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Best Practice Awards 2004
Best Practice Management’s annual Best Practice Awards is now in its fifth year and has become an established fixture in Hong Kong’s business calendar. The 2004 Awards presentation, held on 4th November at the Sheraton Hotel and Towers, recognised best practitioners across a broad industry base. Flexibility, commitment, teamwork, enthusiasm, ethics, customer awareness and ability to embrace change and thrive in competitive environments are descriptions that apply equally to all winners, regardless of category. The quality of their people, their dedication, abilities, adoption of corporate values and performance are highlighted by each company as the major contributor to their success. Needless to say, recognition of the importance of best practices and the need for continual improvement is fundamental to all. The winners of Best Practice Awards 2004 are:
We’d like to thank the following companies for sponsoring the Best Practice Awards 2004
In his amusing and informative keynote address, Mr Mike Rowse, Director-General of Investment Promotion, Invest Hong Kong, praised Best Practice Management’s initiative and foresight in assisting to raise the international profile of Hong Kong companies. Mr Rowse took the audience through the background of the establishment of InvestHK. He explained that the organisation was established following the recommendations of external consultants (PricewaterhouseCoopers) and the first thing he did on taking up his position was to ask the consultants for a report on “how to do things properly”. The implementation of the report, including the introduction of a “rare concept for government” – a very specific business plan outlining targets to achieve and results to be delivered - led to “huge changes” which produced results: within 2½ years, he was invited to the United Nations to make a presentation on Best Practices for promotion agencies. New Foreign Direct Investments for 2004 amount to 200 investments, a 40% increase over 2003, itself a 21% increase over the previous year. Mr Rowse gave full credit for InvestHK’s success to his staff – he “hired 40-50 young Hong Kong kids and left them to it”. At a recent meeting with his staff to discuss InvestHK’s goals for next year he said his Deputy commented they “have to do better.” His initial reaction was one of “how?”, but he realised “he’s right”. “Best practice is not a place, a destination, but an attitude of mind, a journey”, said Mr Rowse. Gold Sponsor
The Gold Sponsor of 2004’s Best Practice Awards was Urban Group, a member of NWS Holdings Limited and Hong Kong’s largest property asset and facility management group. Mr Francis Chiu is Urban Group’s Director of Corporate Services. He informed us that less than 4% of companies in Hong Kong are still in business after 25 years – Urban has been in business for 40 years. Mr Chiu praised Best Practice Management’s vision in establishing the Awards, a platform, he said, that was shared by Urban. A key element of Urban’s success is the recognition and adoption of best practices. Urban’s brand heritage of continual improvement has been built by utilising best practices that are delivered daily by employees to ensure a high level of customer satisfaction. For the past 3 years, Urban has selected a strong contingent of managers to attend the Best Practice Awards in order to allow them to learn from a diverse range of industries and gain a cross-industry perspective, from which they can not only draw new ideas but also be reminded that today’s best practices can become obsolete – the need is to stay ahead. As Mr Chiu pointed out, if you do what you always did you will get what you always got! Urban is striving to achieve world class best practice standards. To accomplish that, it is necessary to benefit from others’ wisdom: “we all need to learn more – we can’t know it all no matter how smart we are”. Silver Sponsor
The MTR Corporation Ltd’s Management Training and Development Manager, Francis Mok, observed that the world is moving forward quickly - he remembered the days when not every household owned a telephone – now it is more a matter more of how many mobile phones a person has rather than whether they have one. In a rapidly changing environment, one of the best ways to fast track learning is benchmarking best practices. As a progressive company and a learning organisation, Mr Mok said the corporation was proud to be a sponsor of the Awards and be part of a system that contributes to Hong Kong being a world class city. Best Practice Award Winners and Category Sponsors Mr Peter Greenwood, Director & Company Secretary, CLP Holdings Ltd, presented the 2004 Best Practice Award for Corporate Governance to Mr Michael Lee, Managing Director of Hysan Development Company Limited.
Ms Kerry Ching, CEO of INVESCO Asia Ltd, presented the 2004 Best Practice Award for Customer Relationship Management to Dr. Edmond Cheng, Managing Director of Urban Group.
Mr Norris Hickerson, Director & General Manager, COL Ltd, presented the 2004 Best Practice Award for Outsourcing to Mr Steve Siu, CEO of CargoSmart Limited.
Mr Steve Tait, Head of Human Resources Asia-Pacific, HSBC, accepted the 2004 Best Practice Award for Simplicity from Mrs Cindy Cheng, Sales & Marketing Director of Octopus Cards Ltd.
On behalf of Mr Rajaish Bajpaee, President and Group Managing Director of Eurasia International (China) Limited Partnership, Mr Marko Baer, Eurasia’s Group Vice President, Corporate Development Group, accepted from Ms Pauline Chan, Assistant Vice President, Customer Management, PCCW Ltd, the 2004 Best Practice Award for Supply Chain Management.
