Puay Chin Tan

Senior Digital Strategist (Asia)

A marketing technology leader, guiding organizations through the maze of martech choices for marketing in a digital world.

Based in Singapore, her foray into digital marketing began with her role as IT Director, marketing for Unilever’s companies across Asia, Africa, and Russia (AAR) regions. She led the creation of new and innovative ways for brands to connect and engage with consumers and developed the best-in-class digital capabilities for Unilever to build and grow its brands.

As China’s digital economy leapfrogged the world’s, Puay Chin spearheaded the drive to make Asia the forerunner in leveraging digital for growth in Unilever. She designed agency ecosystems and developed solutions to operate in China’s unique digital landscape, architected and built the digital ecosystem for the B2B foodservice business, helping it gain 600,000 followers across 360+ cities in 10 months; integrated the ecommerce operations between many partners and ecommerce giants to manage 200,000 orders per hour; initiated AI-driven natural language processing pilots for consumer contact centres.

A strong advocate of technology-driven business growth, Puay Chin actively works with start-ups and thought-leaders to leverage digital innovation, AI technologies, big data insights, and performance measurement to build and grow brands. She also co-developed the digital up-skilling program for 200+ marketers and developed the comprehensive “mobile-first and social” digital training and certification platform for teams ranging from graduate trainees to VPs.

Puay Chin’s forte in managing complex organization changes and business process transformation was honed early in her career, as Assistant Director of Operations for National Computer Board, merging the data centre operations of 11 Ministries of the Singapore government into a single data centre and transforming 11 disparate operations teams into a 60-strong central team whilst enhancing efficiencies of vital government functions. When Unilever needed someone to lead the integration of Client and Technical support services across 12 countries, Puay Chin ensured user satisfaction levels exceeding industry standards within a year. Later, as IT Director for R&D and Marketing in AsiaAMET, she was responsible for the development and deployment of the packaging artwork management process and system in 46 countries in 18-months.

With a strong ability to connect with people, Puay Chin has had many successes in setting up departments from scratch, merged teams from disparate organizations, and managing teams across both cultural and geographical divides. Equally passionate about people and technology, Puay Chin has also facilitated numerous culture change and digital transformation workshops from Pakistan to Japan.

In her spare time, Puay Chin works as a CFO (Chief Food Officer), seeking out delectable and scrumptious eats across South East Asia, and is also an avid traveller. She is intrigued by all things oriental and has explored 56 cities in China and 54 in Japan…and counting!