Judging from the rigorous discussion that took place in November at the famed Raffles Hotel in Singapore, the economy is truly beginning to see some light from behind the dark clouds of gloom and doom.
Keen participation from the attendees at this roundtable, themed ‘Making Better Decisions: Using BI, Collaboration and UC to capitalise on Economic Recovery’, saw lively exchange of views, yet tinged with a feeling of frustration among the IT experts who had gathered to share their minds. The event was sponsored by Microsoft Services.
Ross O. Storey, editor of CIO Asia magazine, kicked off the discussion by briefly mentioning the results of this year’s State of the Asian CxO survey.
“CIO Asia magazine’s latest State of the Asian CxO research, done in July 2009, has found a sharp focus, by senior executives across Asia, on business intelligence as enterprises position themselves for the economic recovery,” he said. “BI is now seen as the number one technology priority for 2010 alongside an ongoing management focus on aligning IT and business goals.”
On the other hand, unified communications is generally accepted to be a communications system that combines several elements, such as voice, voicemail, SMS, fax, video and even video conferencing. Said Storey: “In today’s connected world, with consumer technologies pushing into business, researchers have found that, on average, organisations now support at least seven different communication tools and applications used by employees.”
A July 2009 survey, by CIO magazine in the US, involving some 400 senior IT executives, also provides some pointers on how beneficial UC can be. Storey added: “This survey found that increased productivity (64 per cent) plus faster response times and delivery of information (50 per cent) were the major benefits.
“A separate 2008 survey, conducted by technology marketing consultancy Vanson Bourne, found that on average, companies save 10 per cent of communication costs using UC solutions, causing a 21 per cent improvement in customer satisfaction.”
Are organisations in Asia similarly taking the plunge into BI and UC, especially now that the economy is seemingly turning for the better?
Consistently, the message throughout the discussion was about finding the right decision support system that enables managers to make timely decisions, based on past records, explicit as well as tacit information culled from various sources.
Fact Hunting
The challenge, as sounded out by several participants, is how to ensure the data input into the system is of ‘high quality’, and that the resultant outcome from the system can genuinely be relied on to make sound decisions. While machines have not reached the stage where they can replace human brains cost-effectively, the ability to provide insight into various aspects of business operations is no doubt a big attraction for BI.
The trick is the distillation process—the careful setting up of parameters and statistical filtration that will produce highly refined outcomes that provide new information not available before. One possibility, as mentioned by Kenneth Goh, IS shared services director at Rhodia Asia Pacific, is the ability to spot new trends based on competitor information, market movement, price changes, and specific economic indicators to enable an enterprise to decide whether to invest further into a new initiative, or to cut back on production output to answer a potential glut in the market.
Difficult Task
Scouring the Internet for information can be as difficult as finding a needle in a haystack, said Lim Chin Siang, director, IT & technology group, with the Singapore Media Development Authority. While Google offers lots of results from a query, most of the information presented by Google is generally useless, since the results are based on how popular the query is, and not how significant it is, said Lim.
As someone who looks for investment opportunities, he often needs information that lies below the level reached by the general public. “Relevant information beyond public facts and figures is sometimes far more important for us to decide if we should part with our money,” Lim said, “as the true picture or snapshot of a company’s health may be hidden.”
As such, this MDA executive is after a solution that will provide the intelligence to transform tacit knowledge into explicit knowledge, so that senior executives, such as him, will be able to make informed decisions.
The challenge is also about finding up-to-date information. Quoting from past experience, Lim said that sometimes, information regarding a company would only surface six months later instead of at the time events unfolded, leading to inopportune decisions. “It is this ‘grey area’ that we are most interested in, rather than all the published data,” he added.
Stein Bang, senior director, IT&G Asia Pacific, at executive search firm, Korn/Ferry International, agreed with Lim. “This sort of information is very relevant to us, since we are in the executive search business. We need the right information—reliable information—to find the right people for our clients,” he said.
Friendly Chatter
Perhaps the best piece of information lies in friendly chatter among a group of people, but how to go about codifying or digitising such information into a form usable by an information system is an elusive exercise.
“Using commercially available information feeds such as Bloomberg or other services may help narrow our search scope, but what they provide is mostly public information; you want more ‘secretive’ information that can tell you more,” Bang said.
Goh commented that organisations which need market intelligence or specialised knowledge should subscribe for such intellectual property. “From Rhodia’s perspective, we are willing to fork out cash to subscribe to such services, but what irks us is not getting what we don’t already know. These services are still very wanting from our perspective, as we still can’t get the kind of information or market intelligence to have an edge over our competitors,” he added.
Michael Fung, director, office of strategic planning and quality assurance, at Singapore Management University, lamented that there is so much information out there and yet it can be very tedious to sieve out the relevant facts to help make a decision. He said: “If you need to buy a camera, you could talk to the shop assistant, read online reviews, or talk to friends. Is there an easy way to aggregate all this information?”
