[COVID-19 Transformation] Morning with Dawn Delivery... Contactless Commute and Leisure

Post-Corona, an Era of Great Transformation...<4> Untact Economy
A Day in the Life of a 40s Office Worker... 'Digital Literacy 24 Hours'

"We are currently witnessing the spread of remote work that will be remembered in history, along with digitalization across all fields such as medicine, education, administration, and entertainment. With creativity added to numerous telecommuting situations, future services will become even more digitalized," explained Bob Swan, CEO of Intel, describing the great transformation triggered by the novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19). As he said, unprecedented changes are occurring where the untact culture is spreading and the 'digital transformation' of society as a whole is accelerating due to COVID-19. The way we work has changed to telecommuting and video conferencing, and the adoption of smart factories and robotic process automation (RPA) in production has accelerated. Untact services such as online education and telemedicine have emerged, and distribution systems have been established where orders are placed via mobile and contactless delivery is received. The digitalization of the entire value chain of our society is rapidly progressing. This is both a crisis and an opportunity. It has become an essential task for individuals, companies, and governments to develop capabilities to respond to this digital transformation in preparation for the 'post-COVID' era. The theme of the 15th plenary meeting of the Presidential 4th Industrial Revolution Committee held on the 28th of last month was 'Post-COVID and Digital Transformation,' reflecting this context. On that day, the committee members unanimously agreed on the need to enhance the productive 'digital literacy' capabilities of all citizens. What is digital literacy in the post-COVID era? To grasp this somewhat vague concept, we looked into the day of a man in his 40s.

◆A Day Starting with Dawn Delivery = Mr. Kim Euntaek (pseudonym) begins his day by waking up early and opening the front door. Although it is still early dawn and dark, there is invariably a box placed at the door. He has already received a delivery completion message, like a wake-up alarm. After opening the box, he picked up a well-packaged ham salad sandwich and fresh fruit juice for breakfast. These were added when he purchased fruits, vegetables, and meat for today last night. Taking a bite of the sandwich, he once again thought about the convenience of dawn delivery, which has now become part of daily life.

Being able to receive the products he ordered before going to bed the next dawn was made possible by investments in logistics infrastructure by companies providing dawn delivery and artificial intelligence (AI) technology. Coupang, which started dawn delivery in 2018, has built a frozen and refrigerated logistics infrastructure equivalent to 14 soccer fields to keep products fresh. As of last year, there are 168 Rocket Delivery Centers nationwide, and about 34 million consumers live within a 10-minute delivery radius from these centers. The AI system analyzes customers' ordering patterns to enable timely stocking and rapid shipping.

◆Telecommuting, Collaboration Tools, and Video Conferencing Are OK = After finishing breakfast, he began preparing for work. The commute is about 5 meters?from the kitchen to the desk in his study. Although a short distance, he does not take it lightly. He changes into work-appropriate clothes, brews a warm cup of coffee, and sits at his chair with a serious mindset, turning on his laptop. Although at home, he does not feel inconvenienced thanks to cloud collaboration tools that enable remote work. Not only global companies like Google and Microsoft (MS) but also domestic IT companies such as Channel Talk, Eastsoft, NHN, and Toss Lab offer such tools. For example, Channel Talk provides a 'team messenger' function for team collaboration. It can be linked with customer consultation messengers, supports large file transfers and storage, and allows conversation content searches. In the first quarter of this year, when COVID-19 became full-fledged, Channel Talk's sales grew more than 2.5 times compared to the same period last year.

Sometimes, face-to-face communication is necessary during work. In such cases, video conferences are convened. The global surge in video conferencing solution users is due to the increase in telecommuting and remote work. MS Teams video communication usage increased by more than 1000% in March alone. On March 31, the daily Teams video conference usage time was 2.7 billion minutes, three times the 900 million minutes recorded on March 16, showing a tripling in just half a month.

◆Meals: Delivery vs. Drive-Thru = After finishing the video conference, lunchtime quickly approaches. Children who attended online classes at home are urging him to choose lunch menus. Recently, with increased time spent at home, the use of delivery apps has become frequent. Barogo, a delivery agency, handled 21,029,000 deliveries in the first quarter of this year, a 93.9% increase compared to 10,848,000 deliveries in the same period last year. However, relying solely on delivery food every day is not feasible. He often goes out to buy food via 'drive-thru.' Even when going out, the number of times he uses a private car rather than public transportation has increased. According to the financial platform BankSalad, from December last year to February this year, public transportation transactions decreased by 58.47% in number and 52.44% in amount. The variety of foods available through drive-thru using a car is increasing. Recently, he bought assorted sashimi from Noryangjin Fish Market via drive-thru, earning praise from his family.

In the afternoon, he has to briefly visit the office. Although most work is untact, sometimes he needs to go to the smart work center where the office is located. To enter the company building, he undergoes a facial recognition process. If he walks at his usual pace, authentication is completed in 0.3 seconds through a walk-through facial recognition system. This is also made possible by AI technology. AI can infer the front face based on self-learned data even if the side face of the entrant is captured on video. Lee Youngjong, a senior researcher at the AI Strategy Center of the Korea Information Society Development Institute, diagnosed, "The normalization of untact, non-face-to-face, and contactless lifestyles due to COVID-19 has increased demand for digitalization, accelerating digital transformation across industries, and AI has emerged as an important means of digital transformation."

◆Shopping and Leisure Also Untact = After finishing work at the office and returning home, it is well past quitting time. He needs to prepare a gift for Parents' Day, which is just around the corner. Without hesitation, he accessed an e-commerce site. Various family month promotions with discount benefits were underway. According to a mobile survey conducted by e-commerce company TMON targeting 400 people aged 30 to 50 living in the metropolitan area, about half (51.8%) chose online channels for gift purchases. He frequently uses online shopping not only for gifts but also for various daily necessities. According to the 'Online Shopping Trends' recently announced by Statistics Korea, online shopping transaction amounts in March reached 12.5825 trillion won, an 11.8% increase compared to the previous year. The proportion of online shopping transaction amounts in total retail sales also reached a record high of 28.2%. Lee Heeseok, a professor at the KAIST Business School, explained, "During the COVID-19 emergency, other advanced countries such as the U.S., U.K., and Japan experienced panic buying of fresh food and daily necessities, but Korea remained calm because e-commerce is relatively more developed here than in those countries."

After completing gift purchases, the next task is laundry. Without having to carry heavy laundry to the laundromat, the entire process of collection, washing, and delivery is completed untact within a day through a mobile app. If laundry is placed in a smart collection box at the door by 11 p.m., it can be received by midnight the next day. The startup Laundrigo, which provides this service, grew 48% in March compared to the previous month, handling laundry orders from 20,000 households per month.

After finishing laundry, it is time to wind down and enjoy some personal leisure. His recent hobby is participating in online book clubs. Reading community services such as Trevari organize various online meetings. Since April, Trevari has been operating 'Lan Line Trevari,' a messenger-based reading community, where participants can read and write about selected books untact, receiving enthusiastic responses. The April Lan Line Trevari, limited to the first 200 participants, sold out within a week of opening.

After the online book club and purchasing items to be delivered the next dawn, he went to bed. Although he spent the day untact, fatigue still comes. As he drifted off to sleep, he wondered what kind of day he would face tomorrow.