As individuals, communication comes to us as easily as breathing, but do the same principles apply to corporations?
To shed light and dispel myths, CIO Asia profiles several organisations—from the small nonprofit to the hotel chain and the large logistics companies­—with important lessons to impart.

Communications, they say, is integral to any organisation, in any industry: weld it well and watch it drive business; neglect it and live with the consequences.

Straight from the Heart
As a non-profit with few resources at its disposal, Food from the Heart (FFTH) realised that with creativity and ingenuity, even something as pedestrian as short message service—commonly known as SMS—can be a key business driver. Sexier technologies such as WAP and GPRS were raised as alternatives, but were eventually tabled in favour of using the most widely accessible medium.

It is a deceptively simple concept: FFTH uses SMS to manage the collection and delivery process of food and non-perishables to lower income families. Its receipts of goods that would otherwise have headed for the dump reached S$2.8 million (US$1.7 million) last year.

Using food trek, the SMS reporting system by Fujitsu, FFTH's 1,500 active volunteers send messages from their mobile phones directly into the database with minimal attention from FFTH's three full-time staffers. The resident workhorse—a middleware that facilitates real-time reporting—pre-processes messages to capture text and validates its accuracy; another layer of middleware is on hand to retrieve those records.   

FFTH then moved to customise food trek to meet its needs. Knowing that striking a balance was critical, it then designed the system to be detailed and yet simple enough for the average user to navigate because too much information would increase the margin of error, but too little could hinder operations. It was finally decided that the volunteers would need to send in the keyword, action, quantity and delivery order number, with the additional information gleaned from the volunteer's route and mobile number.

In the spirit of continual upgrades, a map-based tracking system for real-time snapshots of operations has been developed. It constantly checks the database for the latest updates, which are reflected graphically to allow staff to determine, at a glance, the status of collections and deliveries.

Mistakes were inevitable in the beginning, but those began to taper off after volunteers found their rhythm; it also helped that FFTH made adjustments to food trek. "We gained more experience as we went along and realised what kind of data we really wanted and how to extract the information more easily so that at one glance, we could check on our volunteers and also see the quantity collected," says Christine Laimer, founder of FFTH. "We also used it to fine-tune our overall system to avoid food wastage. The last thing we want to do is over-supply someone, which is something the system helps us check against and avoid."

FFTH also studied the patterns of volunteers for common errors that could be corrected during off-line processing. One such example is training the system's AI to recognise the difference between the letter "O" and the  number "0".  

FFTH also has a standalone backbone database for management of data on recipients, bakery partners and volunteers, as well as to coordinate the 226 routes they take. Although it is ideal to marry the two systems, Laimer says there are no such plans in the pipeline because it would introduce unnecessary complexity. "There would be so much input that it would be very difficult to sufficiently train the system to know everything," she says.

Compromise is not an option
Watch Mark Kendall, Grand Hyatt Singapore's area information systems manager, interact with guests and you have living proof of the hotel's commitment to exceeding expectations.  All this comes naturally for someone steeped in the traditions of hospitality.

It is with this business philosophy that Hyatt set out to retrofit the hotel with a S$1 million (US$0.6 million) upgrading project, installing leading edge wired and wireless network infrastructure from Cisco Systems. This is  aimed squarely at catering to the discerning business traveller—accounting for up to 75 percent of Hyattt's customer traffic —who need Internet access anytime and anywhere.  

Hyatt has seen Internet traffic at the hotel surge since the infrastructure went live in 2003, a statistic Kendall attributes to growing connectivity demands. "We also have an easy-to-use service, one that's available through more than one method—not just in the room but virtually everywhere else," he says. "We wanted to approach it from the aspect of providing total connectivity by catering to every need in the market today."

Leveraging technology as a key differentiator on the crowded events and conferences front is also part of the hotel's strategy. "We wanted to create a unique selling point of the hotel and that's to focus on technology," says Kendall. "We didn't put this in because we were running behind, we put this in to demonstrate that we're specifically catering for a niche technology conference market."

With its mind set on wooing these customers, Hyatt went for broke. "When we have had some major conferences, the clients take out several floors to create their own network. All the cabling is separate to the hotel and it all goes back to one separate location, which is the sub-server room in the middle of the meeting facility. It's strategically located within the conference area so technical people can come set up and manage a business network that is traditionally only found at a convention centre," says Kendall. "We designed an infrastructure and facility that would specifically make it easier for the setup and tear downs for this kind of networks and its administration."

He adds: "All our conference areas have multi-mode fibre, single-mode fibre, CAT-6 cables and wireless, which covers every spectrum without going through the general power outlets. At the bottom end, you've got CAT-6 copper, so even if we run ISDN through a meeting room, we utilise CAT-6, not standard phone lines. If you bring in an ISDN line in other places, you're running through their telephone system and multiple MDFs. You pay a premium for ISDN because it has to be a high quality line and we ensure that by making sure that we're using direct connections through CAT-6 to get the best signals."

Although coy about revealing too many numbers, Kendall says that the system is paying for itself. It was not installed with a direct ROI in mind, he adds, because its greatest advantage would be seen through the ripple effects of indirect revenue. "We see it as an investment, something that helps us land a conference and win 2,000 room nights because we've spent the money on the best technology to support the conference business," he explains. "We would not have these kinds of high-profile IT conferences had we not invested so substantially."