Mr Deric Probst-Wallace, General Manager, Property Services, Hysan Development Company Ltd, presented the 2004 Best Practice Award for Technology Deployment to Mr Chan Wing-Wah, Managing Director of Cascade Limited.
Ms.Teresa Au, Head of Training & Employee Development, Asia Pacific, HSBC presented the 2004 Best Practice Award for Training & People Development to Ms. Susanna Li, HR & Training Director, McDonald's Restaurants (Hong Kong) Limited.
Dr Edmond Cheng, Managing Director of Urban Group, presented the 2004 Best Practice Award for Innovation to Mr Atul Malik, Country Business Manager, Citibank NA Hong Kong.
Synopses of Presentations
Hysan Development Company Limited is a leading property investment, management and development company. Property interests extend to some 4.7 million square feet of high quality office, retail and residential space. Mr Michael Lee, Hysan’s Managing Director, and Ms Wendy Yung, Head of Corporate Services Division, explained Hysan’s management philosophy with particular regard to corporate governance, which is ingrained in the system: stakeholders are defined as everyone with whom the company comes into contact, and corporate governance practices are applied consistently. Tenants and shareholders are both classified as business partners. Corporate governance is not looked at in terms of processes but as a framework that engenders fairness, discipline, and accountability; one that drives elements from top to bottom, and creates transparency. Once the top leads the way forward then it helps people below to think that way too. Corporate governance is not “static” but an ongoing process, and continuous improvement is a fundamental value in Hysan. Citibank NA Hong Kong offers a complete range of world-class financial products and services to help customers in their total wealth management. Mrs Maisie Lam, Director of Human Resources, and Simon Chow, Director of Consumer Finance, Citibank Global Consumer Group, outlined Citibank’s global strategy of Innovation. Their long-established vision is to be “the most innovative financial services company” and over the past 2 years they have put an innovation structure in place. Maisie and Simon explained that innovation is the process of turning ideas into practical realities. Innovation is classified into 4 basic types, and all are linked to customer value. The evaluation criteria includes time to market – how quickly can ideas be implemented; and the technology needed – availability and cost requirement. No ideas are wasted – some that don’t qualify in terms of the selection criteria can be applied to other functions. For each idea that is launched, it is tracked as product revenue over 24 months. Innovation has no beginning, no end. The important thing is to build the outline and embed Innovation into the organisation, daily life, and activities – anywhere, any time, any place, innovation is to be part of daily life. That will be Citibank’s focus during the next 2 years.
Eurasia Group of Companies is a wholly owned subsidiary of Hamburg-based Bernhard Schulte Group, in e of the world’s largest independent ship management groups. Eurasia manages a diverse fleet of vessels providing technical management, crew management, marine consultancy and maritime catering management services. Mr Rajaish Bajpaee, Eurasia’s President and Group Managing Director, shared some of Eurasia’s best practices. Of key importance are people, their skills, knowledge and attitude. Ships are US$100 million factories and it is critical that the values and management styles of their captains and crew are aligned with the organisation’s. Management structures such as the 4 Pillars, customised to suit Eurasia’s unique requirements, have been put in place. Throughout Eurasia, all functions are benchmarked annually against best practices in companies outside the shipping industry (for example, delivery is benchmarked against UPS) to ensure continual improvement. The strategy that has always been adopted is to “deliberately” delight not just customers, but the customer’s customer. Mr Bajpaee stated that, once their demands are met, loyal and delighted customers are assured. HSBC was established in 1865, and is one of the world’s largest banking and financial services organisations through the provision of a complete range of personal, commercial and corporate banking and related financial services. In Asia-Pacific, the Bank operates through some 570 branches and offices. Mr Gabriel Huen is Senior Training Relationship Manager, Personal Financial Services with HSBC’s Training & Employee Development Asia-Pacific Department. He said the Bank’s “secret” is its solid foundations and systems that allow maximum flexibility. All projects within the Bank have to be judged on a Return on Investment basis and Learning Solutions’ start up cost of HK$500,000, comprising primarily staff costs, were judged against the benefit of the considerable time saved by staff in identifying the correct and/or relevant training course on offer to them. Learning Solutions has simplified the process so significantly that, from approximately 13 minutes, it now takes only 3 minutes - which in dollar terms is estimated, using existing payroll, at a saving of HK$1.1 million since the first launch of Learning Solutions. One of the initial considerations at the design stage was the ability to update the online material easily and efficiently. Time to market is the major challenge for the future – how quickly Learning Solutions can be updated. Face-to-face and classroom training hours haven’t been diminished; rather, training is now more effective and sophisticated.