Similarly, he asked what must be included in a set of queries in order to identify a suitable executive during a head-hunting exercise, and how to target the search under specific fields. These questions constitute an emerging field in the study of knowledge management, a field that SMU is focusing on.
Robert Poh, director, security services, of Singapore’s Integrated Health Information Systems (IHiS), said collaboration is very important in his organisation, which is the amalgamation of all the IT staff from all the public hospitals in Singapore into one unit.
One area of its operation is the training of doctors where they would need to collaborate with others. For instance, doctors need to understand from radiographers regarding patients’ X-ray images. Collaboration becomes useful when doctors and radiographers are not physically at the same location, as technology enables fast sharing of information online.
IHiS is also looking at mining historical information such as medical records kept as far back as a century ago to help provide better medical care. Poh too mentioned that the biggest challenge is how to get people to come up with what to find and share. “Decision and time is critical for the outcome of a patient treatment,” he said.
Sharing Records
Already, there is some degree of sharing of patient medical records. “Among public hospitals, doctors can access their patients’ medical records wherever the patients move to.
“However, only at the point of care will the patient’s information be pulled out from the doctors’ desktop. This is to ensure patients get the right care, and the availability of such records ‘on demand’ is important.”
While unified communications (UC) is still some distance away from being fully implemented in most organisations in Asia, various aspects of it have already been taken advantage of. One of them is the use of instant messaging or IM, once considered (and still is) an insecure form of online communication.
Kong Fook Keong, IT director, corporate information systems, at Certis Cisco Security, said he is looking into UC, or other collaborative kinds of applications, to enable different offices within the organisation to work better together, both from the cost as well as usability perspectives.
“We are starting to look at capitalising IT platforms for progress, and for our own connectivity, and at investing on simplifying our information processes.”
UC has helped Nokia Asia Pacific to realise cost savings, in addition to productivity boosts. Said Ng Kok Keong, head of business infrastructure, Asia Pacific, Nokia: “We have been using Microsoft Office Communications Server (OCS) for a year now. From the console, you can see the status of your counterpart overseas, and with one click, start an online chat with them. The communication is instantaneous, and it also saves on costs.”
He added that the next level of integration would be to use voice over IP to reduce telecommunications costs. The discussion on BI invariably touched on the art of spotting trends so that managers can guide the business forward.
Thomas Martin, Asia Pacific marketing lead at Microsoft Services, commented that before you can make sense of the huge amount of data collected, you should first look at the process of data formation—what type of data is captured, and how it is stored.
Next is the search capability built into the query engine, so that relevant search results can be obtained. Trend analysis is only possible when there is meaningful data to begin with, he said, and technology is available to help organisations achieve their goals.
What to analyse
However, participants also highlighted that what to analyse can also be highly subjective. Said Mark Lim, head, IT and infrastructure at Tiger Aviation (Tiger Airways): “How do you spot trends? You never know whether you are ahead of the competition, and some healthy sense of paranoia is useful to keep you on your toes. We all know it is tough to be the leader of the pack—chasing someone is easier than setting the pace.”
He added that in a group, different people talk about different things. The finance department might spot a trend based on cost analysis alone, while the marketing people might highlight a different trend. Making sense of it all, and putting it in a way that helps guide the organisation forward is a big challenge.
Samuel Liu Jian Yun, director, information services at Singapore’s Republic Polytechnic, said in his organisation, all the basic components of BI are already in place: the data warehouse, capture of historical data, and the use of data mining tools.
“Next is external integration,” he said. “We are asking ourselves, can we have some intelligence to grab external information and turn it into comprehensive information? These are some of the challenges we face.”
Perhaps organisations need to go back to basics.
Said Martin: “In my organisation, information sharing starts with the individual, and it starts from the top. I think you have to get people to share information sources by setting your own example.”
BOX 1: Delegates at the roundtable
- Mark Lim, head, IT and infrastructure, Tiger Aviation (Tiger Airways)
- Thomas Martin, Asia Pacific marketing lead, Microsoft Services
- Kong Fook Keong, IT director, corporate information systems, Certis Cisco Security
- Robert Poh, director, security services, Singapore’s Integrated Health Information Systems
- Stein Bang, senior director, I&TG Asia Pacific, Korn/Ferry International
- Lim Chin Siang, director, IT and technology group, Singapore’s Media Development Authority
- Paul Loke, senior assistant director, computing and information systems, Singapore National Heritage Board
- Philip Chua, director, heritage technology services, Singapore National Heritage Board
- Ng Kok Keong, head of business infrastructure, Asia Pacific, Nokia.
- Samuel Liu Jian Yun, director, information services, Singapore’s Republic Polytechnic.
- Kenneth Goh, IS shared services director, Rhodia Asia Pacific.
- Michael Fung, director, office of strategic planning and quality assurance, Singapore Management University
Moderator: Ross O. Storey, managing editor, Fairfax Business Media Asia
