Background:

• Headquartered in Hong Kong, Otto international (OI) was founded in 1966 by the Otto Group, a German mail order company and currently one of the world's biggest e-commerce companies
• OI is a one-stop shop for first class global sourcing. For over 50 years, OI has been sourcing from all major production markets for Apparel, Shoes and Accessories as well as Home. Its client base spans across Europe, Asia and Africa

Challenges:

• As a leading global sourcing company, OI has over 550 suppliers in China, India, Bangladesh, Turkey and other major sourcing markets in Southeast Asia, receiving thousands of shipping documents every day
• As supplier usually adopts its own format of shipping documents, OI needs to have a standardized and efficient yet simple electronic document handling platform for supplier management, order management and shipment management

Service:

• Since 2006, Tradelink has been providing a customized vendor management service that allows business collaboration among OI with its suppliers, logistics providers and retailers to exchange shipping documents efficiently and effectively between stakeholders using one single online platform
• More than 3 millions of documents have so far been exchanged via the platform, including bills of lading, packing lists, invoices, certificates of origin and inspection reports etc

Benefits:

• Single point of access to documents facilitates shipment processing and eliminates repetitive day-to-day tasks. For example, suppliers can easily book shipments directly with forwarders through the system based on documents already prepared and stored
• Collection of documents forms the base of OI’s Vendor Payment Service whereby OI serves as a go-between international suppliers and brands. With all relevant documents available on the platform, payment to the suppliers can be made in a timely manner through OI
• Shipment data, including vessel information and expected date of arrival, is directly uploaded by forwarders into the platform. This provides customers with real-time, accurate and easy-to-access information of their orders from one single location

Provide all-in-one payment collection solution for major banks in Hong Kong for thousands of their merchant clients to accept digital payments

Background:

• A major local bank and a bank whose parent company is one of the largest banking institutions in China have adopted our smart Point-of-Sales (PoS) payment collection solution for their merchant clients
• Over 4,000 smart PoS have been deployed to these two banks’ merchant clients across different retail sectors including food and beverage, fashion, electrical appliances and telecommunications etc

Challenges:

• As it is generally not cost-effective for banks to develop their own payment solutions and provide on-going customer support for their merchants, banks tend to look for third-party payment service providers
• Merchants have to install multiple PoS systems to accept different payment methods and deal with different acquirers for payment clearing

Solution:

• Our smart PoS terminals support a wide range of contactless and QR code payment methods including Visa, MasterCard, UnionPay, JCB, AMEX, Apple Pay, Samsung Pay, Google Pay, WeChat Pay, Alipay, Octopus, EPS and FPS through 4G/WiFi networks
• We offer various models of smart PoS terminals provided by our hardware partners and these models have their unique features to meet different business needs
• Value-adding application can be developed on our smart PoS payment solution to meet specific business needs of merchants (e.g. e-receipt / loyalty program)
• We provide all-round customer support from Smart PoS terminal installation, operation training to on-going maintenance and repair

Benefits:

• Simplifies payment collection process and enables merchants to accept digital payments in a more convenient and secure way
• Merchants can lower their operating cost and make use of value-adding applications developed on the payment solution to meet their specific customers’ needs and improve customer experience

Offered digital signing solution to a renowned private hospital for electronic remote signing on medical records

Solution Overview:

A renowned private hospital with around 10,000 staff implemented our solution embedded with digital certificate technology for electronic remote signing on medical records in compliance with their stringent and complicated cosigning requirements. Our digital signing solution facilitates the hospital to complete the paperless procedure of e-Medical Record Management and also ensures the correctness and integrity of the medical records.

Benefits:

• Facilitates paperless workflow with accuracy on Medical Record Management
• Associates signature to individual users for accountability
• Supports audit trail of electronic records

IoT solution for a casino concessionaire to track and monitor over a million widely scattered asset items

Solution Overview:

Tradelink deployed its IoT solutions to a casino concessionaire in Macau to manage assets used and stored at different premises in compliance with the licensing requirements. Using RFID technology, multiple items can be tracked and monitored simultaneously, thus facilitating regular stocktaking by the client of over a million items located at various sites including casinos, restaurants and shopping malls.

Benefits:

• Significantly simplify the stocktaking process, saving time and cost
• Enable staff to identify and track the real time status of items
• Improve asset movement management by allowing staff to submit movement or disposal requests electronically and provide auditability of the asset movement and status
• Reduce ongoing replacement costs with the use of durable RFID tags under intense environment, such as high-temperature kitchens, rooftops and unreachable spots

Efficient data entry service for a Japan-based fashion trader to avoid penalty charge for late Import/Export Declaration lodgement

Background:

• Our client is a fashion trading SME which imports Japanese clothing and apparel into Hong Kong. With most of their business operations in Japan, they only have limited staff resource in Hong Kong to take charge of their administrative work including trade declarations logdement
• Since the departure of the staff responsible for handling trade declarations work in Hong Kong, they have not been able to lodge their trade declarations to the Government within the required 14-days timeframe. For their late declarations lodgement, the company has to pay a hefty amount of late penalty charges; each case as much as $200

