Background
Companies worldwide are increasingly deploying technology to break down physical and geographical barriers. As we move towards the concept of a "global village", Hong Kong SMEs that lag behind in their effective use of technology, particularly vis-a-vis their Asian counterparts, will be increasingly vulnerable to external competitions. In addition, Hong Kong is increasingly seen as lagging behind its Asian competitors such as South Korea and Singapore in its e-commerce adoption. This is likely to have a long-term debilitating effect on Hong Kong's competitiveness as a service industry.
In 2001, the e-Commerce Adoption Campaign (ECAC) Organising Committee which is coorganised by the e-committee of the Hong Kong General Chamber of Commerce, the Hong Kong Information Technology Federation and the Hong Kong Computer Society have with the support of various government bodies, other major Internet and technology related associations in Hong Kong and other professional bodies such as the Hong Kong Society of Accountants to organise a series of campaigns to promote the use of the Internet for e-commerce purposes. The ultimate aim is to improve Hong Kong's competitiveness in the region through increasing e-Commerce adoption.
Following consultation with industry players, it was decided that the campaign would be kicked off with a Hong Kong wide B2C campaign to be followed by a B2B campaign. It was felt at the time that, without a critical mass of e-commerce end-users (whether for B2C or B2B purposes), businesses, particularly small businesses, would find it difficult to justify the efforts and costs associated with deploying e-commerce systems.
The B2C campaign - the tryitonline campaign - ended in mid-December 2001. Despite the relatively modest budget - most of the sponsorships were non-monetary sponsorships - and very difficult economic conditions, the campaign was well received, both by the participants and by consumers.
The Organising Committee therefore proposes to proceed with the plan to educate business users, particularly SMEs which often lack the resources of the bigger businesses to conduct market studies and appoint consultants and which have largely ignored the technological developments. The project aims to raise awareness of SMEs and to encourage effective adoption of e-commerce in Hong Kong so as to enhance the SMEs' overall competitiveness in the global market.
Objective
The project aims to raise awareness of SMEs and to encourage effective adoption of e-commerce in Hong Kong so as to enhance the SMEs' overall competitiveness in the global market.
Benefit and Project Deliverables
The project will take a four-prong approach:
- Isolating the key success factors and pitfalls through focus group sessions.
- Educating SMEs through symposium and best practices.
- Raising awareness of SMEs and consumers regarding the power and versatility of e-commerce through e-commerce roadshows.
- Assessing the benefits of the campaign through an end of campaign survey.
Focus Group Sessions and E-Commerce Blue-print Report
Hong Kong is often accused of lagging behind its Asian competitors such as South Korea and Singapore in its e-commerce adoption. While this belief is widespread and deeply-rooted (as collaborated by numerous surveys), it is difficult to isolate the real problems and concerns, and what options might be available for Hong Kong businesses to leap-frog their Asian competitors.
To get a solid handle on these issues, and to address the issue
of "how Hong Kong can do better than other Asian countries", we
plan to organise seven focus group sessions. Each session will concentrate
on one industry sector:
- Professional Services
- Trading and Wholesale
- Manufacturing
- Travel/Tourism
- Financial Services
- Transportation and Logistics
- IT Solutions Providers
The invitees will include not more than 20 attendees including:
- SME representatives with high/low e-commerce adoption level
- IT service providers and consultants
- Professional bodies
A facilitator will be identified to facilitate each discussion group.
The focus group sessions will be conducted in Cantonese. The number of sessions per industry group is to be determined at a later date. Each session will last about two hours.
We plan to analyse the issue from a number of focal points including business behavior, leadership, government vision and role, infrastructure and IT skills.
From the findings, we will compile an e-commerce business adoption report (the "e-Commerce Blueprint") to document the difficulties, concerns, findings, comments, advice and practical solutions and other data gathered from the sessions. The e-Commerce Blueprint will form the blue print for the remaining part of the project and will be made publicly available.
Business-to-Business Symposium and Best Practices
We expect the focus group sessions will highlight the weaknesses of Hong Kong SMEs, the threats to their survival and the opportunities for improvements.
Based on the findings in the e-Commerce Blueprint, we will organise a Business-to-Business ("B2B") symposium to educate Hong Kong SMEs on how to plan, build and deploy an effective B2B capability and to address the issues highlighted in the e-Commerce Blueprint. A number of service providers have expressed interest in participating in the symposium. For example, the Hong Kong Society of Accountants has indicated that it would like to participate in a session on how to convince CEOs/CFOs the value of IT projects from the financial perspectives.
At the symposium, we also plan to invite:-
- local and overseas e-commerce solution providers to showcase their e-commerce applications and services which might be appropriate for deployment by SMEs; and
- SMEs that have successfully deployed e-commerce solutions to share their experiences with other SMEs. This will encourage more and more SMEs to adopt e-commerce for their business survival and growth.
Roadshows - e-Commerce in Real Life
We appreciate that no amount of discussions and theory would convince the majority of the SMEs to adopt e-commerce solutions. We therefore propose to hold three roadshows to showcase the product and services of SMEs who have deployed (or are already in the process of deploying) e-commerce capabilities, particularly those who have deployed business-to-consumers e-commerce capabilities. This is intended to cover three aspects:-
- From Hong Kong General Chamber of Commerce' past studies, it was found that, ultimately, the consumers drive e-commerce traffic and adoption rate. Without a critical mass of consumers, businesses will find it harder to justify expenditure on e-commerce solutions. For the moment, the bulk of Hong Kong consumers purchases are still conducted via foreign sites (such as Amazon.com). The roadshows are intended to showcase what Hong Kong businesses have to offer and to encourage Hong Kong consumers to transact with local businesses.
- The roadshows should generate quite a lot of publicity. We aim to encourage SMEs who have not deployed e-commerce solutions to visit the roadshow and to see for themselves the potentials of these solutions and to learn from the mistakes of others.
It is often difficult for businesses to gauge the satisfactions of users of their e-commerce systems, partly because most users who do not like a website's system or interface, would simply avoid that site. The roadshows will provide a prime location for SMEs with e-commerce capabilities to showcase their services and to obtain 'on-the-spot' feedback from users. SMEs will be encourage to seek feedback and measure satisfaction levels during the roadshows.
End of Campaign Survey
At the end of the campaign, we will conduct a survey of participant SMEs to find out, amongst others, whether the campaign has raised their awareness of the issues and, if the campaign were to be repeated, how it could be improved. The results of the survey will be made publicly available.
