To be listen the story two of last lesson regarding a CIO wonders when he will be accepted at top management meetings, I want to pinpoint some issues of CIO today. The CIO role is inherently challenging because it is constantly beset by conflicts and problems. Unlike his other executive peers, I think that a CIO not only has to resolve issues internal to his own functional unit, but as a service provider and a business enabler, he has to resolve issues between IT and other functional and business units. Furthermore, he has to facilitate and resolve issues among various functional and business units as a business partner. But this role is only the beginning. The CIO is also supposed to add value to the enterprise as a strategic visionary and a company executive.

The root cause of most of the challenges confronting IT organizations today is the CIO’s inability to lead and manage alignment, starting with IT/business alignment. Not only must the CIO’s vision be strategic and well aligned to the business, his entire IT organization, from top to bottom, needs to be well aligned both internally and to the business.

I believe that IT is not only about technology, however, but rather about applying information technology to create a competitive advantage for a business. In short, if CIO handle the good job of alignment of IT and business, the more opportunity to create competitive advantage of their business environment. In the contrary, misalignment causes a multitude of symptoms, such as IT project delays and cost overruns, poor and unresponsive IT service, runaway IT spending, frequent infrastructure outages, a general business perception of low IT value, and a sense of definite problems with IT, the solutions to which are not clear.

I want to share one point as my boss always say: Do something different. When there is a change, there is opportunity. Be proactive. To ensure the effectiveness of the IT within organization and its continued success, CIOs should strive to continually adjust people, processes, and organization to realize incremental improvements, which add up over time. In today CIO, he should focus on leadership and management and on providing vision and high-level strategies of IT.

I think Outsourcing / Offshoring delivery of IT services is more popular in Hong Kong organization. An outsourcing / Offshoring of IT service has been the catalyst for a major shift in the buying and hiring behavior of organizations in Hong Kong. Some analysts predict that this growth will continue. Let take my company as an example, My Company headquarters is based at U.S. and the country offices, factories are distributed all over the world. My company size at Hong Kong is more than 1000 but only has I.T. department with 7 people which include the head named as I.T. manager. In this small team, they are work as the coordinating role with other functional department and find some solution helping the business growth.

For other major I.T. tasks such as help desk, server maintenance, e-mail maintenance, computer set-up. etc., are outsourcing to CSC, global I.T. services provider. This is a global contract between my company headquarter and CSC. Therefore, as one of the local country office in Hong Kong, we have not the opportunity to participate the contract negotiations and the terms and conditions have already bound. As such, as one of the functional staff in Hong Kong, we have not clear to know the service scope coverage. Any clarification shall forward to headquarter and waste a long time.

However, in practice, CSC also sublet part of the I.T. service support to one of Hong Kong I.T. firm. The help desk service is remaining to provide by CSC Singapore. If my colleague has any enquires, he / she can ask to CSC help desk and have the language choice by English or Chinese but this method is so remote. Another ways to ask for help, it is a resident staff appointed from CSC sublet local company. He / she can give closer (in front of P.C.) consult, investigate, suggestion.

In fact, it is more difficulties to establish good ‘contractor-client’ communication. In my opinion, the problem consists of the two main factors – cultural differences and geographical remoteness. At first, the culture shock often becomes a major barrier on course of intercultural exchange. As applied to CSC to my company, the issue of cultural differences is not that material, CSC Singapore speak fluent English and also arrange some CSC staff who have ability to answer Chinese enquires. The second, as CSC sublet a local company & a resident staff stay in my Hong Kong company office, geographical remoteness now is to reduce to a minimum.

Last Saturday, I had attended an enjoyable lesson topic of Electronic Commerce. I want to list some point of view and the lessons learn at this blog for sharing. Nowadays, I believe that Hong Kong places great importance on its role as an information technology and electronic commerce hub. Although the Internet bubble had burst for a few years ago and many Internet start-ups had gone bankrupt or disappeared. Internet activities and e-commerce transactions seems no any sign of slump. One of the major factors can be seen from the increase in Hong Kong’s broadband access. Internet has been the catalyst for e-commerce, increasing replacing proprietary networking systems.

One of the essential issues about question of electronic commerce is opportunities or threats? Electronic Commerce created a new business model. Business transactions can be placed faster and wider. It opens up enormous market opportunities for sales and for new types of retailing. However, the challenges of copyright, taxation, security, privacy…. have been created at the same time. For example, let to talk security problem. Are current standards, such as SET, is adequate? Whether the current practice in Hong Kong can offer enough customer protection? Or these issues only lay the issue of credit card issuing banks

Remember the case discussion during the lesson last Saturday. “I live in Hong Kong and use a Canadian intermediary….” The second question is “Which tax law applies?” With the growth of the Internet, more and more questions related to Internet taxation have arisen. At this point, I want to share my opinion regarding Hong Kong current taxation problems of electronic commerce which may affect to access Hong Kong sources of income and taxable profits:-

1.      Easy for tax avoidance – Computer servers can place on different countries, it can simply used as a storing equipment or run by a computer programme.

2.      Easy for tax evasion – Customers will receive an electronic confirmation for order placed, and their payment by credit card or by cheque can directly deposit into personal bank account with nobody knows. Electronic Commerce traders sell their product and services through Internet and all trade records only stored in computer equipment and these electronic data can easily to modify.