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The Census and Statistics Department (C&SD) released today (January 19) the results of the Quarterly Business Tendency Survey for the first quarter (Q1) of 2024.
Business situation
For all surveyed sectors taken together, the proportion of respondents expecting their business situation to be better (13%) in Q1 2024 over the preceding quarter is slightly higher than that expecting it to be worse (12%).
When compared with the results of the Q4 2023 survey round, the proportion of respondents expecting a better business situation in Q1 2024 is 13%, lower than the corresponding proportion of 17% in Q4 2023. On the other hand, the proportion of respondents expecting a worse business situation has increased from 9% in Q4 2023 to 12% in Q1 2024.
Analysed by sector, respondents in most of the surveyed sectors expect their business situation to increase on balance or remain broadly unchanged in Q1 2024 as compared with Q4 2023. In particular, more respondents in the financing and insurance sector expect their business situation to be better in Q1 2024 as compared with Q4 2023.
The results of the survey should be interpreted with care. In this type of survey on expectations, the views collected in the survey are affected by the events in the community occurring around the time of enumeration, and it is difficult to establish precisely the extent to which respondents’ perception of the future accords with the underlying trends. The enumeration period for this survey round was from December 1, 2023 to January 8, 2024.
Volume of business/output
Respondents in quite a number of the surveyed sectors expect their volume of business/output to increase on balance or remain broadly unchanged in Q1 2024 as compared with Q4 2023. In particular, more respondents in the financing and insurance and retail sectors expect their volume of business/sales to increase in Q1 2024 over Q4 2023. On the other hand, more respondents in the construction sector expect their volume of construction output to decrease, as compared to those expecting it to increase.
Employment
Respondents in most of the surveyed sectors expect their employment to increase on balance or remain broadly unchanged in Q1 2024 as compared with Q4 2023. In particular, more respondents in the accommodation and food services, manufacturing, financing and insurance and real estate sectors expect their employment to increase in Q1 2024 over Q4 2023. On the other hand, more respondents in the information and communications sector expect their employment to decrease, as compared to those expecting it to increase.
Selling price/service charge
Respondents in most of the surveyed sectors expect their selling prices/service charges to remain broadly unchanged in Q1 2024 as compared with Q4 2023. In the accommodation and food services sector, however, more respondents expect their charges for services rendered/prices of food provided to go up in Q1 2024 over Q4 2023.
Commentary
A Government spokesman said that business sentiment among large enterprises showed some softening as compared to three months ago, but remained positive in overall terms. Large enterprises’ appetite for hiring also stayed positive.
Looking forward, the spokesman said that further recovery of consumption- and tourism-related activities should support business outlook, though the difficult external environment and tight financial conditions will continue to dampen sentiment. The Government will monitor the situation closely.
Further information
The survey gathers views on short-term business performance from the senior management of about 570 prominent establishments in various sectors in Hong Kong with a view to providing a quick reference, with minimum time lag, for predicting the short-term future economic performance of the local economy.
The survey covers 10 major sectors in Hong Kong, namely manufacturing; construction; import/export trade and wholesale; retail; accommodation and food services (mainly covering services rendered by hotels and restaurants); transportation, storage and courier services; information and communications; financing and insurance; real estate; and professional and business services sectors.
Views collected in the survey refer only to those of respondents on their own establishments rather than those on the respective sectors they are engaged in, and are limited to the expected direction of quarter-to-quarter change (e.g. “up”, “same” or “down”) but not the magnitude of change. In collecting views on the quarter-to-quarter changes, if the variable in question is subject to seasonal variations, respondents are asked to provide the expected changes after excluding the normal seasonal variations.
Survey results are generally presented as “net balance”, i.e. the difference between the percentage of respondents choosing “up” and that choosing “down”. The percentage distribution of respondents among various response categories (e.g. “up”, “same” and “down”) reflects how varied their business expectations are. The “net balance”, with its appropriate sign, indicates the direction of expected change in the variable concerned. A positive sign indicates a likely upward trend while a negative sign indicates a likely downward trend. However, the magnitude of the “net balance” reflects only the prevalence of optimism or pessimism, but not the magnitude of expected change, since information relating to such magnitude is not collected in the survey.
Furthermore, owing to sample size constraint, care should be taken in interpreting survey results involving a small percentage (e.g. less than 10%) of respondents in individual sectors.
