2011

ANTHONY NG ARCHITECTS LIMITED: building towards a paperless future

BSM920 Topics in Advanced Strategy Group D 8/6/2011

1. Introduction
Si th 1970s, th archit ct ral i stry i Hong Kong enjoyed a brilliant growth as a result of real estate and stock market speculation. In 1996, the industry was very profitoriented and time conscious, and heavy bureaucracy was one of the main characteristics of the market. The role of the government and others institutions such as the HKIA (Hong Kong Institute of Architects) are essential in the Hong Kong architectural industry. Anthony Ng is an architect from Hong Kong who started his own architectural practice in 1991 in Wan Chai. Thanks to his visionary and entrepreneurial leadership qualities, he succeeded in making Anthony Ng a practice able to deliver buildings on time while providing top designs. The firm has been selected for big projects such as the Verbana Heights and most recently the HK$ 12 billion new airport development project in Tung Chung. These big projects created new needs for the company in order to improve its performance. First the number of employees needed to be increased, but with that the management of information and communication also needed to be improved. Indeed, the number of persons involved in the project and so the number of documents needed to be forwarded, distributed and stored was consequent. A technological improvement of the communication system became a necessity; in 1997 Anthony Ng recognised the future potential of using a paperless system which would then improve the circulation of information and knowledge in the company.

2. Towards a paperless architectural practice

Internal pressures Inhouse Transaction costs economics

Physical storage of documents in the office of Anthony Ng was an important cost for the company. First of all, it was costing time as the tracking of the documents could take a certain amount of time depending on when they had been stored. Secondly, the storage space used for documents was big enough to fit 20 employees, and according on how the number of employees was growing throughout the years, the need for space will soon be a priority. Third, the documents filing required personal filing charges as well. Finally, the communication costs were not insignificant around 40 mails were getting in the office every day, documents needed to be photocopied too, and the communication between Anthonys Ng employees and with clients were costing time and money.

There were for Anthony Ng undeniable in-house transaction costs which needed to be reduced. The paperless strategy imagined by Anthony Ng implied a new document management system, which would then enable the firm to reduce the costs of personal filing.

The room used by the central filing storage would disappear and allow the company to increase the number of employees. In the architectural industry and for Anthony Ng, the competitive advantage lie in the creativity and originality of the designs, but the main critical success factor is time. The market is very time conscious as mentioned before. A new document management system would enable Anthony Ng to save time on communication thanks to the use of emails, on documents tracking thanks to the web-browser. By improving their efficiency on the time delivery of project, the practice would avoid minor delays, granting Anthony Ng a competitive advantage, because in 1997 the technology was not widespread yet.

External pressures Institutional Based View One of the external pressures was coming from the government which plays a huge role in the architectural industry of Hong Kong. The HKIA also plays a huge role as it is responsible for the governance of the professional conduct of architects by making them adhere to Code of Professional Conduct. These institutional pressures come with rules and norms (certification ISO 9000), so the organisations seek for legitimacy and survival by accommodating to institutional practices (Greenwood et al. 2008). In Anthony Ng case, the bases of the institutionalisation are both a coercive regulation and a cognitive internalization (Scott, 1995). The HKIA is an association which is using rewards and penalties to coerce architects into compliance with the standards they came up with => COERCIVE REGULATION On the other side the government is a national institution which encourage compliance as it is taken for granted as the way things are done (Oliver 1991, Shenkar 2002) => COGNITIVE INTERNALIZATION To respond to these institutional pressures, Anthony Ng decides to use co-option strategies to cope with government pressures. Learning to deal with the Building department was an important aspect of the architectural industry, as it would help avoiding important delays and loss of contracts. Another aspect of the co-option strategies use by Anthony Ng was to adopt corporate social responsibility which is considered as a new institutional logic (Lee, 2008). In addition to standards building and attractive designs, Anthony Ng decided to work on eco friendly projects, which enabled the firm to won the highest honour from the HKIA.

3. Chaos
The implementation of a paperless system was a change that would take place in a complex environment. When starting to use this new system Anthony Ng did not know the real

outcome of this change, because there could have been many different effects that were largely unknown in advance. When the staff started using the paperless system, the organization could not assure that the change would increase the productivity of the company. Even though the costs of the company would reduce and the information was supposed to flow easily, what if the staff did not adapt to the new technologies or if the clients preferred face to face communication rather than emails? What if there was a problem with the system and the documents could not be sent? Anthony Ng adapted to the new change. This meant that also the agents (staff and clients) had to change their behavoiur and hence the behavior of the company changed as a whole.

4. Evolution
The paperless system was an evolution for Anthony Ng. On one hand the nature of the change was incremental. They were already performing computer aided design and sharing peripherals. Moreover the use of internet and browser technology was becoming more usual. So at this point Anthony Ng decided to start planning a Intranet based document viewer and management system. On the other hand the extent of the change was a transformation, as the new system was going to change the way the company used to work, their communication system, their culture.

T is evolutionary c ange was necessary. Among t e internal and external pressures mentioned before, we can find some pus ing factors t at motivated t e c ange. One of t ese factors are t e ig inventory costs. Wit t e implementation of t e new system t e p ysical storage of t e documents was not longer be necessary, and t is space could now be used for fitting more employees t at would be necessaryfor working in future projects. Not only t is personnel for taking care of t e management of t e p ysical document would not be necessary. Anot er factor is t at wit t e new system t e documents were going to be stored in an appropriate way. T ere would not be p ysical storage of t e documents, instead t e documents were going to be scanned, distributed and stored in t e system andt e ardcopy would be given a unique ID t at cross referenced t e softcopy in t e system. T is way t e retrieval and tracking of t e documents would be muc more systematic and efficient t an t e traditional paper based filing. T e need to s are information internally was ot er of t e pus ing factors. Accessing Tung y C ung, w ere Ant ony Lgs next project was taking place, was only possible b boat. Communicating wit t e staff working t ere and discussing necessary issues wit t em would be very time consuming. T erefore t e intranet t at was going to be implemented would en ance communication and make it more efficient.

5. Impact
T e implementation of t e paperless system will ave impact in many aspects of t e organi ation.

First of all t ere will be an impact in t e communication patterns. From being paper based to online reliance. T e possible good impact of t is c ange is t een ancement of informations

delivery both internally & externally and speeding up processes. A very probable bad impact would be avoiding face to face communication. There would also be a change in culture, in the way architecture was done. Now with all the electronic systems there was a fear that this could affect the way of working in a negative way, as there might be a lack of attention to details. There could also be a bad impact of resistance for the organization. As they might percieve this new systems as insecure, because they do not know it or maybe just because they preferred the traditional system. What is necessary to be done is to help adaptation with a good change manager, that maintains effective communication and involves employees in the change process. A good communication strategy, training programmes, and reward systems can help employees to adapt easier to the change and to be optimist and committed to it. Finally it should be necessary to improve security and follow the evolution process.

6. Conclusion
Anthony Ng used an IT strategy in alignment with its business strategy. Indeed IT is very important in the knowledge based strategy of Anthony Ng. By using Henderson and Venkatramans strategic alignment model maps we can determine the relationship between the firms strategy and IT. Anthony Ng used technology transformation with the implementation of the new document management system to manage knowledge and communication inside the company. The change management became crucial to implement this new IT strategy because of the new organisational structure, new routines and new control structure that lead to a new paradigm thanks to the sharing of knowledge.

References