CityU Omni-Channel Retailing Innovation Seminar

The CityU Omni-Channel Retailing Innovation Seminar was organized by CityU Engineering Doctorate (EngD) Society in the Department of Systems Engineering and Engineering Management (SEEM) on 14th April 2015. The seminar provides latest technology on O2O, IOT for shopping mall operators to attract more consumer business so as to provide a best opportunity for Hong Kong retailers to learn about best practices and get new impulses and insights.
(EngD team photo – Left: Dr. KW Liu, Dr. Keynes TW Chan, Dr. WT Chan, Dr. Chris Chiu, Dr. Rocky Lam and I)

Dr. Rocky Lam (Chairman of CityU EngD Society) gave a seminar note and introduced different speakers and briefed their technology on retail application.

Hon. Charles Mok (Legislative Council Member (IT Functional Constituency)) gave us an opening note. He briefed the recently events such as formation of Innovation and Technology Bureau and revamped of Innovation and Technology Advisory Committee. He told us that the silver winner of ICT award in last Friday was found very similar to Google Glass but they innovated to use cheaper technology to achieve similar results. He said Innovation could solve new requirement and provide new strategy.

Then the demo video from Multimedia Software Engineering Research Center, CityU and the topics included “Indoor Location Technology – Ruckus”, “Retails Mobility Solution – 00Card, M3”, “eCommerce O2O Solution – Netsuite, Vantis Solution Ltd.”, Facilities Management Solution – SwitchMap” were showed. SwitchMap product was showed in the following diagram. When people pass the sensor, switch activated.

Dr. Sun Hong-yi (SEEM, CityU) was our guest speaker and his topic entitled “The Sun model and the DVD model for Retail Innovation”. Firstly, Dr. Sun asked a question that “Where is Hong Kong going?” He compared HK’s GDP and Mainland GDP. The ratio form 19% in 1997 down to 2.8% in 2014. He also predicated it could be less than 1% of HK’s GDP in Mainland GDP. Therefore, Dr. Sun promoted Innovation to obtain economic growth in Hong Kong.

Then Dr. Sun introduced the Sun model of creative thinking in which we needed to think out of box through lateral and divergent thinking.

DVD model stand for Distance, Value and Dollar. The following diagrams showed it application and principles.

Mr. Wan (NetSuit) introduced NetSuite Solution for cloud ERP and its mission was One World One System.

Jonny (Founder of 00Card) briefed 00Card which was new generation of membership and its functions included Member Gathering, Joint Promotion, Real-time Message, Hot Discount and Special Gifts.

Mr. Dickens Lee (Technical Manager, Ruckus Wireless) presented the topic “Smart Wi-Fi for Retail”. Their technology is for indoor positioning via Wi-Fi.

The example of rail station was showed and it realized the big data of population distribution and location with time (Where, When and How many).

Mr. Kevin Chu (Senior Solutions Architect, North Asia) presented Olik Business Discovery Platform. It is based on user-driven Business Intelligence (BI).

Then he explained the methodology and demonstrated retail data sample for us.

Mr. Aiden Ho (Brand Director, SwitchMap) was the last speaker and his topic named “The Modernization of Electrical Utility Controls in Commercial Spaces”.

It was a Low Power Stand Alone Wireless Technology with unlimited range and used to control through remote access and program with intelligent. It expected to save your energy consumption automatically.

At the end, Rocky led the Q&A Session.

Reference:
CityU Engineering Doctorate Society - http://www.engd.org/
Engineering Doctorate (Engineering Management) - http://www.cityu.edu.hk/seem/prg-engd.htm