Challenges:

• Our client finds it not cost effective to hire a replacement staff in Hong Kong to take care of their declaration submissions. However the task is a statutory requirement which needs to be accomplished within 14 days from importation / exportation of goods
• Due to their resource issue, the company is paying penalty charge up to $200 for each late declaration lodgement

Service:

• Tradelink offers our data entry service to help our client clear their outstanding trade declarations as well as handle their on-going trade declarations
• Our data entry service includes extracting required data from shipping documents such as invoice and packing list provided by our client through e-mail and inputting the data into the import / export declaration form for the company to submit to the Government within 14 days from shipment of goods

Benefits:

• Significantly save time and manpower required for trade declarations work to free up resources for business development
• Comply with government requirements avoiding late lodgement penalty

Service Overview:

Established in 2019 in Hong Kong, Toyowa Company Limited (“Toyowa”) is a retailer and wholesaler of Japanese imports including health food, skincare and baby care products. Having short shelf-life products and urgently needed facemasks amid the epidemi, Toyowa desperately needs a responsive logistics service provider who can provide timely and comprehensive follow-up service to them. While being a SME startup, cost control is also their prime concern. Tradelink’s FQS provides a bid-and-offer platform that helps Toyowa to easily and readily find reliable partners offering best deals for processing shipments. Toyowa has completed at least 3 orders using FQS since their business started in 2019.

Benefits:

• Receives up to 5 offers in just a few days for each Request for Quote posted
• Up to 30% saving on freight charge

Service Overview:

Established in 1990, Rose Knitting (Asia) Limited (“Rose Knitting”) engages in the manufacture and sales of knitting products which are mainly exported to Western Europe and North America. It was among the first batch of users of the electronic Restrained Textile Export License (RTEL) service^*, the first Government Electronic Trading Services (GETS) launched by Tradelink in 1997. Apart from RTEL, Rose Knitting is also user of Tradelink GETS including Import & Export Trade Declarations (TDEC) and Certificate of Origin (CO) until today.

As a licensed service provider of GETS, Tradelink provides user-friendly interface to Rose Knitting for the electronic submission of trade documents to the Government, delivering acknowledgment / response messages from the Government and settling payments. Tradelink also provides comprehensive customer support services including technical support and training to all its users. With Tradelink’s professional support, Rose Knitting was able to go through a smooth transition from paper submission to electronic submission of trade documents in compliance of Government requirements.

^*RTEL service was ceased since abolition of the textiles control system for exports of garments / textiles goods to the US/EU in 2005.

Benefits:

• Enhances the efficiency and visibility of the trade document submission process
• Trade compliance data was backed up by Tradelink and data could be recovered easily in case of computer system failure
• Reliable and quality customer services support to ensure smooth trade compliance operation

Background:

• Our client is a renowned F&B group running various brands in Hong Kong, from fine dining , to fast food restaurants, as well as bakery shops and coffeehouses
• Tradelink provided our TMS solution to the F&B group to schedule its daily deliveries of fresh and temperature controlled food items to over 500 outlets in Hong Kong and to manage the performance of third-party logistics companies (3PLs) responsible for the delivery

Challenges:

• To ensure on-time and accurate daily deliveries of different kinds of fresh and temperature-controlled food items to over 500 drop points has been a huge challenge
• To assign delivery routes manually was a time consuming and error-prone task
• Due to the lack of information on fleet utilization, product monitoring and traceability, the group had no control and visibility over delivery operations thus had to count on 3PLs’ arrangements
• Had to spend plenty of time and administration work on delivery charges billing to ensure the correctness of 3PLs charging

Solution:

• Powered by data analytics, our TMS auto assigns the most efficient delivery route based on pre-defined factors such as product volume, temperature requirement, shop locations and opening hours, delivery time limit and traffic conditions
• To learn from drivers’ practical experience based on actual road conditions, the system uses Artificial Intelligence to analyze and compare the system suggested routes with the actual routes used by drivers and apply the logics where appropriate in subsequent route planning
• To tackle the difficulty of parking in Hong Kong, the system advises drop-off locations to dispatch orders to multiple nearby outlets
• To enhance vehicle usage, trucks that have completed their orders early or have available space are identified and will be called back to the distribution center to pick up new orders for delivery
• Provides customized handheld device for driver to find out the full list of items for each delivery order and upon completion of the order, to scan the location bar code of the delivery outlet as a proof of delivery
• Data are sent in real time to a centralized system for record and analysis
• Detailed transportation records in the system can facilitate automatic calculation of delivery charges of 3PLs for easier and more accurate settlement
• Enables back office to real-time track and trace the delivery status so as to analyze and evaluate the 3PLs’ performances and allocate resources more effectively

Benefits:

Electronic Know-Your-Customer (eKYC) solution for a major bank in Hong Kong to enable a 8-minute remote customer onboarding journey on its mobile app

Background:

