“Automation will be the key solution”

Joanne [email protected] Photos: Cheong Kam Ka Hosting 2015 Macau Banking Automation Day, local IT company TechNet teamed up with Hitachi in a bid to introduce automation technology to Macau’s banking industry. PC Wong, head of TechNet, said Macau is facing critical challenges such as the human resources shortage, strict labour import policy and sky-rocketing rentals, the solution to which, he believes, is automation What’s the purpose of hosting Banking Automation Day? The 2015 Macau Banking Automation Day is hosted by TechNet Technology, which is a local company established more than 10 years ago. We’re facing a lot of the challenges of our customers, such as the human resources shortage. The situation of the small and medium enterprises (SMEs) is very critical, due to the high operational cost, including the human resources and the rental of commercial buildings, and you know Macau has a very strict labour importation policy. Therefore, even if you have the global resources in other places in the world, you cannot just put them in Macau and utilise them. We believe Macau has a very good foundation for the automation technology to grow and automation will be one of the opportunities to resolving the challenges of Macau’s industries. And banking is your starting point? Definitely. We selected banking as our starting point because banking is one of the automation-applied industries of the world, such as our daily use of ATMs, and in Hong Kong and the US they’ve already been using what we call virtual teller machines but at this moment Macau’s finance and banking sector is still very traditional. That’s why we teamed up with Hitachi, one of the leaders of automation technology in the world. By leveraging the automation technology application from Hitachi, we will benefit most of Macau’s industries, which is why we wanted to host this event. What’s TechNet’s role in this partnership with Hitachi? We started the partnership with Hitachi two years ago. Firstly, we began with their technology but not automation. And now we are announcing to the Macau market that we’re moving forward from the technology side to automation. Of course, we have our ultimate target, which is having robotic technology in the future. We also want to educate and promote local Macau people, to train up their skill-set, to apply the technology and try to improve the general quality of Macau citizens. We hope we can make some contribution to Macau society. What do you expect from this partnership? We believe this programme will be very significant in the coming two years. The reason is that automation can help the banking industry to lower their costs. We’ve conducted research showing that when you’re conducting a transaction by human, it will cost a few US dollars. But when you’re conducting a transaction by ATM machine it will only cost less than US$1. And if you do the transaction through Internet banking it will only cost a few cents. However, for the banking transaction, if you’re handling cash, you have to use the ATM machine at least. We believe the Macau market is growing. For example, Studio City is opening this year. The new Galaxy property has just opened. Next year, we’re expecting a few other properties, such as Louis XIII, MGM, Parisian and many more. All the openings will require a lot of human resources. Isn’t there a risk of excessive job demand? Macau’s supply cannot fulfil the future job demand. With the banks continuing to open branches in each casino resort what would happen is that they will be facing a tremendous challenge in hiring people; and they would have to pay a considerable amount of rental for the space; thirdly, it would be very critical for them to maintain their businesses. That’s the reason why automation may be the solution to help banking provide a stable, quality service in the future to adapt to the future business environment in Macau. That’s also why I think we should and could achieve full automation. How is Macau doing so far in terms of automation compared to neighbouring regions? There’s definitely a big gap. What I can tell you is that in the finance and banking industry we are far, far behind Hong Kong, Singapore, and even Mainland China. There’s a huge gap for us to catch up. However, we have limitations to [closing] this gap. We don’t have enough high quality and knowledgeable people. We even cannot find enough IT talent in Macau. The people graduating with IT majors here in Macau have been dropping every year but the demand for IT professionals is growing. We also lack computer/mechanical professionals in Macau. When you don’t have this kind of people, how can you achieve the goal? Anyway, our business goal and our revenue goal is not stopping. We understand that gaming revenues are dropping but the non-gaming business is growing. That’s why it’s a very good timing for transformation. Why good timing? On the one hand, the business is growing, the property market is growing, and the banking business is required to grow together. On the other hand, there’s a shortage of human resources – you cannot find enough people in the local Macau market. And the policies of labour importation limited the growth of local SMEs. Therefore, if you want to solve the critical problem of Macau’s current situation, you cannot just depend on human [resources]. We need to apply technology. We need to apply automation. What will be the biggest challenge in applying full automation? I don’t see it as a big challenge. Most Macau citizens that often go to Hong Kong and Mainland China have already seen the banking systems and the automation technologies applied there. They see that the banking service is completely different from Macau, as well. They’ve been asking how come Macau’s banking service is so behind Hong Kong and other places. That’s why from the consumer market point of view, we believe they have the expectations. What’s lacking is