TT: The government has put effort into a lot of initiatives to creating a "knowledge-based" economy in Taiwan. Are they having any impact in the software industry?
Liao: Actually, I think that [the government] talks too much, too high. A lot of Taiwanese companies do not even have a basic information system to keep their information flow streamlined.
You can see that the price of labor is relatively low in Taiwan compared to the US or other countries so a lot of work is very labor intensive. So going into any company here to see how the internal processes and work flow, you will see companies here are relatively inefficient. Companies are still weak in this area.
If we want to become a knowledge-based economy, internal processes must be efficient. The only people who implement [efficient internal processes] are the big enterprises, but Taiwan's economy is built on small and medium enterprises, not like Japan where they have more big corporations rather than small businesses.
So, looking at our economy, the way to improve overall productivity is by helping small and medium-sized companies build their internal processes by offering them complete [information technology] systems like ASPs (application service providers, or Internet-based software to help run a business with software for accounting and inventory control), or by offering them other forms of cost-effective software.
We see that in Singapore and in Scandinavia, the governments there are doing that for the majority of enterprises to help boost the economy. That would be the first step, building up the first level of information systems, then we could work on the knowledge-based economy for companies of all sizes.
So, I think that is a good idea, but I think there is a missing layer in terms of their plan because they don't have a solution for building up the first level of information systems for those companies.
TT: My last question is bit more personal. In Taiwan, most companies are still led by men, with few exceptions. What is it like for a woman in Taiwan to rise to such a high position, and what challenges have you faced?
Liao: I don't know, actually, I think I have a lot of advantages being female in my company and also working in the software industry. The same question was raised last night with some of our Japanese customers.
We had a party for some of our Japanese customers and everybody was very surprised that I am a woman.
I'm just doing the job I feel I can do best and I think that people give me a lot of encouragement. If I have the same results as a man, they give me a lot of praise just because I am a woman -- I don't think I deserve that. Just because there are few women in the high-tech industry they see this as very special.
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