Ayala ICT summit

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Ayala ICT summit gathers IT chiefs

(September 2008)

Over 500 strong, the participants had gathered on August 27 and 28 at the Grand Ballroom of the EDSA Shangri-La Hotel in Mandaluyong City.

It was a gathering of chiefs—CIOs and CEOs—of the Ayala Group of Companies along with their staffs in their respective accounting, HR, and ICT departments. Attending also were representatives of many of the country’s top ICT vendors who regularly do business with at least one of the member companies of this conglomerate.

No less than Fernando Zobel de Ayala, president and chief operations officer of the Ayala Corp. delivered the keynote address at the gathering’s start. The event: the Ayala Group ICT Summit.

Participants in this event, a conference and trade show, had come together to share best practices in the use of ICT for their respective companies.

“At no other time is the value of information technology within an enterprise so important, given that ICT stands at the center of an increasingly knowledge-based, global and borderless economy where productivity, innovation, and mobility define a company’s and ultimately the country’s competitiveness.” Ayala said in his address setting the tone at the beginning of the summit. “It would be technology the Ayala group would turn to address challenges of raising productivity, improve the quality of the conglomerate’s goods and services, enhancing economies of scale, and expanding reach.”

As with most ICT conferences and trade exhibits, many breakout sessions also took place, mostly on technology topics. But the main events consisted of CIO and CEO fora.

Taking part in the CIO Forum were chief information officers of the conglomerate’s companies, as well as a good number of chief executive officers at the CEO Forum.

Talk revolved mainly around ICT strategies at the CEO Forum in what was perceived as tough times for the global economy. Also discussed was the impact of globalization on the conglomerate’s ICT thrusts.

At the CIO Forum, Ayala Corp. CIO Ma. Angelica Rapadas noted the need for common ICT projects where each of the conglomerate’s companies could participate in. On the other hand, Globe CIO Rodel Garcia suggested that the group of companies use its collective purchasing power to obtain better prices for hardware, software, and peripherals as well as site licensing agreements for enterprise solutions.

Ayala Systems Technology Inc. CIO Erwin Locsin noted that each of the Ayala companies had different lines of businesses and often required different ICT systems. However, there were some systems they could own and operate in common such as business intelligence systems.

At the CEO Forum, BPI President and CEO Aurelio Montinola 3rd called for the conglomerate to adopt a “back to the basics” approach with regard to the purchase of ICT systems. He urged that all systems considered for purchase should contain only features needed, in order to reduce purchase costs.

He told his audience that ICT personnel should not be blinded in their purchasing decisions by the brand names of prestigious vendors offering the latest and most sophisticated features for their hardware, software, and peripherals. He pointed out that as with high-priced cellular phones, most of these features would hardly or even not be used at all.

For his part, Globe Telecom President and CEO Gerardo Ablaza said that because their telco had to compete with multinationals and outsourcing companies for ICT talent, salary rates for their ICT professionals had recently been upgraded. But he cautioned that better pay was only a starting point for retaining them. They would also have to be given interesting projects to do.

With regard to globalization, BPI’s Montinola said their recently-launched Internet 24/7 banking services would enable them to more aggressively tap the OFW market.

HR Mall CEO JP Orbita said their company would leverage their ICT systems and the Ayala brand to aggressively market their outsourced services to companies in Asia. Such services would consist of HR functions such as payroll processing.

Yes, as stated in an earlier column, this is now the peak of the ICT events season and this will last until mid-November. More such events shall therefore take place in the next few weeks. This writer promises to try to report on most of them. Meanwhile, he shall be logging off for now.

Source: Manila Times

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