someone to introduce global resources to Macau. At the same time, we only have 600,000 population in Macau, but how many tourists do we have each year? We have a huge number of tourists each year. When these tourists come over from Mainland China and other places of the world, they also need to access their finance through banks. They need to get cash through the ATM. They need to spend the money through their credit card, etc. we believe that banking automation will not only benefit local residents but also Macau tourism. We need to adapt to the global trend. And we need to close the gap in order to develop our tourism sector as well. Why did you choose banking as the starting point for automation? Banking has already applied automation since the ATM machine. Banking also has a very big impact, from Internet banking to mobile banking widely used in Hong Kong, Mainland China and the US. Banking is one of the industries that has already well accepted automation technology. Macau is missing some motivated organisation to apply that. We believe banking is the easy way in and it’s the most conceptually acceptable for now. We’re currently just introducing the automation for ATM machines, to introduce the smart and intelligent system based on ATM. We’re not inventing something completely new here, otherwise there will be fear, which we understand. For the first step, we may do some smart system based on the ATM system. For the second step, we will introduce a virtual teller machine that can totally work as a teller at a bank. These technologies are very common in Hong Kong, Mainland China and the US, but not in Macau. Macau should seriously catch up. Where do you see TechNet in the Macau market? We see ourselves as an innovative system integrator. We cannot invent a robot for Macau. We cannot find enough resources to provide the solution for Macau enterprises. But we have the power and ability to leverage global resources. We can help to set up a solution or build a system to assist Macau’s local banking and finance industry. Why didn’t you enter the IT field in Macau more than a decade ago? We found a very big room for Macau to improve in terms of information technology. Macau has been growing very fast and we also understand that much of the infrastructure, conceptual new products or solutions cannot be applied in Macau because no-one’s doing that. We also see good solutions from elsewhere all around the world. But most of the international big brands feel Macau is too small. There’s the truth. Sometimes these big international brands can’t justify setting up offices, research centre or even a sales office in Macau. And that’s exactly why Macau always lags behind in a lot of areas and service solution or something like that. Macau cannot attract these big names to come to Macau and they also find it difficult to employ people in Macau. Even when they want to come they find it is very difficult even just to maintain the operation of a small office – it’s hard to find people; employee turnover is very high, rental cost is much higher than Mainland China, even Hong Kong. That’s why we want to go out. We believe we can be the integrator. That’s our position and where our value lies. What experience would you like to share after more than a decade of operation? The company has around 40 employees right now, with the majority technicians, such as IT. Currently, our main job is conducting high-level IT infrastructure support for the major casinos – SJM, Melco Crown, and Wynn. And the banking industry – the major banks here in Macau like Bank of China Macau, Tai Fung Bank, ICBC (Industrial and Commercial Bank of China Macau) and Luso International Bank . We’re very focused on IT and automation. This is the direction we’re serving at this moment. To be honest, we are benefiting from the growth of Macau. But you also have some concerns… Our concern is that without the people, without qualified personnel, we cannot survive in the future. How we can distinguish ourselves from the other companies is to train up our staff’s unique skill-sets. We have to select a good product and good solution, which helps our customers to either increase their profit, or lower their costs, or provide a stable workforce. Without these three key points, our products and services would not be accepted by the Macau market. That’s what we’ve learned throughout the years. How do you solve that? To maintain and survive as an SME, our organisation has to be a learning organisation. We don’t have the product but our people can learn fast. We don’t have the knowledgeable people but we can leverage global professional people to learn from. We need international resources but global companies also need us as local mediators to extend their arm to provide service to Macau customers. We see our value is that when we can bridge the international companies to Macau customers, we are essential. However, we would not limit ourselves as a platform. We will train up the Macau team to become the extension of the global big brands and help them deploy, maintain and even decide their future product in Macau. How about yourself? Personally, I’m a local Macau resident, growing up in Macau up to high school when I moved to Australia to study. After that I also studied in Hong Kong. And then I worked in IBM for almost ten years and one of the largest system integrated companies for another 8 years. Then I established my own IT company. I had almost 20 years of employment experience before starting my own business. Where do you see the company in, say, five years… I will concentrate on automation solution development for Macau. That will be my future. Because I believe if I don’t concentrate on making it the best I can never be successful in other areas. I would say that before I successfully achieve automation in Macau, I shouldn’t waste my energy on other [targets]. I will focus on one development direction before moving on to others.