Traveling Mind

My 2011 Read List

2012-01-20T16:58:00.001+08:00

This time around, I want to talk about books. Particularlyabout titles that I read in 2011 that are worth some reviews; I reckon too muchof FingerTec talk sometimes could bore the audiences.

Last year, I bought about 100 books in total and a few eBooksfrom Kobo and not counting my magazine subscriptions. Some books are forreferences; some are trashed after a few chapters, and only 30 or so that Iread cover to cover. Here I introduce a few English books that I like.

1. MacroWikinomics: Rebooting Business and The World - Don Tapscott and Anthony D. Williams

Tapscott is a thought leader in digital world. ThisMacroWikinomics should be an extension of his observation for masscollaboration, in a larger scale after the published of Wikinomics in 2006. Inthis book, he gives some true examples on how MacroWikinomics happened inbusiness, government and civil society.

2. A WorldWithout Islam - Graham E. Fuller

This book is NOT about criticizing Islam. In fact it concluded thatthe global confrontations wouldn’t be lesser if the world is without Islam. Fuller,a former vice chairman of the National Intelligence Council at the CIA gives alot of analysis and proofs that the conflicts and tensions that exist betweenthe West and the East are geopolitically mounted, rather than caused by religiousorigins. The discussions are not confined to Islam only; in relation to Islam, itbroadly covers the Christianity, cultural, politics, economic, history andmore.

3. Steve Jobs - Walter Isaacton

I don’t prefer celebrity biographies, and I hardly buy orread any memoir. But this was an exception to me. We are in an IT-relatedbusiness and a person like Steve Jobs is such a legend that the details of hislife are worth a look at.

4. The Takeover - Stephen Frey

I bought this book in a second-handbookstore. I have a few books of Stephen Frey, some I finished and some I discardedhalf way. My last purchase, Hell’s Gate unfortunately felt in the lattercategory. This one so far I think is his best. If you want business world’sthriller, this is it.

5. Fall of Giants - Ken Follet

I have a fullcollection of Ken Follet’s books. This is the first book of his trilogy aboutthe change of the major world powers before and after the World War 1, writtenin a style that gives it a lot more fun than a history book. I would definitelyconsider getting his second installment due this coming September.

6. The White Tiger - Aravind Adiga

This is Aravind Adiga’s debut novel that won him a Booker Prize. Ibought the book, expecting some surprises to be in store and it didn't disappoint.I must say that I enjoy books written by Indian writers, especially one likeRohinton Misty who beautifully and powerfully depicts the harsh life in India.

Aravind’s White Tiger novel has a more comical feel. The low-life chauffeurturned “social entrepreneur” tells his own story, justifying his crime, and atthe same time, revealing the rampant corruption that has eroded the Indiandemocracy system.

7. The Fear Index - Robert Harris

In my view, I found GhostWriter more interesting in film rather than a read, but nevertheless,Robert Harris is still one of my favorite writers. His latest work, The FearIndex, is a combination of technological, financial and psychological fiction,which brings an interesting and creative turn to the book.

His ancient Rome trilogy, based on thetale of Cicero’s slave secretary, Tiro, is another intriguing piece although itseems like Robert Harris has totally forgotten his mission to complete thetrilogy - after the publication of Imperium and Lustrum, I, for one, have beeneagerly awaiting for news of the third and final part.

8. Animal Farm - George Orwell

We all know George Orwell because of his classical 1984, which wasfirst published in 1948, the famous prophetic haunting tale about the “ThoughtPolice” and the “Big Brother”. This novel was first published in 1946; and I boughtthe digital copy, as the printed copy is a rare in major bookstores. Both Animal Farm and 1984 criticize totalitarianism, and the author uses animalsas characters in his Animal Farm.

Historical Record For Every Terminal

2012-01-08T22:41:00.000+08:00

Our practical branding concept continues to bring us some new and innovative systems that benefit resellers and customers, this time we introduce CloudTrack.

