One of the novelties presented at this year’s edition of the Macao International Environmental Co-operation Forum & Exhibition (2023MIECF), which kicked off yesterday and will continue until Sunday, was a new mobile application (app) from local company CESL Asia that aims to revolutionize the way companies manage their assets, people and other resources.

The ‘Ortux’ is a platform that offers a set of tools that will help companies be more efficient and, at the same time, make better use of the information they collect daily but that often fails to produce results due to quantity, complexity, and difficulties with analysis, as told to the Times in an interview with the president of CESL Asia, António Trindade.

The app was initially developed internally within companies that comprise the CESL Asia universe and for the company’s own management and efficiency purposes but is now, after years of development, available to all others who wish to engage in the modern era of management.

As Trindade explained, companies of all sizes have huge quantities of data and information to handle daily. The way this data is managed and processed can help companies be more efficient on several levels, including personnel management, resources allocation and many other ways. Efficiencies will be in the areas of electricity bills, transportation, and many others.

From sampling to real data use

As Trindade explained to the Times, the app comes from the company’s own experience of over 30 years of operation different fields including consultancy and other services to other companies and government entities.

“From our own use, we are getting very good results [in the use of the platform] with savings of about 20 to 30% on the use of resources, namely turning off usage times more efficiently. We also see a reduction in waste [of some raw materials and commodities] as well as in people [staff] who no longer need to do repeated tasks or waste time checking the status of tasks, etc.,” the president of CESL Asia explained.

“We also use several tools including Artificial Intelligence (AI) and other sophisticated tools to process large quantities of data [coming from every staff member or department] that until today was impossible to process. We generate millions of reports annually about the daily activities that previously were impossible to analyze.”

He said that in the past the company had to resort to either internal audits to understand what was happening in certain areas or short studies using sampling, a situation that has now been overcome with the use of this technology that uses all real data available and not just a sample of it. Additionally, using the programmed algorithms, the information is presented in a form that is easy to use.

As an example, Trindade explained that through this app it is possible to combine information such as weather reports with the type of user of a given service or the frequency that a certain service is requested. It is also possible to understand the particular needs of a certain group of people according to their characteristics, among many other aspects that historically needed to be observed and analyzed manually.

Macau as a lab

As in other cases, for CESL Asia, as Macau has the same functionality as other countries and regions, and being a small territory it is the “perfect lab size” to experiment with the use of these technological tools.

“Macau is small in area but very complex in terms of functioning. It is a perfect lab to test some of these new technology tools,” Trindade said, noting that in the development of this app, the company is counting on the support of another local company – Meta-Archit Software Technology Limited – that over time has allowed over 30 years of data from companies within the CESL Asia universe to be entered into the app. This concurrently facilitates the growth of other Small and Medium Enterprises in the process.

A big step forward in the quality of life for workers

One of the great advantages of the app is also how simple it is for staff members to use, and how it provides them with assistance in their work and personal needs.

Trindade explained that not only does the app help with reminding workers of the time scheduled for certain tasks, as well as itemizing the required tools and materials, but also provides a background and a history of similar tasks or references to those who completed the task previously. It also allows workers to “ report incapacity to attend to some job or report sickness, or request leave, change shifts, etc., allowing them to immediately allocate the task to another person without wasting time or jeopardizing completion of the task itself.”

The inputs contributed by everyone in the company into the same platform also allows it to predict behaviors and potentially address problems before they occur, avoiding inefficiencies and minimizing the time spent on unnecessary tasks.