The Computer Centre is offering a variety of goods and services to support the use of IT by staff and students of the University.  These include software site licenses and distribution media, computer consumables, training, network services and laser printing services etc.  Most departments order these goods/services through the Computer Centre for convenience and to enjoy the benefit of group rates offered to the Computer Centre for bulk purchases. 

The Computer Centre is pleased to launch a new and effective electronic ordering system to further save time and effort for the departments in acquiring goods and services from us.  If you read our first article on "HKU Digital Certificates (HKU-Cert) to be issued in September" , you would learn about the electronic delivery of service (ESD) that the Computer Centre is launching in the University environment, with the newly introduced digital signature technology.  Our CC Ordering System is one of the pilot applications to make use of this state-of-the-art technology.  With the application of digital signatures, departments are no longer required to fill in the CC Order Forms in paper as the whole ordering process will be automated and completed on-line.  This should speed up the processing time and greatly facilitate and streamline the ordering operation. 

The New Online CC Ordering System

The electronic CC Ordering System serves as an on-line computer store which allows the departments to place orders to the Computer Centre at any time and place.  Through the System, departments may simply select the required products/services through the product selection list on-line and then check out by providing the required fields of information.  Upon completion of the order, departments are requested to sign the proposed order form electronically with their HKU-Cert private key.  The system will then automatically forward the electronic order to the designated approving authority, i.e. Head or the Administering Authority of the Department, for approval on-line. 
 

Signing an Order with Digital Signature

Besides bringing convenience to the departments, the new CC Ordering System also assists the Finance Office in processing and handling internal ordering transactions.  The System is built in with automated checking routines to validate the approving authority and other information such as account codes and funds' sources etc.  More importantly, with the data captured at source and passed directly to the financial systems of the Finance Office for further processing, this not only saves the Finance Office's effort on data entry but also minimizes the possible manual mistakes. 
These are benefits that an electronic operation can give us which cannot be realised with the existing paper-based operation. 

To provide a comprehensive and speedy service to the departments, we are working out the provision of a delivery service for certain products ordered from the Computer Centre through our electronic CC Ordering System. 
 

This new CC Ordering System should provide a more convenient and secure on-line shopping environment for members of the University to acquire goods and services from the Computer Centre.   It is always the mission of the Computer Centre to employ the latest computer technology to facilitate our University's teaching, learning, research and administrative activities. 
 

If you have any comments on the above or you wish to give feedback to us after trying out this on-line ordering system, please feel free to contact the undersigned.

Fanny Chau
Tel: 2964 5737
E-mail: hcxccyh@hku.hk