Electronic Commerce in Hong Kong: Gold Peak Industries (Holdings) Limited - Essay Example

Electronic Commerce in Hong Kong: Gold Peak Industries (Holdings) Limited The Gold Peak Group owns an industrial investment portfolio that is highly diversified in Asia and beyond. It runs manufacturing, marketing, and distribution and R&D operations in well over ten countries across the globe. The group employs approximately 13, 000 persons across the entire portfolio. Such a huge portfolio and coupled to the company’s robust IT and Strategic division constantly developing new product technologies and e-commerce solutions the company can only further expand in terms of global market share.

This means human capital will continue to inform the group’s strategy as it penetrates new territories. I therefore look at the case with major goal of making recommendations based on the manpower shortages. A major problem as depicted in the case is human resource shortages especially when it comes to skilled workers. It for instance is faced with the difficulty of recruiting an IT programmer who is both IT literate and at the same time well versed with the industry. This is further compounded by the poorly developed financial and technology infrastructure in Hong Kong which significantly hinders the growth of e-commerce.

However, the solution still lies in the IT strategy that has been adopted by the group as a source of strategic advantage. By deploying and strengthening the e-commerce systems especially on the B2C front the company will be capable of maintaining market share growth whilst reducing the need for more employees as the most work will be done by computer systems. Training is another source of solution for the skilled manpower shortage that the company faces. Development of multilingual training programs for instance should address the language barriers that are likely to arise as a result of the international presence of the group and help bring employees across the group to the same speed.

This is because same training material will be used across the business and as such skills uptake will go up and in turn favour the mobility of human capital. With the global nature of the group another human resource strategy would be to outsource from the local territories. Locals are well versed with the local business and therefore hold importance business information that could be strategic to the group’s strategic expansion. The group also has the option of diversifying its human resources; with the continued internal expansion comes the challenge of managing human resources.

At the moment most the development work as well as the entire team carrying out systems development is based in Hong Kong. This is a limitation in itself and the company can go around it by having more talented employees in the different regions and leverage the information sharing capabilities to work in synergy and deliver the much sought after competitive edge. By having developers and programmers as well as other skilled workers strategically located in the different regions the group should access a blend of strategic information with much ease.

In conclusion therefore the ambitions technology and expansion strategy has not only delivered tremendous business growth but also challenges of human capital management. The company faces a major manpower shortage especially for skilled workers. Recruitment of a programmer that blends as an IT literate and industry versed individual for instance has not been easy for the company. Diversification of the human resources, emphasis on training and strengthening of the IT (e-commerce) systems should help the group overcome the challenges.

Works Cited.Case. “Electronic Commerce in Hong Kong: Gold Peak Industries (Holdings) Limited.”