Chart 1 shows the views on expected changes in business situation for the period Q1 2023 to Q1 2024.
Table 1 shows the net balances of views on expectations in respect of different variables for Q1 2024.
The survey results are published in greater detail in the “Report on Quarterly Business Tendency Survey, Q1 2024”. Users can browse and download the publication at the website of the C&SD (www.censtatd.gov.hk/en/EIndexbySubject.html?pcode=B1110008&scode=300).
Users who have enquiries about the survey results may contact the Business Expectation Statistics Section of the C&SD (Tel: 3903 7263; email: business-prospects@censtatd.gov.hk).
KSR Pet Care continues with progressive staff investment plan.
MCLEAN, Va. – Jan. 10, 2024 – PRLog — McLean based dog walking/pet sitting business KSR Pet Care, which reached a milestone birthday in 2023, has started 2024 with a new leadership promotion. Christy Kline who has been with KSR Pet Care for 9 years was promoted to Vice-President. This newest development is one more step in a series of sizable staff investments, which KSR Pet Care started years ago.
The secrets to KSR Pet Care’s success have been considered unworkable by many of their peers, but KSR Pet Care has continued to move forward, even during the pandemic. “As a business we chose to make a sizable investment in different phases. The most progressive one was in our health benefits (medical, vision, dental) which we offer not only to our full-time but also our part time employees and their dependents.” says Karen Rosenberg, Owner/President of KSR Pet Care. “After 7 years, I can say it has been worth the investment. We did not interrupt those plans during the pandemic: Although our market was dead, we chose the only viable option, the government loans, which have since been forgiven.”
Usually, a pet care business of KSR Pet Care’s size employs one, maximum two office staff members. Again, KSR Pet Care took a different approach. About 10 years ago, more field as well as office staff were hired. Office manager Julie Lessner who has been with the business 8 years, clarifies: “We currently are a 30+ employee business including three managers and office assistant to offer detail-oriented customer service as well as support to our team in the field. We strive to take care of both as the stakes in a pet care service business are high.”
The business is not new to pioneering. In 2015 another exceptional measure was taken. Vice-President Christy Kline remembers: “In the course of 2015-2018, we employed three aspiring dog trainers at KSR Pet Care who needed help establishing themselves as certified dog trainers and/or were still completing their certification. We therefore decided to start a dog training school at KSR Pet Care offering dog training to complement our other services. It was a win-win although we knew it would not last. The training school ran its course from 2016 to 2018 until all three dog trainers left the nest and started their own dog training businesses. The relationships we wielded, the coaching and referrals we offered are gems for life.”
KSR Pet Care’s investments were always calculated and still with risk as the cost of living in KSR Pet Care’s service area (McLean, Vienna, Falls Church, North-Arlington) is high and more staff members have been forced over the years to move further away, while travel expenses remain high. It seems though that 40% of their staff today still weighs off in favor of staying employed at KSR Pet Care because of the care the office support team provides and the extralegal benefits. Turnover is medium-low and total employee count is to date the highest since its founding in 2008.
“Having a small business in Northern Virginia is both a dream come true as well as an honor,” concludes Karen Rosenberg. “Having survived the pandemic, which brought our industry’s market to a stand-still, we feel confident again and hope to continue offering dog walking and pet sitting for many years to come. But not alone, never alone. Investing in people on all levels is key, even if that means taking calculated risks.” https://www.ksrpetcare.com
NEC Corporation (TSE: 6701) has enhanced and expanded the performance of its lightweight large language model (LLM) and is scheduled to launch it in the spring of 2024. With this development, NEC is aiming to provide an optimal environment for the use of generative artificial intelligence (AI) that is customized for each customer’s business and centered on a specialized model that is based on NEC’s industry and business know-how.
These services are expected to dramatically expand the environment for transforming operations across a wide range of industries, including healthcare, finance, local governments and manufacturing. Moreover, NEC will focus on developing specialized models for driving the transformation of business and promoting the use of generative AI from individual companies to entire industries through managed application programming interface (API) services.
