The impact of SARS on the business community in Hong Kong was immediate and intense. During the weeks in which the crisis was at its peak, face-to-face meetings were frequently replaced by phone or email communications. Employees worked from home to avoid public transport and supervise children whose schooling was disrupted. And companies drew up or refined contingency plans to cope with temporary office closure.

While most firms did not need to put their business continuity plans to the test, many small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) did try out new ways of remote working. With the crisis now thankfully in the past, these companies have learned from their experiences to emerge as stronger, more flexible organisations.

Cost savings and efficiency

By giving employees the means to temporarily work from home, SMEs have discovered that not only can telecommuting staff help to maintain business as usual during a crisis, but also that providing mobile-working options to certain personnel can reduce costs, raise operational efficiency and promote job satisfaction.

This was certainly the case for Mutual Fit, an electronics original equipment manufacturer (OEM) specialising in voice and music integrated circuits. A classic SME with operations in Hong Kong and China, Mutual Fit adopted e-business in early 2003 to enhance inter-office communication, empower travelling sales staff and improve working efficiency.

It standardised its IT system using some off-the-shelf software products, and implemented a virtual private network. This put at its disposal video conferencing, a workflow system that improved the efficiency of the office workforce by up to 20 percent, and an enterprise resource planning (ERP) solution that shaved up to 20 hours off purchasing order processing time and reduced inventory by 40 percent.

With its new system, Mutual Fit estimates that it will save HK$4.4 million on an initial investment of HK$450,000 over three years. What it did not predict was that the IT system would be of immeasurable value in the face of an unprecedented health crisis in the Pearl River Delta. In spite of the disruptions caused by SARS, the company was able to continue to collaborate with its Mainland colleagues and to allow Hong Kong staff to work from home.

Overcoming IT challenges

Like many SMEs, Mutual Fit had to overcome the twin challenges of a limited IT budget and a lack of in-house IT expertise in setting up its new system. While it had the ability to carefully plan its systems upgrade and seek out the right technology partners for the job, many companies trying to quickly ramp up their mobile working capabilities in response to the SARS crisis did not have this luxury.

Help was at hand in the form of a number of joint initiatives by the local IT industry. In early April, the Hong Kong Computer Society and Microsoft Hong Kong initiated a free online and phone IT support service to help companies maintain normal business activities by boosting their "working from home" capabilities. Support was provided to both individuals and business organisations facing difficulties in setting up a mobile business work environment over the Internet, with many callers experiencing problems with improper remote-computing infrastructure settings.

Later that month, a large cross-section of the IT community joined with the government to form the DO IT! Coalition to help Hong Kong recover from the SARS crisis. Among the initiatives so far announced by the group are the DO IT! Small Enterprises Support Scheme, designed to let SMEs purchase their first computer at below cost, the DO IT! Value Scheme to help companies jumpstart their IT systems with discounted hardware, software, applications, constancy and telecom services, and an IT in Health Forum.

Accelerating the e-business trend

Before SARS became a business issue, SMEs in Hong Kong had already begun to rely more on email communications and high-speed broadband access.

According to the "Survey on e-Business Adoption in Hong Kong" conducted by the Information Technology Services Department and the Hong Kong Productivity Council between July and December last year, 57 percent of the 2,000 local SMEs surveyed had set up individual email accounts for staff and 69 percent used broadband connections. This compares favourably to the 2001 survey where 52 percent of establishments were found to use only one email account for the entire company and 62 percent still relied on dial-up rather than broadband Internet access.

SMEs that had adopted e-business practices were enthusiastic about the cost savings and improvements to work efficiency, as well as opportunities to create new sales channels and enhance customer service. However, some 47 percent of establishments in Hong Kong were found to neither have adopted e-business nor have any plans to do so in the next six months.

It will certainly be interesting to compare these figures to the results of e-Business Adoption Survey due out in December of this year.

The impact of SARS on SMEs has accelerated the shift to mobile work practices and a broader appreciation of the benefits of e-business and m-commerce. IT can revolutionise traditional business methods, giving SMEs access to company and customer information anytime, anywhere and any how for better customer service, greater operating efficiency and dramatic cost savings. Hong Kong has an opportunity to turn this unprecedented health crisis into an unparalleled opportunity to enhance its e-readiness and resilience and help our SMEs -- the backbone of the economy -- to realise the importance of technology and equip themselves to be more competitive.