The Hong Kong Product On-Line System provides a tailor-made home-page on which local SMEs can set up shops and advertise their products to overseas buyers. It also enables overseas buyers to purchase samples from SMEs.Standard Chartered Bank will provide a high-security payment solution for credit card transactions made by the overseas buyers over the Internet. ``It costs about $3,000 for a SME to make an application to open a shop. The $3,000 includes Web page design service and we have 150 designs,'' said Ronald Cheung, general manager, information services division of HKPC.

`Upgrade Dubai'
The Dubai Economic Department has been given the task of transforming Dubai into a city of excellence and a world class centre for business and trade, Director-General Mohammed Alabbar said at the conclusion of the Share Best Practices 2000 conference and exhibition, reports Gulf News.

``We seek to work together on developing Dubai in a planned manner to make it a city of excellence and a world class centre for business and trade. This is done through distinguished people committed to understanding, meeting and exceeding customer expectations.''

Alabbar said a company must have good management, but human resources also require investment. The process of quality and best practices is driven by people. Organisations will succeed in the long or short term, but quality and excellence are driven by people and there will be no excellence without them.

``When the Dubai Quality Award was launched, we knew it was a lengthy process. However, we had no choice but to start immediately, even if the fruits were to be borne in 10 years. The number of award applicants grew from what it was two years back.''

IBM catching up in W Asia
Aggressive pricing and major gains for portable computers helped IBM grab almost 10 per cent of the West Asian market last year, says Gulf News.``We are out to buy market share, even if this means making sacrifices on net realisations. This has proved successful since 1998, and will continue until we attain the projected market share. Now it's a misconception that our prices here are much higher than in the US,'' said Thierry Louesse, regional manager for the Personal Systems group.

IBM aims to attain 15 per cent of the regional market. Asked whether it might prove dangerous to sacrifice margins in the longer run, Louesse said: ``No, this business model has been adopted before and proved very useful. We will continue until the targets are attained, after which we might switch strategies.''

In 1999, IBM's shipments of desk-tops, portables and servers totalled 55,877, a 61.65 per cent growth over 1998's tally of 34,567. West Asia accounted for 564,290 units, up 31.67 per cent over 1998, according to data from International Data Corp (IDC).

Input for stockbrokers
The Stock Exchange of Hong Kong (SEHK) will provide input service for stockbrokers for off-system trades of Tom.com to relieve the pressure on the trading system during the first 15 minutes of trading in the share, writes Hong Kong Standard.

The SEHK predicts that it may take longer than usual to execute trades in Tom.com shares during the early hours of trading on March 1 due to heavy trading, it said in a news release. Instead of reporting off-system trades into the trading system, traders can report these trades to the Floor Office of the SEHK by prescribed contract slips currently used with the attached summary sheet, before 9.30 am.