Yes, this is a cloud computing technology platform, but no, this is not a system for sale. This is an additional support system from FingerTec to make sure that as our sales grow, our technical support improves to the benefit of every party involves in FingerTec business.

This system is expected to provide convenience to our resellers and technical team in tracking every terminal’s historical records, complete with necessary information required to perform technical support.

It begins with this simple idea: Every respectful human life keeps a medical record for doctors to issue the right prescription in time of need. What if the same practice is applied to a machine?

Many manufacturers don't bother to know where and to who the device has been sold to and they would rather consider their obligation fulfilled so long as the limited warranty is provided and served.

But to be different, we are pleased to consider a functional device as having a life of its own. Imagine that it was born to serve its master whom has different expectations. Its burden of workload depends on the total workforce and the nature of business of its master. Hence, keeping a 'healthy body' all the time is fundamental for a machine to serve its master well. If you can pull records of a specific machine at anytime and check on its health condition even for the slightest hiccup, and be able to give an immediate and right treatment on the machine, wouldn't you want to?

The only reason that deterred us from introducing the CloudTrack much earlier was due to the difficulty of integration with our backend accounting system. In fact, we had quite some talk with the supplier in the past years, and the breakthrough came only early last year.

With respect for all life, there is a thread of health records keeping track of the devices' well-beings. And after a device is 'born' from the production line, its full "maternity" record i.e model, serial number, firmware version, core board and MCU version, and etc. would be uploaded to the CloudTrack for easy reference. Resellers who bought the devices are given the rights to access the records, they are encouraged to continue the trail by filling up where and to who the device had finally gone to, and enrich the biodata whenever they perform technical supports to the particular device.

I believe that one of the reasons our business continues to grow is because we never underestimate the capacity to accommodate technical supports that usually increased in tandem with the sales growth. Besides adding a few technical personnel, a good system would definitely play an important role.

Beyond Biometrics

2011-12-21T16:58:00.001+08:00

(This is my Foreword for Beyond Biometrics, FingerTec annual publication)

I always had the dream to build a world-class brand. And, I believed that full-fledged execution is the only way for me to get closer to that dream. Over the years with FingerTec, we have been building, improving and strengthening not only our products and services, but also our system and our people, in our way to achieve this ultimate goal of building a renowned brand.

When we created a vast pool of online resources based on practical branding that leveraged on Internet technology, we promised our customers that we would Make Things Easy. User friendliness is the priority in almost everything that we do, starting from leading-edge products to support systems. This strategy had brought us hundreds of loyal resellers and ten-of-thousands of customers in more than 120 countries around the world.

Our 2011 recorded a growth of 15% as compared to the previous year, which I'm proud about considering the volatile world's economic situation. Even though the coming year's economy would still be enveloped in a gloomy outlook from the likely spread Eurozone debt crisis, we particularly optimistic about the future ahead of us.

Let's welcome 2012 with the publication of Beyond Biometrics. This annual magazine contains FingerTec's past activities, and the retrospect of the brand's highlighted events. we also give you a hint of what's in store for the year 2012 by FingerTec.

Beyond Biometrics is not merely a title for our magazine, it has become our new slogan, succeeding We Make Things Easy, marking the arrival of a new era that focuses on technology transformation of FingerTec products, and the changes in our business approach simultaneously. The recent debut of our web-based and mobile TimeTec system has the market excited, and we expect to expand our platform to cloud computing technology and to offer it as SaaS (Software as a Service) in the short future would definitely stir another round of excitement.

Furthermore, we will continue to lift the slogan to a higher ground, to become our philosophical guide that blends into our strategic planning and daily operation.

With all that we have in plan and the team that we have onboard, I am confident that the FingerTec brand will soar to a new height.

It is my pleasure to present to you Beyond Biometrics and let's stride towards the promising future.

Persistency in Execution is the Key to a Successful Plan

2011-12-13T11:43:00.003+08:00

Recently, during the IFSEC Arabia Exhibition, I had a talkwith one of FingerTec distributors from Saudi Arabia.

