IT experts discuss support for businesses

At the meeting, Pham Gia Tuc, VCCI's vice president and general secretary, said this second phase from 2011-15 would be a necessary step to further develop the project after its successful first phase in the 2006-10 period. Many enterprises, especially small and medium sized businesses, expected the project to continue, he said.

Le Van Loi, director of VCCI's Institute of Information Technology for Business (ITB), said the second phase would continue activities from the first phase, solve problems that occurred during the phase one implementation, and add new programmes that were suitable with business developments and information technology (IT) trends at home and abroad.

Key activities during the second phase will include improving awareness of the role and effects of IT application in business; IT consulting for enterprise production and operations; IT training programmes for businesses; development of e-commerce; and proposals on policy and regulations that create advantages for IT use in business.

During the meeting, representatives from relevant ministries, industries and associations expressed their agreement with the plan for phase two activities.

Nguyen Minh Hong, deputy minister of information and communications, said during the second phase, the ITB, which implemented the project in the first phase and would continue in the second phase, should have measures to maintain the State-owned electronic trading floors that it built in cities and provinces.

Hong said the institute should plan to use IT when doing business, including in its management, customer relations and human resources activities.

"The institute should launch an online forum for enterprises to discuss and learn from the IT experiences of other companies and experts to use in their own production and business activities," Hong said.

The representative from the Ministry of Home Affairs said the plan currently only focused on small – and medium-sized enterprises, while craft villages and households businesses also needed support from the project.

"So, the project should pay attention to craft villages and household businesses to help them integrate into the world of business as the state targets development of e-commerce in all economic sectors," he said.

The project should include specific targets for different economic sectors, such as State-owned enterprises, foreign-invested enterprises and private enterprises, the representative of the General Department of Tax said.

Loi said the first phase of the project was beneficial to Vietnam's business community. The project built five national level e-commerce floors and 15 others in cities and provinces.

E-commerce service

Also yesterday, VCCI opened the VCCI E-Commerce Service Provider (VCCI-ESP) which will provide e-commerce services to enterprises.

Offered services include business to business, business to customer, e-payment, e-commerce training, information security for business and digital signatures.

The centre would play an intermediate role between businesses and the centre's partners to help business approach suitable e-commerce solutions and effective online trading support tools, save money and improve their competitiveness, Loi said.

The partners are the Vietnam Commercial University, the Ministry of Industry and Commerce's Vietnam Research Institute of Electronics, Informatics and Automation (Vielina), the Vietnam Datacommunication Company (VDC), SmartLink Card Joint Stock Company, the Hoa Binh Software Solution Joint Stock Company and the McAfee Company.