NEC has enhanced its LLM by doubling the amount of high-quality training data and has confirmed that it outperformed a group of top-class LLMs in Japan and abroad in a comparative evaluation of Japanese dialogue skills (Rakuda*). Furthermore, the LLM can handle up to 300,000 Japanese characters, which is up to 150 times longer than third-party LLMs, enabling it to be used for a wide range of operations involving huge volumes of documents, such as internal and external business manuals.
NEC is also developing a “new architecture” that will create new AI models by flexibly combining models according to input data and tasks. Using this architecture, NEC aims to establish a scalable foundation model that can expand the number of parameters and extend functionality. Specifically, the model size can be scalable from small to large without performance degradation, and it is possible to flexibly link with a variety of AI models, including specialized AI for legal or medical purposes, and models from other companies and partners. Additionally, its small size and low power consumption enable to be installed in edge devices. Furthermore, by combining NEC’s world-class image recognition, audio processing, and sensing technologies, the LLMs can process a variety of real-world events with high accuracy and autonomy.
In parallel, NEC has also started developing a large-scale model with 100 billion parameters, much larger than the conventional 13 billion parameters. Through these efforts, NEC aims to achieve sales of approximately 50 billion yen over the next three years from its generative AI-related business.
The development and use of generative AI has accelerated rapidly in recent years. Companies and public institutions are examining and verifying business reforms using various LLMs, and the demand for such reforms is expected to increase in the future. On the other hand, many challenges remain in its utilization, such as the need for prompt engineering to accurately instruct AI, security aspects such as information leakage and vulnerability, and business data coordination during implementation and operation.
Since the launch of the NEC Generative AI Service in July 2023, NEC has been leveraging the NEC Inzai Data Center, which provides a low-latency and secure LLM environment, and has been accumulating know-how by building and providing customer-specific “individual company models” and “business-specific models” ahead of the industry by using NEC-developed LLM.
NEC leverages this know-how to provide the best solutions for customers in a variety of industries by offering LLM consisting of a scalable foundation model and an optimal environment for using generative AI according to the customer’s business.
About the generative AI business strategy
1. Three-stage development of generative AI business through managed API services
The Managed API service provides dialogue and search functions utilizing large-scale language models such as LLM developed by NEC. With this Managed API Service as the core, the generative AI business will be developed in three stages: (Phase 1) Building industry- and business-specific models targeting individual companies, (Phase 2) Incorporating industry- and business-specific models into business packages and solutions, and (Phase 3) Developing business packages and solutions through partnerships with companies.
2. Strengthening the structure of technology development and sales activities
In addition to the NEC Generative AI Hub, a specialized organization established directly under the Chief Digital Officer (CDO), and the Digital Trust Promotion Management Department, “ambassadors” have been established to promote the generative AI business from the corporate sales department. This will provide customers in various industries with the best possible generative AI solutions.
A new “Generative AI Centre” has also been established to oversee the generative AI technology that supports these activities. Approximately 100 leading-edge researchers in the area of generative AI from global research centers will be virtually integrated to accelerate the commercialization of research results in generative AI through seamless collaboration between research and business.
3. Partner collaboration for the provision of safe and reliable LLM
Looking to the future, NEC is promoting the LLM Risk Assessment Project in collaboration with Robust Intelligence to provide secure and reliable LLM.
NEC will provide industry- and business-specific models that have been risk assessed according to global standards.
While pioneering new AI innovations, NEC will continue to consult with customers to enhance value, including service and function expansion, and to provide safe and secure generative AI services and solutions for solving customer challenges.
Kinetic Consulting, the leading boutique consulting company providing business growth consultancy, has released macky.ai, the first AI business consulting platform that offers any organisation an easy, non-prompt-based AI consulting solution for up to 55 different business categories. The platform is powered by OpenAI’s artificial intelligence technology.
CEO of Kinetic Consulting – Joe Tawfik
What is Macky AI?
The Macky AI platform overcomes some of the key hurdles preventing the mass adoption of AI in a business environment. No training is required for employees to begin taking advantage of the consulting platform. No knowledge is required on how to prompt the AI to get the right output or determine if the output is suitable. The hard work of determining which prompt to use or if the output is suitable has already been determined by the software’s creator, Kinetic Consulting. Platform users are asked a maximum of three questions to generate the desired output.
