個案總覽

In 2003, a year in which Hong Kong's small and medium-size enterprises faced an extraordinary disruption of normal operations as a result of the outbreak of SARS, the advantages of Internet-facilitated, remote-access solutions such as IP-VPN, telecommuting capabilities, and video conferencing became all the more evident. In February 2003, the Information Technology Services Department and the Hong Kong Productivity Council released the results of their biannual survey on the progress of e-business adoption in Hong Kong. The survey found that 47% of active businesses in Hong Kong had not adopted and/or did not have any plans to adopt online business capabilities (in even the most basic forms) within a six-month, forward-looking time frame, an increase of three percentage points over the previous survey. As a result of economic difficulties, a number of businesses had abandoned basic Internet capabilities such as e-mail accounts and company Web sites altogether to save on operating costs. Just one month later, many of these companies had reversed course and were scrambling to deploy technologies to support business operations as uncertainty gripped the region. In what ways were network technologies able to assist small and medium businesses in contingency planning? What were the long-term cost and efficiency improvements that might be realized with a "virtual office" capability? Examines how some businesses have enhanced their Hong Kong and regional presence by deploying technologies to facilitate communications and collaboration.

TradeCard Inc. is a New York-based financial supply chain service provider focused on serving importers and exporters. Its product--TradeCard--aligns the documentary and financial requirements of a domestic or international trade transaction with the physical movement of goods. TradeCard launched its product in Hong Kong then moved on to open representative offices in Asia. In November 2002, TradeCard Inc. decided to enter China. Not only is China considered to be the biggest market in the world but most of TradeCard's biggest customers in the United States, Europe, Hong Kong, Singapore, and Taiwan have their products manufactured in mainland China. With China's accession to the WTO, foreign companies, including TradeCard Inc., are eyeing China as a very promising market. However, China has yet to develop its legal, financial, and technological infrastructure to accommodate international players. Discusses how a structured B2B online payment system such as TradeCard can be marketed in China and how TradeCard Inc. can create a critical mass of users in China.

Formed in late 1996, Boeing Australia Ltd. (BAL) was a relatively new company and a global extension of the U.S. firm, the Boeing Co. BAL developed capabilities in the areas of space and communications, site management, and the upgrade and maintenance of military aircraft and equipment. As BAL grew, so did the legacy information system it used for both internal communications and external dealings with customers. BAL, however, faced difficult decisions as it sought to upgrade its procurement systems and processes to improve operations. In early 1999, BAL recruited a new national procurement manager, Russell Menere, whose immediate task was to look for gains in productivity by improving procurement processes, either through cost savings or by reduced processing time. To meet this objective, Menere initiated a number of short-term improvements. These included the rationalization of a large number of BAL's suppliers, improving BAL's relationships with its key suppliers; the introduction of a credit-card purchasing system for low-value, large-volume consumables; and the adoption of electronic ordering processes with BAL's larger suppliers. In 2002, with new opportunities available through e-business technology, Menere needed to decide what BAL's next step should be. Should BAL invest in a new system that would simplify the procurement process across different divisions and support complex interfaces with suppliers? Should BAL continue to sit on the fence and seek short-term improvement tools for integration with its existing legacy systems?