Three IT pillars to improve entrepreneur’s competitiveness

According to Dr. Vo Tri Thanh, Deputy Director of the Institute of Central Economic Management Research, technology application was a vital part for each enterprises to survive efficiently in new competing environment. Information technology (IT) could empower enterprises thank to its three characteristics including: fast transfer speed, high connection and great integration. With these three capabilities, IT had become a solid foundation for innovation and magical transformation in business operation.

Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung also requested ministries, industries and enterprises to develop and apply IT in production and management to improve the national competitiveness. However, a recent survey at nineteen state-owned corporations showed that the money had been mostly invested in desktops, servers and office applications and that only 11% of the amount was used by 28% of the surveyed companies to implement customer relation management (CRM) or enterprises resources planning (ERP) applications. It also revealed that there were only three out of nineteen enterprises having CIO or equivalent position.

The majority of interviewees agreed that the toughest challenge encountered by enterprises in applying IT in production and management was the awareness of the employees and leaders within their organizations.

Mai Cong Nguyen, General Director of FPT IS ERP claimed that ERP was the key to general management problem for enterprises.

"Our national competitiveness is low and degrading. When can we keep pace with other countries? Competitive edges of enterprises can be achieved through four approaches namely capital access, material, technology capabilities and managerial ability. In my opinion, managerial ability is the key for enterprises to open the door to the world and play a fair game there. A weaker and less- armed team but with better management can still win the game. ERP is the solution to the general management problem of enterprises” said Mai Cong Nguyen, General Director of FPT IS ERP.

Agreeing with this viewpoint, a representative from the National Petroleum Corporation of Vietnam (Petrolimex) emphasized that enterprises, especially state-owned ones should take risk, dare to change the awkward mindset and old-fashioned practices and put investment in Information Technology to the appropriate level. After successful implementation of ERP project with FPT, the leadership of Petrolimex had well recognized the efficiency of the system and was amazed by how easy and proactive it could be to extract the information for the best management of their inventories.