Communicating in the High Seas
Dancing around the problem of exchanging data with its customers was starting to give COSCO Logistics blisters. The serious disconnect of exchanging data between the organisation and its partners, who had myriad systems and formats, raised demands for a seamless, real-time exchange platform link between Logistics Management Information System and Enterprise Resource Planning systems.

A Sybase solution was employed to enable an integrated messaging infrastructure for exchange of business data usingXML. By customising business flows, message matching and format transformations, the system automatically validates, formats and processes messages.

COSCO Logistics has since reported improved service levels and reduced operational costs. The automated process cuts down the time spent, translating into shorter ordering cycles, reduced inventory cost and removes uncertainty from the entire process. "Before we put the data exchange platform in place, COSCO Logistics and our customers all had different systems and no automatic conduit to talk to one another. Information exchange was difficult," explains Xiao Zhang, CTO of CoscoNet

e-logistics, in Mandarin. "Post-installation, the biggest obvious advantage is that after the system receives the orders, it automatically processes the information and reverts to the user almost immediately. This draws us closer and makes for a much more cohesive working partnership with our users. We have timely knowledge at our fingertips into all the orders and know things like which stage of processing the customer's in, if his goods have been delivered or if he's received the orders."

The benefits have also rippled through the entire supply chain. With better visibility into the whole process, manufacturers have enjoyed faster shipments, a more efficient delivery system, reduced logistic costs and better inventory management and forecasting, while transporters now have prompt warehousing and dispatching, proper storage management as well as improved reporting to their customers.

Improving the quality of service has helped strengthen COSCO Logistics' competitiveness in the market, says Zhang, who cites the example of how its attempt to complement the IT systems of home electronics vendors has made it the premier choice for them. "In the short term, customer satisfaction means we have more orders and increased revenue," he adds. "We believe this is a window of opportunity for us in the long term."

There is no clear-cut way to answer the question of ROI, says Zhang, because there is more than a single factor at play.  "The system makes my entire logistics operations better. This business has improved tremendously in recent years after we started adopting IT systems extensively, making it into what you see today," he adds. "As time goes by, the ROI becomes more and more obvious."

Touching briefly on the problem of standards, Zhang concedes that a major problem for the industry is a lack of common standards. "While there've been common standards used internationally, there is still no mature standard used in China. Our only option now is to have middleware to adapt to the different systems everyone uses," he says. "We do acknowledge that having standards is an important thing to us and as the biggest logistics provider in China, we need to gradually lead the industry towards developing common standards. Doing so will have a relatively significant impact on the local logistics industry."

No laughing matter
PSA Singapore Terminals now enjoys crystal clear communications after deploying the TETRA (Terrestrial Trunked Radio) digital communication system from Motorola—which offers integrated voice and data capabilities—at its five terminals earlier this year to replace an antiquated analogue platform.

The S$9 million (US$5.4 million) investment may seem like pocket change for the world's largest transshipment hub, which handled a record volume of 20.6 TEUs in 2004, but it goes a long way in an industry that relies on fast and reliable communication to maintain frequent contact, facilitate decision-making and information exchange and coordinate movement of equipment and cargo. "The old system reached a point where we needed to make a move on investing in the latest technology to be efficient and reliable," says Christopher Ong, Head of Engineering, Singapore Terminals, PSA Corp.

TETRA is an open standard defined by the European Telecommunications Standardisation Institute (ETSI), developed in response to the scarcity of frequency. This new technology circumvents that problem by multiplying the frequency to give a four-fold increase in the number of channels. "Channel frequencies are limited resources everywhere, including Singapore. It's a challenge for us as we consider the increase in facilities that come with our expansion—we're developing 15 new berths by 2011 as part of a long-term growth strategy—which means we need wider coverage to support more users. The existing analogue system has reached its limit in terms of capacity and we would've needed to ask the iDA [Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore] for more channels and frequencies," says Ong. "So while technically we could've continued on analogue, it would have been very expensive and nearly impossible in practical terms."

With the technology designed to bring management across the five ports under one roof for greater efficiency, PSA would no longer be constrained by servers or base stations that work specifically from a particular location. "Going digital reinforces the integrated and seamless connectivity of our four terminals so when it's installed by end 2005, we have an integrated network management system to communicate with greater ease and efficiency," says Ong. "Since we adopted the system at Pasir Panjang Terminal five months ago, there's no voice traffic congestion since it has better channel efficiency."

This is particularly important for PSA, which has multiple party communications requiring dialogue between berth operations, key crane operators, supervisors working on the ground and aboard the ship, the control centre, prime movers and yard crane operators. "In the existing system, the guys have to switch sets to communicate when a truck goes from one terminal to another because they don't work together. With the new system, it doesn't matter to the driver where he moves to because he uses the same set to communicate," says Ong. "So now I'm operating on systems that can be brought across the board which is important for connected and seamless operations."

It is also a critical communications medium at the ports in case of emergencies. "Take for example someone on the ground sees a container or some accident about to happen. He could press a button and call back to control room, bypassing whoever's in front of him to reach the control centre," says Ong.

Even the best have to be vigorous in defending their position. Ong says: "In terms of ROI, I can't put a thumb on how many dollar and cents. Ultimately what we can see as the potential for benefits is that efficiency of communicating information, which will translate into much better efficiency in our operations as well as serve our customers faster and better," says Ong. "Ultimately, we're always looking for technology that helps us better our operations because that's very important to PSA's customers."