Hanoi (VNA)🧸 - Vietnamese firms should apply information and technology (IT) to improve labour productivity and competitiveness, Nguyen Truong Thang, Director of the Institute of Information Technology, Vietnamese Academy of Science and Technology, said.

The country's IT infrastructure was cheap and competitive, which facilitated enterprises, Thang said at a meeting in Hanoi on January 7. The national IT infrastructure also had stable transmission lines and prices, he added. Meanwhile, Le Van Loi, Director of the Vietnam Chamber of Commerce and Industry (VCCI)'s Institute of Information Technology for Business, recommended that firms boost IT applications as it would help them work faster and have better services in the context of integration. Secondly, he said that if firms did not apply IT, their work would be less effective. Thirdly, IT would help firms satisfy customers if they created fan pages on Facebook or Twitter. "Customer satisfaction is very important in business," he emphasised. "For enterprises which have hundreds of thousand customers, only technology can help them stay in contact with their customers." An attendee at the meeting also shared a story about IT applications in customer care services. She said her friend in the United States bought medicine and then received messages about the medicine's usage and notification on her mobile phone and Twitter to remind her to take the medicines regularly. "When she had completed the dosage, she received an offer to buy a new one with preferential pricing, and now she has become a friendly customer of the pharmaceutical company," she said. Technology can help businesses manage and take care of millions of customers automatically, while a customer care staffer can only take care of about 50 customers per day, she said. Over ten years, information technology has become a key economic sector with a high growth rate and efficiency, Doan Duy Khuong, VCCI Vice Chairman said. The sector has contributed nearly 7 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) of the country, as well as boosting development of the socio-economy sector, Khuong added. The Vice Chairman said that many Vietnamese enterprises had actively invested and applied IT in their administration, production and trading activities. However, most of Vietnamese enterprises were still not fully aware of the role of IT, and therefore, were still struggling to find IT models suitable for their financial capacity and business purposes, Khuong added. "VCCI will co-operate with agencies, research institutes, and technology groups in the future as well as increase international co-operation and social resources for the purpose of developing businesses," Khuong said. VCCI would also support the business community in Vietnam, especially small – and medium-sized enterprises by consulting with businesses in advanced technology applications to improve competitiveness and increase labour productivity, he stated.-VNA