders, it explores how a unified data strategy is the key to driving AI innovation, business growth, and truly personalised customer experiences.
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