“Since you make cold calls to get appointments, how manyprospective customers do you meet in a day?” I asked, after he explained abouthis sales activities.

“Approximately three to four, about a hundred a month.”

“That’s a lot. Then how many readers you can sell in amonth?”

“I reckon about fifteen to twenty. It varies from month tomonth, festive months would be less, and if there was a project, the saleswould be more.”

“That’s quite impressive,” I replied. “How about next year,would you foresee that you could meet more potential clients in a month?”

My question caught him off-guard and he started to calculatethe possibilities. He then raised his head and said, “Probably not. Because Ithink I would see less (customers) but selling more readers.”

Exactly. He saw the logic by getting more referrals and morequality potentials.

“But still, time is limited for everyone. Why don’t you trysome new strategies?” As usual, I started my “routine lecture” to persuade himto look into Internet marketing as an alternative method to improve hiscompany’s image and boost sales.

I began to explain how to tap on our resources, to usemonthly newsletter as an effective tool to spread the influence and to reachthe maximum target audience by a single click.

“And you virtually meet more prospective customers not byhundreds but by a few thousands every month. The mailing list will get longermuch easier, and you will experience the days when customers will be callingyou instead of the other way round.” Of course, I told him that rule ofpermission marketing is applied.

I received positive responses from his boss, who joined uslater in the conversation, and him. I sincerely told them that the Internet marketing might look simple, butwithout persistency, many had failed in adopting the strategy.

I recalled three years ago when I visited a distributor, Inoticed that some ineffective conventional methods were being used by them tohandle both sales and support in a vast country, I told them that they have tomake a few changes to prosper.

I later spent a month writing FingerTec Distributor Guidebookas a reference, and urging more resellers to follow our successful strategiesin expanding their business in the local market. Because, I really don’t think that to increase sales amount,the workforce size needs to increase at the same rate.

Since FingerTec Way has been proven to work fine inexpanding business to cover the worldwide market, I strongly believe that itshould fit into other local markets effortlessly with some minor modifications.Even if resellers make use of the same concept and include some other productsthat they carry, I think it should work fine too.

Alas, although some distributors agreed, acknowledgedand implemented the idea, it wasdone in a perfunctory manner. Forexample, they may set up Facebook accounts, but updated them once in a fewmonths, not to mention tougher tasks such as sending newsletters with some oftheir own contents periodically, which I think would be a highly efficient wayin yielding maximum advantages in the long run.

Persistency in executions is the key to ensure a successfulplan; that is what I have learned over the years. In fact, relationshipsbetween FingerTec and its partners can be more intimate than just buyers andsellers if they were to implement the FingerTec Way. They are free to use our plentifulresources to grow their business. The persistency in execution is everythingthat they need.

The FingerTec Way is still in its infancy. Hence, wherever Igo, I feel it is customary to promote it to the resellers that I met, hopefullyto gain more followers. This has become my new persistency.

IFSEC Saudi: Religion As Brand Identity

2011-11-27T20:20:00.001+08:00

I couldn't help but to compare what I had observed in the two Islamic stronghold countries that I had visited, Iran a few years back, and Saudi Arabia just last week.

Wearing of headscarf is compulsory for all women in Iran but their pieces of clothing and headscarves can be fashionable and colorful. This headscarf ruling is applied to foreign women too. But black is the only permitted color for women in Saudi; they put on black headscarves, black veils, shapeless Abaya black gowns covering from head to toe, exposing only a pair of flickering eyes, and some even covered their eyes with black veils too. But for foreign women, while headscarf and veil are not enforced, black gown is obligatory. With Saudi men wearing their traditional white robe and their women put on the black ones, such contrast is so eye-catching in Riyadh, the capital city of Saudi, and located in the middle of Arabia in a desert environment.

Alcohol is forbidden and entertainments are scarce in both countries but you get more Western TV channels in Saudi than in Iran. Facebook is banned in Iran, but I could gain access in Saudi. It had made my stay in Saudi slightly entertained.

