Peihui Wang
CIO OF THE YEAR, ASIA PACIFIC
IT fundamentals help drive growth.
2010
No one ever said building the right technology infrastructure was
easy. Especially for a HK$160 billion Fortune 500 company like China
Resources (Holdings) Co., Ltd.
“Managing the information technology for a company like China
Resources, whose core businesses cover many industries, is very
challenging,” says Peihui Wang, general manager of the Information
Management Department at China Resources and Oracle Magazine’s
CIO of the Year for Asia Pacific. “But even though it’s complicated,
I’m proud to be leading a team that’s helping to establish
comprehensive I T solutions that strengthen the fundamentals of
our company.” Wang adds that both the chairman of the board and
the CEO of China Resources pay close attention to the company’s
information architecture and provide support and understanding to
her department. “Their support continuously encourages us to keep
moving forward,” she says.
China Resources traces its roots back to 1938, when it was
established in Hong Kong. The company’s businesses range from
consumer goods to power, real estate, medicine, gas, and finance.
Like many companies in the Asia Pacific region, China Resources
has been growing rapidly; its turnover has quadrupled in the past eight
years. That pace of growth requires an agile and enterprise-oriented IT
infrastructure. In the past, China Resources had used a combination of
global and local enterprise resource planning and custom-developed
applications. As a result, the overall IT infrastructure was very
fragmented and could not support the company’s fast business growth.
However, in the past 24 months, Wang and her team have
undertaken the creation of an enterprise infrastructure that can help
integrate business processes. The new strategy is aligned around 12
key horizontal IT projects that will be rolled out across the company
over the next three years. Tying these projects and the underlying
IT strategy together is a collection of comprehensive solutions
including Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition and Oracle
E-Business Suite.
”My goal is for our new IT systems to provide faster, more flexible,
and greater alignment with the business,” says Wang. “The solutions
and practical management best practices provided by Oracle are very
valuable for China Resources, and we look forward to continuing our
partnership with Oracle.”
RICHARD JONES/GETTY IMAGES
Making the right technical decisions to effect this type of massive
change within an organization requires more than just a solid
understanding of technology. While in the past many CIOs focused
primarily on providing technical support to the business, Wang sees
the role very differently today, especially as companies have become
increasingly complex and far-reaching, like China Resources.
“CIOs need to devote their attention to the improvement of IT
systems to match their companies’ strategic plan and drive the
innovation to strengthen companies’ profitability and competitive
strength,” says Wang.
Name: Peihui Wang Job title: General manager of the Information Management Department Company: China Resources (Holdings) Co., Ltd. Location: Hong Kong Award: CIO of the Year, Asia Pacific, 2010