CargoSmart Limited is one of the most advanced portal and integration providers for the ocean container transportation industry. Customers use CargoSmart to help manage their shipments with multiple carriers throughout the shipment cycle. Launched in October 2000, CargoSmart now has over 12,000 active registered members. CargoSmart has a very strong relationship with its outsourcing partner, Hewlett Packard. Mr Steve Siu, CargoSmart’s Chief Executive Officer, explained that, as a multiple carrier portal, the company works in a very mixed environment, with customers also outsourcing to third parties. Outsourcing the hosting of its production applications and its customer support help-desk to a carrier-neutral third party vendor enables CargoSmart to maintain its ocean carrier neutrality and allow information and statistics to be shared. CargoSmart can focus on development and promotion, while Hewlett Packard focuses on providing quality data centre services. Business and IT need to work closely together and achieve alignment. Relationship building is critical: working as a team with one outsourcing partner is more than a Service Level Agreement and contractual management – continual discussions are essential. Both parties have made very heavy investments and it is to mutual benefit that the relationship flourishes. McDonald’s Restaurants (Hong Kong) Limited is Hong Kong’s largest chain of Western quick service restaurants, with a network of over 200 restaurants. It has a clear training roadmap from top to bottom, with set programmes and an emphasis on teamwork that creates a fun place to work where a lot of magic can happen. Susanna Li, McDonald’s Human Resources and Training Director, said that over the past 2 years the core development program and management development program both have been revised and updated and revamped so as to be more user-friendly. The framework for managers’ curricula has been adopted from head office in Illinois and localised to make it “more interactive and fun”. elearning is being introduced for crew to enable them to refresh what they have learned from classroom and on-the-job training. All staff undergo a minimum of 40 hours of training each year, the cost of which amounts to approximately 3% of the company’s profit. A lack of age discrimination, combined with a very diverse culture and a broad, mass market, customer mix result in unique training requirements. Recruitment plays a very important role in identifying the personal characteristics required; and an effective training programme moulds staff into the McDonald’s culture of super efficient and effective counter service by a team of friendly and caring staff. Three levels of measurement track consistency of service and offerings and assist in identifying opportunities: Using absolute standards, full time consultants visit competitor restaurants every month; Mystery Shoppers pay 3 visits to restaurants monthly (in the morning, lunchtime and evenings, to track consistency); and every quarter 600 survey forms are collected from each store from focus groups.
Urban Group is Hong Kong’s largest property asset and facility management group, with a portfolio covering 320 projects with 180,000 residential units, 20 million sq ft of commercial and industrial premises, and 33,000 car parks, serving over one million people in Hong Kong. Mr Bevis Leung, Urban’s Senior Group Manager, Marketing Services, highlighted that it’s the quality of relationships that is important and Urban’s 40 years’ experience in service recognises that satisfaction isn’t enough – customers need to be committed. Urban has a wide spectrum of customers, from those in the Mid Levels and Peak to those living in public housing estates. Senior managers and front line staff visit customers daily and Urban’s 24/7 Customer Service Call Centre, and websites for each facility, allow for greater customer relationship enhancement. Commercial and industrial premises are visited regularly so as to understand customers’ needs and ensure any necessary preventative measures are implemented to fulfil customers’ requirements. Urban’s Crisis Communications Centre was established during the SARS outbreak in Hong Kong and is continually being enhanced to ensure crisis prevention and reduction through the reduction of risks, time wastage and poor resource management. A 3-Tier Crisis Communication Alert System was introduced in early 2004. Communication is the most important tool used in order for frontline mangers to be able to take decisive action. Cascade Limited is a subsidiary of PCCW, Hong Kong’s premier telecommunications provider. Cascade designs, builds and operates network infrastructures to manage the flow of voice, data and multimedia information, providing technical and consulting services in Hong Kong and throughout the Asia Pacific region. Cascade is the first Asian technical services company holding the prestigious TL9000 certification for technical support and network management, and has consistently been recognised by external parties as being the best in Asia. Mr Peter Yu, Cascade’s Senior Vice President, Network Services, outlined Cascade’s achievements. eCentre is the company’s supreme network management centre designed with a “manager of Managers” concept to position eCentre as the Master Centre over the second layer of network management centres for voice, data, broadband, Internet Protocol, Netvigator services and the UK’s wireless broadband service of PCCW’s telecommunications services. The telecom industry has become even more competitive over the past decade and the strategy is not to lower price but to give value. Cascade has changed from equipment management to network management to service management, and is turning technology into business value to both customers and the company itself through the deployment of the latest technology. Mr Yu stated that the Cascade is exporting its technology, encapsulated in eCentre, worldwide, particularly to China but also to Southeast Asia, notably Indonesia and Thailand.
Into The Future All suggestions are welcome so as to ensure that Best Practice Management’s commitment to make the Awards best in class will be fulfilled. Gold Sponsor
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