The creators of the Macky AI software have curated the types of everyday requirements of key departments in a business and what type of suitable output can be generated from a generative AI solution. An example may be generating something as simple as a job description for a new employee or something more complex, such as creating a new business process or reengineering an existing one. These types of requests are often requested for consultants to perform. Macky AI aims to reduce the cost of everyday consulting needs for companies so they can empower their employees to complete these tasks without the need for costly consultants.
By freeing up the costs paid for these lower-level activities, companies can now divert effort and funds to develop higher-value business initiatives, such as business roadmaps and growth strategy plans. These higher value and more complex business requirements will remain better suited for traditional consulting. The Macky AI platform is unique because it also provides its users with traditional consultants for more complex needs. The ability for an organisation to have the best of both worlds, all on one platform, is made possible on Macky AI. The future of consulting will be the augmentation of AI and human consultants.
Macky AI Provides New Consulting Options for SMEs
A 2023 report by the OECD[1] on the outlook of SMEs in OECD countries highlights that the majority are currently operating in highly challenging environments. The report cites that SMEs have been greatly impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic, rising geopolitical tensions, high inflation, tighter monetary and fiscal policy, and supply-chain disruptions. Retaining and attracting staff has also become a major issue for SMEs in OECD countries. According to a Future of Business Survey, it is reported to be the second most pressing challenge faced by SMEs that are older than two years in the first quarter of 2022[2]. Many SMEs have also depleted their cash reserves during the pandemic and now find it challenging to raise capital for their business to fuel the rising costs of goods and services and the capital required for digital transformation projects.
Outside of the OECD, we find the importance of a thriving SME ecosystem even more critical. In the Gulf region, SMEs contribute even more to the economy than their counterparts in OECD countries. Within the UAE, for example, SMEs represent 94% of the companies and institutions operating in the country, contributing more than 50% to the country’s GDP. SMEs account for 86% of the private sector’s workforce. Operating extensively throughout the rest of the GCC, SMEs employ 80% of Saudia Arabia, 43% of Oman’s workforce, 57% of Bahrain, 23% of Kuwait, and 20% of Qatar.
The importance of having healthy and thriving SMEs is recognised as the primary pillar of strength for any economy. The challenging environment and rising cost of capital make it difficult for SMEs to afford traditional consulting. Ironically, this is the time when consulting is most needed to help SMEs navigate, transform, and thrive again. Macky AI gives SMEs affordable access to consulting services using artificial intelligence. The AI business consulting platform provides an on-demand service for key business challenges, such as analysing a profit and loss statement to identify cost savings and developing a 12-month marketing plan to increase sales.
The Future of Consulting
Business consulting, like most industries, is undergoing a period of disruption. Technological advances, such as artificial intelligence, are accelerating the delivery of consulting in the future. Critics of the technology may highlight how AI is not 100% accurate in its outputs and is prone to error, so it should not be used. This argument is fundamentally flawed because even human-based consulting is prone to errors. All outputs delivered by human or AI consultants should be checked for accuracy. The advancement of generative AI technology has reached a point where it is now highly useful in a business or education environment.
AI technologies should be embraced rather than resisted if they are fit for purpose. Macky AI is designed to be specifically for business-related needs, and even in the open question section of the platform, the AI has been programmed not to answer questions that are not business-related. The objective of restricting it for business purposes only is to ensure that if employers give it to their employees, it will not be used for personal needs.
“As advancements in AI evolve, we need to accept that it will become a natural part of how we interact with things, get answers to our questions, and help solve complex problems. The future of consulting will be an augmentation between AI and human consultants. This is the inevitable evolutionary path. The percentages of AI usage versus human is unknown at this stage. However, I am 100% confident it will not be all traditional human consulting for much longer. Macky AI is the first step towards bringing AI into the workplace in a controlled environment for a specific business purpose. By empowering SMEs with affordable consulting outputs for business tasks, we are also helping SMEs overcome everyday business challenges and thrive in the future. Macky AI is designed to democratise consulting, making it accessible to all organisations regardless of size.” said Joe Tawfik, founder of Macky AI.
[1] OECD (2023), OECD SME and Entrepreneurship Outlook 2023, OECD Publishing, Paris, https://doi.org/10.1787/342b8564-en.
[2] OECD-World Bank-Meta Future of Business Survey, Data for Good, (March 2022).
Contact Information: Alfred Berring Media Officer media@kineticcs.com
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