APD. How does Petrosin manage such a sizeable pool of offshore resources?

SL. It is indeed a mammoth task managing such a dynamic operation offshore. The trick is to balance entrepreneurship with quality corporate management.

At Petrosin, we have worked out a sound corporate structure and system to manage and utilise resources efficiently and effectively. We have also committed a significant budget to training and developing our manpower resources.

APD. Petrosin appears to be an ambitious e-business player in Asia. What is its vision?

SL. Petrosin's vision is to be the leading provider of IT and Internet solutions in Asia Pacific. We believe that the experience we have gained in being part of the boom and bust cycle over the past two years has provided us with the experience and foresight needed to anticipate new industry changes and align our strategies accordingly.

APD. Given the fast paced nature of the industry, how do you separate the IT aspect of your operations from the relatively slower paced nature of the oil and gas industry?

SL. The internet has rendered many notions of conventional thought upside down. Where strategies were once considered to be well thought out plans prior to execution, the boom cycle of 1999-2000 seemed to instead advocate an 'act now, think later' strategy where mergers, acquisitions, strategic alliances, and affiliates were signed on without much apparent deliberation.

The recent meltdown, therefore, has effectively weeded out the weaker players and placed conventional strategy back at the forefront. Our systems are flexible enough to accommodate new trends and developments. Our managers, including myself, surf the Net regularly to keep updated.

APD. What can others learn from Petrosin's experience in e-business?

SL. With our level of resources and commitment, we are able to come up with many dotcom ideas, and execute them fast. For instance, the RecruitAsia site was built by an in-house team over a five month period. This is backed by a strong team of offshore IT, content, research and data entry. After its launch, we still keep the development team to continually add new features in making the portal competitive.

Unless you want to be a market leader, you cannot embrace e-business the way the Petrosin group has done it. What you really need is the right mindset and the determination to make your organisation dynamic and resilient to changes.