When the regional managers of Orient Overseas Container Line used to gather for their regular meetings at the company’s Hong Kong headquarters 20 years ago, they would waste the first day arguing. According to CC Tung, chief executive of the line’s parent group, each executive would angrily insist the data he used to measure his regional business were correct and those used by others wrong.
Then, after a meeting in the early 1990s, the then chief executive, CH Tung, CC Tung’s brother, who later became Hong Kong’s first chief executive under Chinese rule, realised the fundamental problem: OOCL had no real grasp of basic management information. He opted to resolve the problem by replacing its sprawling, ad hoc network of computer systems with one that was purpose-built.
