| |
 |
 |
 |
| CIO-Asia.com,
January, 2002 |
| |
| Three
CIO 100 honourees made millions out of thin air, thanks to
wireless technology. - By Winston Raj |
| |
| HONOUREES
IN THIS STORY: |
|
 |
Hong
Kong Jockey Club - Hong Kong |
|
www.hkjockeyclub.com
|
|
Great
Eastern Life Assurance Co. Ltd - Singapore |
|
www.lifeisgreat.com.sg
|
|
Keppel
Logistics Pte Ltd - Singapore |
|
www.keppellog.com.sg |
|
|
 |
There
is reason for the wide grin that Steve Beason wears
nowadays.
The two-time CIO 100 honouree, who is the executive
director for IT at the famed Hong Kong Jockey Club,
knows much about building systems to appease the gaming
urges of the public - it's a trademark that he has learned
through working in the gaming industry for more than
20 years. The trick he says "is not so much in
building new systems for gaming, but to better enable
the high rollers to get more into the game." |
|
|
| In
Hong Kong, passion for gaming reaches frenzied levels in horse
racing. It's not far from the truth when taxi drivers comment
that the island nation holds its breath when a horse race
is going on. High demands begets high expectations, and to
meet them Beason furnished his jockey club with a comprehensive
IT system that automates, streamlines and secures the club's
proprietary betting system—an effort that won him a CIO
Award last year. But that was not the reason for his grin. |
|
| Beason
wanted to do more than build automated systems that handled
traffic very well. He wanted to further increase the "satisfaction
for the club's high value customers in on-course areas."
The higher the satisfaction level, the more the money spent
on betting, he reasons. |
|
Steve Beason
Hong Kong Jockey Club
|
"So
I looked to provide mobility for customers placing bets
while retrieving all necessary information," says
Beason. "Such an alternate choice of betting services
that provides a personalised, informative, and a one-stop
interface of betting services to on-course customers
would coax them to cough out more money from their pockets,"
he says.
So with the help of a local firm, he built SpringBoard
modules for betting, and distributed it with over 5,000
Handspring Visor PDAs to on-course customers. "This
provides a secure avenue for customers to bet at the
race course while moving around," says Beason.
"You can even batch several bets at one go, and
the module can work with both colour and monochrome
PDAs." On top of that, the modules are tamper-resistant.
"The data will be immediately erased if someone
tries to change it or open it," he adds. |
|
|
| So
far the PDAs have been a hit, with over US$1 million dollars
being transacted within a week of its launch, notes Beason. |
|
| But
he knew that such a system alone would not be enough to win
the hearts and minds, and most importantly, the wallets of
the club's own high rollers. And so in addition to the Visors,
he built Wireless Interactive Terminals that "facilitate
mobile, secure betting transactions as well as racing and
betting information to their customers over wireless LAN."
|
|
| Each
US$3,000 terminal uses a Fujitsu Stylistic LT P-600T Pen Tablet
that is touch-screen based, and operates on the Windows 2000
platform. The wireless LAN was provided using Lucent Technologies'
wireless systems linked to an internally developed enterprise
website that provides the club's information on racing, betting
and organisation profile, plus other interactive services.
|
|
| The
Club is currently pilot testing four terminals at the members-only
areas. "It has so far been a hit with the customers,"
says Beason. "Before that, we used the 9,000 close-circuit
TVs to bring in the information, which showed revolving betting
odds. But with the Wireless Interactive Terminals, you can
see specific odds for a particular race without having to
move out of the members-only lounge. It adds a touch of personalisation." |
|
Presently,
the four terminals are only for informational data access
only. Beason is looking into tying the systems together with
a wagering tool, but admits that it will take time. "We
have had some brute force attacks over the month through the
Internet, so we are cautiously looking into setting up a secure
wireless platform using the new WEP standards at the moment,"
he adds.
No matter what the costs are, Beason reckons that the gains
have far surpassed his own expectations, which is the chief
reason for his wide grin - and the reason why his project
is part of the CIO 100 list. |
|
| When
life becomes great |
|
| Mark
Lim Kian Wei was glad that he has lived to see the launch
of his compny's portal, Lifeisgreat.com, that weaves in the
advantages of wireless technology - and in Lim's case, very
profitable advantages. |
|
| A
year ago, however, the Head of IT and eBusiness at regional
insurance giant Great Eastern Life Assurance Co. Ltd was all
jitters. Lim was in the midst of setting up an insurance mega-portal,
as part of the company's re-branding efforts, to increase
the speed of acquiring new sales leads through the Internet.
|
|
| But
Lim wanted more than just a channel to acquire new leads.
He also wanted those leads to be serviced even faster. He
sought a way for his agents to be notified of potential customers
at the website, almost instantaneously. "Or else, we
will be losing those potential customers," he adds. "After
all, that is why these customers come to the website in the
first place - to be immediately served." |
| |
Wireless
technology was the obvious choice, but it was still
in its infancy and riddled with a myriad standards and
protocols - all of which held their promises and nagging
drawbacks. Great Eastern Life was also not in the mood
to experiment. In fact, financial institutions are never
known to be at the forefront of technology. "It's
not that we do not want to use leading-edge technology.
But we can't afford to have one that will turn into
a bleeding-edge one," says Lim.
