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Balancing
act between tech innovations
and delivering better services
By Erwin Lemuel G. Oliva
IT’S a tough job running the country’s most
visited website. It is even a tougher job to introduce
more technological innovations as the website aims to
provide better service to its readers. Just ask INQ7.net’s
vice president for technology Bobby Gantuangco and he
would readily go into a long tirade of “what ifs”
and whatnot.
“One of the major challenges
that we experience is enhancing value for customers and
doing so within our financial targets,” said Gantuangco.
This means running a website is a balancing act between
introducing more innovations and improving services for
its readers. As among one of few surviving Internet companies
in the country after the dotcom bust, INQ7.net has been
able to wisely manage its financial resources to “keep
the lights on,” so to speak.
INQ7.net is currently in the business of providing relevant,
up-to-date information to Filipinos. And these days, providing
information in the most efficient way has been a big business.
Think Bloomberg and Reuters.
In the last three years since the birth of INQ7.net, Gantuangco
has learned to manage his and others’ expectations.
In any project the technology division wants to undertake,
he said that everyone in the company (or at least the
decision-makers and middle managers) should be informed
of the variable constraints and opportunities that are
related to the project.
“You should not
be afraid to ask questions or challenge to clarify information
that would help you design and deliver the right solution,”
he said.
As head of technology, Gantuangco said that INQ7.net is
setting its sights on the next generation of communication
devices, such as fourth-generation wireless technologies
and innovations in multimedia messaging.
Fourth-generation wireless technology is described as
a service that marries Internet technology with mobile
communications.
Currently, we are seeing mobile phones that are able to
handle color graphics, simple polyphonic tones and text.
In the future, we would probably have so-called converged
multimedia devices that support wireless Internet and
communications.
Multimedia messaging, on the other end, is the next innovation
following text messaging. Just imagine watching news clips
via your phone or downloading more multimedia content
using wireless devices.
In light of these innovations, Gantuangco said that INQ7.net
has designed its system to enable the website’s
content to “to piggyback on any new device or platform
that comes along.”
Now comes the balancing act. Most technology heads of
companies would agree that throwing money at a technological
problem or opportunity is not as simple as it would sound
-- considering that dotcoms have lost their luster.
“Almost everyday we get feedback from our peers,
readers and advertisers on how we can improve or what
new service should we be offering next. Admittedly, a
number of these ideas just end up in our to-do-list especially
when the solutions to the problems are costlier than the
problem,” Gantuangco said.
INQ7.net has outsourced some system development to cut
on costs and save on time and human resources, INQ7.net's
technology head disclosed.
“A number of
technologies we have deployed in our system were outsourced
from companies who developed these cutting-edge products.
In that sense, we are not original. But the combination
of these products with our homegrown core system differentiates
us from our competitors in the region,” Gantuangco
said.
One of the technology requirements outsourced involved
“geo-targeting technology,” which allowed
the website’s content to be presented seamlessly
to a specific location like the United States and the
Philippines from the same source of operation. In short,
this innovation allows for faster and more efficient delivery
of information to locations that demand it most.
INQ7.net has also developed most of its in-house systems
using open source technology. This makes it more cost-effective
for the company, Gantuangco said.
“We use
proprietary or open source technology, mainstream or not,
whatever we see fit. The open source enterprise level
solution does not necessarily translate to savings. Total
cost of ownership includes cost for maintenance and some
open source services also cost a lot and a similar proprietary
systems cannot offer the same functionality,” he
said.
Unknown to many, INQ7.net is now set up like an online
news service but with a twist since it also provides a
venue for advertisers to target a bigger set of audience.
In fact, advertisers can derive almost a precise measurement
of the impact of their advertising using the website’s
own metrics.
“We are set up like a news
service, ad agency, publisher and producer. Advertising
is our primary revenue source and would likely remain
that way. However, product and service segmentation is
the way to go. INQ7.net was formed to take advantage of
all relevant revenue streams derived from the Internet
and online services,” he said.
According to recent reports, online advertising spending
worldwide has already exceeded the rate during the boom
years of the dotcom era.
“Advertisers who
are open to ‘creative executions’ (of their
campaigns) go to us. There are now about 4.5 million Filipinos
using the Internet. If our last quarter performance last
year will be an indicator, we see a fast growing awareness
in online advertising and expect more creative and programming
projects with advertisers and our editorial team,”
he added.
However, as one of the top websites in the Asian region,
INQ7.net is seeing competition coming from the region’s
advertising market.
With more than 30 million page views, and more than 1
million unique users, INQ7.net has discovered, and even
pioneered, some technological innovations, as it aims
to deliver better service, Gantuangco said.
“It’s
not just a website we are updating every time; we are
recording the Philippine history in the new millennium,
with a touch of the wonderful world of digital technology,”
he said.
“Actually, I’m proud of
my tech team. We share the same vision that some 50 years
from now our grandchildren would see, with parallelism
to television and the newspaper, what we’ve done
together to empower the Filipinos with information in
this digital age.”
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