Operations guy finds BayanTrade the ‘perfect place’ to share his skills

When Pacific Century CyberWorks chairman and CEO Richard Li tried to convince the world he was an IT guru, he dressed down, cut his hair and started wearing eyeglasses instead of contact lenses, and began talking in technospeak.

BayanTrade’s director of operations does the opposite. He dresses corporate, hasn’t changed his hairstyle or glasses, and talks business.

And his secret passion is news, any kind, and all the time. "I get to the office early to read online publications, and do the same thing in the evening at home when everyone is asleep," he says.

Recently named director of operations after a stint as chief technology officer for BayanTrade, Dante Briones’ website preferences reveal an executive with broad interests aside from B2B e-commerce and e-bidding. Favorites on his browser settings include The New York Times, CNN and CNBC. While he spends time browsing technology news, politics, sports and editorial, opinion pieces dominate his reading.

So it’s not surprising to learn that one of the Philippines’ most prominent IT experts has spent most of his career helping companies manage business processes, supply chains and procurement rather than setting up IT infrastructure.

"I’ve been considered part of the IT sector for the last decade," Briones explains, "but most of the work I’ve done has focused on supply chain management. IT is more an incidental part of the job."

As director for corporate business systems for JG Summit from 1994 to 1995, Briones led a group-wide business process reengineering initiative. "We looked at all the core processes and redesigned them to increase efficiency and productivity before big enterprise systems made that popular," he says. "And it involved the entire supply chain, not just the group. To achieve the gains we were looking for, we had to look closely at both suppliers and customers as well."

Briones trained to be an engineer, and later a mathematician. After earning an undergraduate degree in engineering from the University of the Philippines, Briones followed up with a master’s degree in computational mathematics from Northern Illinois University with a perfect grade point average. He completed all the core courses required for a Ph.D. at Northern Illinois before deciding to return home to the Philippines.

"I used to come home every year to check conditions, and by late 1988 I was convinced of the timing. I completed the next semester and then packed my bags for good," Briones recalls. "My friends all thought I was crazy."

But Briones, who views himself as a patriot, had always intended to return. "It was just a matter of when," he says. "I wanted to play a part, a significant part, in bringing technology and business practice that I learned in the US to the Philippines."

BayanTrade is the perfect place to do so. But perhaps reflecting the other contrasts in Briones’ life and career, he doesn’t view the company as a dot-com startup. "We are a full-service e-commerce company, not just a portal," he explains. By full service, Briones is referring to professional and value-added services that the company offers buyers and sellers on the network.

Among those services are strategic sourcing, integration services and content management. "Where most B2B exchanges talk about technology, we talk about business," Briones says. "We’re here to provide the full, complete package for buyers and sellers who want to leverage B2B e-commerce to lower costs and open new markets."

So far, it’s working. Briones says that unlike many other portals around the world, BayanTrade is meeting its revenues and growth objectives, and is well on the way to profitability despite the current tough times for most technology-based companies.

"Our business model works," he says, "because it’s based on business fundamentals, like liquidity and performance."