"And that is because our greatest asset is people's
trust in us - without it, we are nothing." |
|
Mark Lim
Great Eastern Life Assurance |
|
|
| Lim,
however, had an edge: he was no technology fanatic. "In
fact, my roots are from the business-side, and not from the
technology-side," says Lim, which is the reason he chose
the 160-character long Short Message Service (SMS) as the
medium for information transfer. "Everyone is using SMS
nowadays and it is a natural medium to notify agents of potential
customers," adds Lim. |
|
| He
was also not too fazed by the highly-touted potential Wireless
Application Protocol (WAP). "Look at the number of WAP
phones in the market. There aren't many. Basing our future
on a technology that is not widespread is a bad business decision,"
says Lim. "Going SMS was more practical." |
|
| Along
with the Marketing Department, Lim and his team build a Lead
Management System that automatically channelled product enquiries
instantly and directly to the company's agents. "An SMS
and e-mail alert would be sent to the selected agent. Our
SMS server is two-way, which means that the agent could simply
acknowledge the lead by replying 'Y [send]' and the details
of the lead would be streamed via a second SMS to the agent,"
he adds. With the system, Lim estimates that an agent could
respond to a user through the phone within 15 minutes of enquiry.
|
|
| "Any
leads that are not acknowledged within 24 hours would be reassigned
to another agent for follow-up. An agent who fails to acknowledge
his or her lead within 24 hours for three times would be blocked
from receiving further leads," says Lim. This ensures
that the SMS system will be fully utilised and not abused,
he adds. |
|
| The
new system increased Great Eastern Life's daily hit rates
at their website by a whopping 270 percent, with the new SMS-aided
Lead Management System generating more than "S$756,000
[US$445,000] in new premiums in just about 8.5 months since
the launch of the portal in January 2001," says Lim.
"The closing rates of online sales leads stand at about
15 percent, which is a very promising figure compared to leads
from traditional channels such as newspaper ads." |
|
| Even
as Lim nervously laughs at the tense moments he had when building
the Lead Management System, he is careful not to rest on his
recently acquired laurels. Currently, he is in the midst of
launching a WAP-based application, called i-Planner, that
provides Web and wireless Internet users with an objective
tool for preliminary fact-finding. |
|
| Such
a setup, Lim hopes, will increase the closing rates of sales
leads, while boosting revenues at a time when the industry
is in the midst of de-regulation and when local players need
to thwart the ambitions of global insurance giants - a hope
that has helped Great Eastern Life earn a place on the CIO
100 list. |
|
| At
the logistical centre |
|
| Although
wireless technology was used to reap profits at both the Hong
Kong Jockey Club and Great Eastern Life, they were deployed
at the periphery of their infrastructure. But Singapore-based
Keppel Logistics Pte Ltd wanted wireless at the centre of
theirs - a concept that etched worried creases across CEO
Claus Czisla's forehead. |
|
| Why
the gamble? "Keeping customers well-informed has always
been a key element of success at Keppel Logistics," says
Czisla. "And putting wireless technology at the centre
of our infrastructure will help us leap-frog the barriers
that we encounter with traditional wired technology."
But to do that, he needed a technology that would not clog
the system, which could delay vital information about the
delivery status of customers' goods. |
|
| The
logistics giant had, however, no time to wait for the perfect
wireless solution - if there were such a thing. As the pace
of competition increased around the region, Czisla needed
to ensure that his customers were well-fed with reliable and
accurate information about their goods in real-time. Otherwise,
competition would eventually catch-up with Keppel Logistics,
he says. "To counter this, our logistics management system
needed to have updated and real-time delivery status information." |
|
| So
Keppel Logistics started an intensive search for a cost-effective
wireless solution with "a real-time delivery status update
capability." Czisla did not want a proprietary solution,
however, that could have solved his needs. "It would
have been expensive. Besides, we wanted to use the existing
and more familiar GSM network instead." |
|
| A
wireless turnkey solution, based on PalmWindow's onHand SMS
Server and Sun Cobalt servers, appeased Czisla's needs and
concerns. "All we had to do was power up to gain instant
access to high volume SMS messaging through PalmWindow's SMS
hub service network without hefty infrastructure investment,"
he says. |
|
| Furthermore,
PalmWindow maintains a single point access for SMS messaging
directly to Singapore's three telecommunications carriers:
Singapore Telecommunications Ltd, MobileOne Asia, and StarHub
Pte Ltd. This frees Keppel Logistics from worrying about inter-network
capability. |
|
| The
workings of the wireless infrastructure are deceptively simple.
The onHand SMS Server enables Keppel Logistics to provide
an electronic version of the delivery orders (DOs) from the
data generated by its existing Logistics Management System.
This is then sent to the assigned delivery crew's mobile phone
as an SMS message by staff from operations. |
|
| Upon
delivery of the goods, the delivery personnel then sends an
SMS message of the corresponding DO back to the SMS server,
which immediately updates the status of the goods in the Logistics
Management System. "Hence, a near real-time update of
delivery status of goods is achieved," says Czisla. If
there is a problem, the delivery crew can also send an SMS
to customer service for immediate attention. |
|
| "Now
we are able to get real-time delivery status information from
our delivery crew as and when the goods are delivered,"
says Czisla. "Moreover, the system provides an effective
solution that improves our customer service and distribution
management with the use of mobile phones." It certainly
is effective enough to put Keppel Logistics on the CIO 100
list. |
| |
  |
| |