• Our client is one of the note-issuing banks in Hong Kong whose parent company is a British multinational banking and financial services company headquartered in London
• By adopting our eKYC solution, our bank client became the first traditional bank in Hong Kong to be able to conduct a complete KYC check for remote customer onboarding with the whole process being carried out on the applicant’s own mobile device

Challenges:

• Traditional KYC process involving physical document gathering and processing is not only labor intensive and time-consuming, but also could result in increased costs, manual errors, duplication of effort across different platforms within the bank
• The requirement for a face-to-face contact with the customer to conduct a traditional KYC process for account opening imposes a constraint to the bank to acquire new customers when such face to face contact cannot be made due to various reasons
• In view of the fierce competition from the emergence of virtual banks and customer expectation for a convenient and simple onboarding process, it is a priority for traditional banks to implement digital transformation to stay competitive

Solutions:

• Integrated with the bank's backend system, Tradelink’s eKYC solution enables the bank’s customer to perform KYC check on the bank’s mobile app for account opening without the need to go to a branch for physical identity verification
• Supports Hong Kong Smart Identity Cards from 2003 and New Smart Identity Cards from 2018
• The digital customer onboarding process includes the following steps:
  
  
  1. ID document verification
     Require user to capture ID document for anti-forgery validation
  2. Facial anti-spoofing with liveness detection
     Require user to blink his/her eyes to detect if a photograph/video/mask, instead of the person him/herself, was being used during the selfie capture
  3. Identicalness Checking
     Compare the photo on the ID document with the selfie to confirm the true applicant
  4. Two-step Verification
     Send a One Time Password (OTP) to verify user’s mobile number and his/her identity

Benefits:

• Significantly shortens the KYC process and account can be opened in 8 minutes
• Reduces the bank’s operating cost
• Achieves a paperless KYC process and eliminates the risk of manual error
• Offers seamless experience to bank customers for account opening anytime and anywhere and saves customers’ time as they need not to visit the branch
• Brings convenience to the bank’s customers as they can set the online banking login and password at the time of account opening
• Convenient and simple onboarding process helps new customer acquisition

Provided e-cheque solutions to several e-cheque issuing banks in Hong Kong allowing banks to save cost significantly in cheque processing procedure

Solution Overview:

Tradelink provided e-cheque solutions to several e-cheque issuing banks in Hong Kong, one being a note-issuing bank. Providing full range of certificate-related functions supporting e-cheque from certificate issuance, certificate management to e-cheque lifecycle management, our solutions enable the payer and payer bank to sign an e-cheque digitally.

Benefits:

• Eliminate enormous manual work and save significant costs in processing paper cheque
• Provide a more convenient and environmental friendly alternative in handling payment as payers can process e-cheque anytime and anywhere

Ambient Warehouse Automation Project for a leading supermarket chain’s 33,000 sq.m distribution centre

Background:

• Our client is a leading supermarket chain operating over 200 outlets in Hong Kong
• Collaborated with our hardware partners, Tradelink provided warehouse automation solution for use by our client at its 33,000 square meter multi-purpose ambient warehouse to support 7x24 operations for goods delivery to its 200+ outlets
• The project was one of the largest-scale warehouse automation project in Asia outside mainland China

Challenges:

• As one of the largest and busiest distribution centres in Hong Kong, our client’s warehouse operations before automation required an immense amount of manpower and experienced workers
• Due to the demanding warehouse working environment, our client has always faced issue with manpower shortage in particular skilled labor
• Due to the high rental cost, our client wished to streamline the warehouse processes for their Fast Moving Consumer Goods and achieve zero inventory to maximize warehouse space utilization
• Facing growing competition from online shopping, our client has been looking for ways to improve the productivity and accuracy of its warehouse operations to maintain its competitive edge
• Throughout the project implementation period, its existing operations cannot be disrupted so as to meet their daily business needs

Solution:

• Powered by Artificial Intelligence and Big Data, our solution reengineered each and every work process of the warehouse from goods receiving, put-away and storage, order picking to shipping
• Our Warehouse Management System (WMS) serves as the mastermind to plan, guide and control manual operations as well as different automated material handling equipment provided by our hardware partners including:
  
  
  Automated Guided Vehicles (AGV)
  • Automated load carrier directed by a combination of computer software and sensor-based guidance systems with pre-defined paths
  • To handle bulky goods and achieve goods-to-man picking
  4-way shuttles
  • Automated pallet shuttle moving in 4 directions
  • To handle the put-away and retrieval of goods within high-density storage according to their expiry dates and importance
  Put-to-light systems
  • Automated sortation system through the use of light devices
  • Integrated with conveyor belt to achieve goods-to-man picking
• With the use of customized handhelds, warehouse operations can be updated real-time to the computer system to enhance inventory visibility and facilitate management
• Tradelink acted as the overall Project manager to oversee the planning, development, implementation and maintenance of the solution

Benefits:

• Daily warehouse daily throughput is doubled
• Goods-to-man picking performed by AGVs significantly reduces manpower requirement
• Tedious picking process is simplified and picking failure rate is significantly reduced
• High-density storage supported by 4-way shuttles helps to save warehouse space
• Enhance inventory visibility and warehouse efficiency