The introduction of AI to Esoft’s production will also be of great importance to Esoft Vietnam. The combination of new technology and a highly specialized workforce will make Vietnam a powerhouse in Esoft’s global supply chain.
Asia means much more than assembly line factories and access to cheap labor.
In Esoft’s case, our long-standing presence in Vietnam also equates to access to highly specialized labor and a large body of talent in software and IT.
Esoft employs more than 700 people at its office in the Vietnamese capital, Hanoi, and with the implementation of a range of AI solutions across Esoft’s organization (https://labs.esoft.com/chasing-the-perfect-image-esoft-launches -its-first-ai-solution/), the Hanoi office will play a key role in Esoft’s global supply chain.
“A large part of the value enhancement of Esoft’s solutions takes place in Vietnam,” says Thomas Frisenberg, CEO at Esoft Vietnam. “AI can make us even better and even smarter at this.”
“AI can help ensure that we can also use our Vietnamese employees for work tasks that are more value-creating than we do now,” he continues. “Not just in relation to our products at the current moment, but also those we will deliver tomorrow and the day after tomorrow.”
400 Photoshop Specialists
Since 2007, Esoft Vietnam has grown under Frisenberg’s leadership, transforming from handful of employees to more than 700 specialists servicing customers on five continents, with solutions in the field of image and video editing.
“Esoft employs about 400 Photoshop specialists in Hanoi, and it is these employees, among others, who will find that the AI solutions free up time for other, more exciting work tasks than basic image editing,” Frisenberg says.
“We already offer a number of retouching solutions, but this is something we can scale up even further thanks to the introduction of AI – partly because our employees can dedicate more time to such tasks.”
AI will Streamline Quality
From a purely commercial viewpoint, quality, consistency and efficiency are three of the keywords for Frisenberg when it comes to the impact AI will have on Esoft’s customer deliveries.
“AI can help streamline the quality of our solutions. There is absolutely no doubt about that. And given that AI will free up resources in the organization, it will also enable us to develop new add-ons to our solutions and make us competitive in new markets.”
A Southeast-Asian Tech Hub
Since 2000, Vietnam has been one of the fastest growing economies in Southeast Asia. According to World Bank figures, GDP per capita grew by a factor of 2.7 from 2002 to 2018, and more than 45 million Vietnamese people were lifted out of poverty in the same period.
After several years in the country, Frisenberg has experienced first-hand how Vietnam, and Hanoi in particular, has developed into an East-Asian tech hub for software development as the economy and living conditions have greatly improved.
The talent pool is as big as the competition for talent is fierce. Frisenberg also hopes that the increased strategic focus on AI and data can make Esoft an even more attractive workplace.
“We want to attract the right specialists from outside and, at the same time, upgrade the skills of some of our existing employees, because we can see that we will need some different and more creative skills in the future,” he concludes.