Last editorial review: 2 October 2026
Start with the account and the people you work with
When a Hong Kong company asks whether it should use Lark or Feishu, the useful first question is not which name sounds more familiar. Start with the organisation account already in use, the administrator who controls it, and the people who must collaborate. A Hong Kong office working with colleagues in mainland China, a Macao operation and external suppliers may have several account and access situations at the same time.
Official support material explains that Lark and Feishu are operated by separate entities and that accounts are used in their respective clients. Treat that as an account boundary, not as a complete procurement answer. Before discussing documents, approvals or automation, ask an administrator to confirm the tenant, sign-in route and client that the company actually intends to support.
If the business has no formal CIO, the work can still be divided sensibly. An internal IT contact or managed service provider can verify the technical facts, a department head can describe the workflow, and HR can plan onboarding and support. Every unresolved point should have an owner and a date for follow-up.
Compare a real workflow, not two brand names
Choose one recurring piece of work: contract review, purchase approval, campaign delivery or a customer handover. Write down where the work starts, who prepares the information, who approves it, who needs visibility and what must remain after the project is closed. This turns a broad product comparison into a test that a buying team can observe.
A feature list rarely shows whether the latest document will be easy to find or whether the next colleague can take over without calling the original owner. Ask each proposed setup to demonstrate the same workflow. Record what is confirmed, what requires configuration and what still needs written clarification from the supplier.
Put the CEO, CIO and HR questions on one page
The CEO or business sponsor should define the problem worth solving, the pilot boundary and the conditions for stopping or expanding. The CIO or technical owner should verify accounts, permissions, external guests, support escalation, data handover and the lifecycle of a user account. HR should make sure staff know where to sign in, where official records belong and where to ask for help.
A good one-page decision record contains the target workflow, pilot participants, data owner, budget owner, contractual reviewer and a short list of unresolved questions. Login counts alone are not evidence that a working practice has improved. A stronger signal is that several roles can complete and hand over the same process with fewer private explanations.
Handle cross-border collaboration as a managed arrangement
Cross-border work adds more than another login. It adds data flows, external roles, handover points and supplier responsibilities. List the information that an external participant genuinely needs, who approves access, how long access should remain and who checks it when a person changes role or leaves the project.
Do not describe search phrases such as ‘Lark international version’, ‘Feishu overseas version’ or ‘Lark Chinese’ as guarantees of account interoperability, feature parity or regional availability. Use the organisation's current official support and contractual information. Where personal or regulated data is involved, ask the appropriate legal, compliance or data-protection professional to review the facts. This article is an operational buying guide, not legal advice.
Run a bounded pilot before a company-wide announcement
A two-to-four-week pilot is usually easier to learn from than a broad launch. Pick one department and one workflow. During the first cycle, note every point where a participant cannot find the latest information, is unsure who should approve, or has to move a decision back into a private message. During the second cycle, add someone who must take over the work and see whether the record is understandable without a verbal briefing.
At the end, the business sponsor can review whether ownership and handover are clearer. IT can review account and permission issues. HR can review the first-week instructions and recurring support questions. Keep the exceptions visible: some systems or sensitive processes may need to remain outside the pilot until their owners approve a different arrangement.
Read quotations on a like-for-like basis
Ask suppliers to separate subscription, setup, migration, training and continuing support. Confirm the billing currency, payment cycle, minimum commitment, user changes and renewal process in the formal quotation. If Hong Kong and Macao entities contract separately, confirm who signs, pays and receives support for each arrangement.
Do not publish or rely on an estimated total before the supplier has confirmed the scope. HR can provide expected joining and leaving patterns, IT can describe migration and integration work, and finance can then compare proposals against the same assumptions.
CEO FAQ
- Am I buying software or changing a way of working?
- Approve a specific business problem and a bounded pilot, not a collection of features. Ask who owns the workflow and how the team will recognise a clearer handover.
- When should we avoid a full rollout?
- Pause expansion when account ownership, data ownership, external access or exit arrangements still have no named owner.
- What should the final decision paper contain?
- Include the workflow, pilot scope, success observations, unresolved risks, budget, supplier answers and the person responsible for each next step.
CIO and IT FAQ
- Can we assume Lark and Feishu accounts are interchangeable?
- No. Verify the organisation account, client and collaboration arrangement with the administrator and official support. Do not infer interoperability from similar naming.
- What belongs in the technical questionnaire?
- Ask about identity lifecycle, sign-in methods, administrator and guest roles, export and handover, support escalation and the evidence available for each answer.
- How should we test cross-border work?
- Map the data, systems, people and approval points first. Treat any cross-system trust or external collaboration setting as an administrator-controlled decision.
HR FAQ
- Is an installation link enough for onboarding?
- No. Staff need the official sign-in route, the first workflow, the place for formal records, the support contact and a clear reason not to use unofficial downloads.
- How do we avoid two parallel ways of working?
- Define which process is in the pilot, how long the old channel remains, and who resolves exceptions. Do not let every team invent its own version.
- How do we know adoption is real?
- Observe whether different roles can complete and hand over a whole process. Login volume is useful operational data but not proof of a successful change.