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Tech Perspective @ The EDGE

DAMIEN WU, CIO
LINK ASSET MANAGEMENT LIMITED

Damien Wu is the Chief Information Officer
at Link Asset Management Limited, with
over 20 years of IT management, consulting
and startup experience. He is responsible
for the formulation of IT strategy as well as
the management of all IT functions of Link. Prior to joining
Link, he had held senior IT management roles at various
multinational consulting firms and local conglomerates,
including Avanade (a Microsoft and Accenture JV) and
Orange Sky Golden Harvest. He was also the co-founder/
CTO of two successful IT startups in Hong Kong,
Resources Link Ltd. (A JV with China Resources) and
Wisers Information Ltd.

How has technology evolved at Link?
Although Link is the largest REIT in Asia, we’re actually EC Mall, Haidian District, Beijing
a very young company, just a bit over 10 years old. It
was actually transformed from a public asset to a REIT department to focus on enhancing our interactions with
which had no precedent in Hong Kong. When Link was consumers. One of the CEM’s initiatives was to develop
set up, we inherited the shopping centers as well as aged our own consumer app, called Park & Dine, which we
computer systems from the government. For the first launched in 2015, and have been improving continuously
few years, therefore, we focused on improving internal ever since. It offers a full range of features, from checking
business processes and controls, and updating all the parking space availability to queuing for the more popular
systems. restaurants in our centers before you arrive, and it offers
shopping advice and e-coupons.
When I joined Link eight years ago, there wasn’t even an
Enterprise Resource Planning System, and there were The other area we initially focused on was our shopping
isolated systems for functions like accounting, rent roll, facilities. While the company is quite young, the prop-
jobs and purchase orders. There were challenges in find- erties that we own and operate are up to 30 or 40 years
ing a good solution, as the available products were not old. As we renovate these properties, more and more
really designed for Asia, which is a unique market. We digital devices—from different sensors to digital panels,
eventually selected Yardi and worked with their service cameras, smart vending machines and network devices—
team to localize the systems for Hong Kong. After that, are being added. These Internet of Things (IoT) devices
we also developed our own procurement management generate a wealth of useful data, so we began to manage
system and implemented a leasing CRM system based on all the data centrally and strategically to create more
Microsoft’s CRM. modern, connected centers, and to better understand our
customers.
What were the next steps?
After stabilizing internal systems and processes, we We are also about to complete our first major develop-
moved on to focus on two areas. The first was consum- ment project, a Grade A office and commercial complex
er-based applications. This coincided with our strategic called The Quayside located in the rapidly developing
plan to expand outside of Hong Kong into mainland Kowloon East neighborhood of Hong Kong. It has been
China. In China, e-commerce is very hot—people are a lot really an opportunity for us to plan all these building tech-
more tech-savvy in terms of e-payment and consumer nologies from scratch. Given the vast amount of network
apps, so there was an impetus for moving into that area. and digital devices in our new or renovated buildings, we
It started with an organizational restructuring where are also in the process of redesigning our operation pro-
we set up a Consumer Experience Management (CEM) cesses to cater to this new digital era.

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