Quality Alchemist (品質煉金術師): IuPDI Seminar on SME O2O Business Transformation

The Seminar entitled "How SME to find opportunity through O2O Transformation" was organized by International union of Professional Development Institutions (IuPDI) and Department of Systems Engineering and Engineering Management (SEEM) of CityU on 31 May 2016. The Hong Kong Science and Technology Parks (HKSTP) was one of supporting organization. The seminar aimed to discuss how to purchase goods online safely and sharing SME O2O (Online to Offline) transformation. Before the seminar, I took a photo with organizer and speakers.

(Left: Mr. Kelvin Ho (Managing Director, Saint’s Alp Singapore Pte Ltd. (仙跡岩)), Dr. Louis Liu (Instructor I, SEEM Dept., CityU), Mr. Leslie Lee (Chairman, IuPDI; Secretary and Honorary Chairman, CQI-HK) and I)

The first guest speaker was Mr. Leslie Lee (Chairman, IuPDI) and his topic named “How to ensure safety for customer who purchase online?” Firstly, Lesile analyzed what were customer concerns. He mentioned some factors as follows:

- Does online shop trust?

- Are goods real, quality and safety?

- Uncertainty on Price, Delivery time and After sales service

- Personal data protection

Then Leslie briefed IuPDI Certified Online Shop scheme which could solve the customer concerns. He proposed 5 program as follows:

1. Differential Trust Online Shops through their online shop certification

2. Audit to verify the effective of the certification

3. Provide strategy service and information to customer (Partner with Paypal, CMATCL, HKSTC, HKTDC and Frasertec, etc.)

4. Promote Accredited Online Shop Platform

5. Online Shop Best Practices (e.g. Clear information, real, safety and economic (value for money) goods, safety payment system, complaint handling, etc.)

Leslie also briefed the certification process and online monitoring monthly. It included surveillance and renewal assessment. The standard of certificated online shop was shown below.

1. Business Registration (Hong Kong)

2. Fair Operation of Online Shop

3. Customer Protection

4. Compliance of Goods

The second guest speaker was Mr. Kelvin Ho (Managing Director, Saint’s Alp Singapore Pte Ltd. (仙跡岩)) and his presentation entitled “Traditional Business Transformation to O2O”. Kelvin’s talk aimed to discuss how SME (retailors) face the business difficulty and how traditional business transferred to O2O (Online to Offline) business model.

The overall content included the discussion the difficulty of restaurant and sale channel. Kelvin told use the difficulties of retails included cost increase (rental fee), manpower shortage and salary increase, legal responsibility increasing and sales channel limited. Then opportunity of online shop for improving the market share was also discussed. B2C in China was increasing from 2013 to 2015. The market share of two key online shop platforms (e.g. 天猫 and 京東) was upto 80%.

After that Kelvin introduced there were three paths to increase market share through online shop. They were Self-established web shop, online shop platform and Groupon. The following table summarized the strength and weakness of each path in different characteristics.

Finally, Kelvin introduced the business strategy transformation from traditional 4P (Product, Price, Place & Promote) to 4C (Consumer Value, Cost Convenience & Communication) to 4S (Sense Service, Speed and Social Network).

He concluded the success factors in O2O were “Disruptive Innovation” and O2O virtual plus realistic. Lastly, he quoted Bruce Lee statement as conclusion that “Knowing is not enough we must apply. Willing is not enough we must do.”