On July 9th, the Global Management Program (GMP) at Waseda University successfully hosted its third forum in 2024. Held in Room 201 of Building 15, the forum focused on HSBC’s (one of the world’s largest banking and financial services institutions) digital transformation strategy, providing students with a unique opportunity to delve into real-world business challenges.
Explanation of today’s forum by Professor Kim
The forum featured presentations and discussions on HSBC’s current state of digitalization, the challenges it faces, and its strategic planning. Similar to previous GMP forums, students from different seminars and years were grouped together to work on a pre-assigned task by Professor Kim, Assistant Professor at the School of Commerce. The task was to develop a digital transformation strategy for HSBC to achieve its goal of digitizing 80% of all services by 2026. This task was an extremely challenging case study that was given at the HKUST International Case Competition (HKICC) last year, in which the second batch of GMP students (currently fourth year students) participated.
Presentation of Group 1
Prior to the forum, each group drafted strategies and prepared materials through online meetings. Four groups that excelled in their initial video presentations were selected to present their solutions at the forum. These presentations showcased a variety of innovative ideas on advancing digitalization, such as “opt-out automatic digitalization,” “customer assistance through AI auto-learning,” and “digital education programs for customers.” After each presentation, the audience, GMP students who participated in HKICC last year, and Professor Kim posed questions and provided feedback, leading to lively discussions. At the end of the forum, awards were given to the best group and the best audience member.
The Best Group with Prof. Kim and the 4th Year Student Judges
“When working on this task, my group focused on differentiating between the current state of digitalization in Hong Kong and that within HSBC,” said Ryusho Kato, a fourth year GMP student. “We conducted in-depth research on underutilized digital areas. This forum was a great opportunity to learn about ‘the fusion of finance and digital’, a crucial topic for the future careers of business students like us.”