Segregation of different sexes is a common scene at the food corners in Saudi. All shops are closed during prayer times which did not happen in Iran.

Segregation of sexes at the food corner

Generally, Saudi women are not allowed to work and they are not allowed to drive by law. Even at the women cosmetic counters at the shopping mall, only salesmen were around to serve you. The IFSEC Arabia observed the similar scenario, the religion extended its grip to bar all female exhibitors from entering the hall, making the exhibition the all-male show.

IFSEC Arabia was relatively small, occupied only a small hall with less than 100 exhibitors. Since FingerTec is a famous biometrics brand in the Kingdom of Saudi, and we already have a few active and performing resellers, our participation's purpose was mainly to meet with them and to understand this unique market better.

Visitors gather at our booth

ItQan's Mr. Mohammed Naiem Ewidah (right) and Mr. Mohamed Adbulmoniem Abdul Mustafa (left)

To name a few who came include Global System's Technical Manager, Mr. Mohamed Abdelatif from Jeddah who came on the first day, ItQan International's Project Manager and Sales Engineer, Mr. Mohammed Naiem Ewidah and Mr. Mohamed Abdulmoniem Abdul Mustafa from Dammam who came on Day 2 and 3 to help us at the booth. We also had a good conversation with ZulTec’s Sales Manager Mr. Mohammad Munir and SecuTech Arabia’s Pre-Sales Consultant and Sales Manager Mr. Mohammad Shahzad and Mr. Rauf Anwar Mohammad and Proline UK’s Assistant Manager Mr. Nasiruldin Y. Sulaiman who dropped by our booth. We also took the opportunity to meet Innokat Saudi’s Deputy Managing Director and e-Business Director Mr. Ali S. Al-Farhan and Mr. Naser Abu Al-Haji who become our partner this year, and active in government projects in Riyadh.

Islam was originated in Saudi Arabia in the 6th century, and spread fast to the Middle East and later to the rest of the world. With over 1.5 billion followers as of 2009 or over 22% of earth’s population, Islam is now the second largest and one of the fastest-growing religions in the world.

Over centuries, the major religions have evolved an astonishing ability to extract loyalty, unswerving devotion and financial contributions from their adherents, which must make them a fairly appealing business model to emulate as to yield brand identity and brand loyalty.

The iconic tower, Burj Al Mamlakah or Kingdom Centre

And, if we see FingerTec in a religion perspective, the logo as the religion symbol; the philosophical ideology as a fundamental principle; the global reseller program as a basic teaching; the online resources as a doctrine to instill beliefs; and the resellers as evangelists, we have no doubt why our brand has religiously spread in over 120 countries.

The different of Islam between Iran and Saudi, and in other different countries, as Graham E. Fuller, a political scientist has put it, there is one Islam, but many different ways Muslims live and interpret it that differ greatly from country to country, age to age, issue from issue, person to person. In fact, Islam is what Muslims think Islam is, as well as way they want it to be. And they differ, as do adherents of other faiths.

And I see our localization efforts and product customizations to fulfill certain requirements fit into this explanation, but FingerTec still remains as One Brand.

Economic Crisis Yet Again?

2011-11-10T09:36:00.005+08:00

All eyes are on Euro Zone crisis. If the dangling Greece debt turmoil could not find its way out which seems quite likely, the crisis which has been plaguing the Euro Zone could be spiralling as an enormous hurricane that would hit the world's economy anytime soon. This pessimist analysis by some experts masks the world's economy with a layer of dark clouds.

Belt tighten during downturn?

When some companies look out the window, frown at the gloomy skies and decide to cut costs to prepare for their years ahead, thankfully our plans for next year would not be affected.

We have hired more programmers to speed up our research and development works; aggressively preparing for new software and hardware products for the coming years. We continue to recruit a few more technicians and we have extended the support hours to include midnight to early morning, and with this decision, we have reduced the gap of 'support staff unavailable online' to three hours a day, and prolonged the technical assistance to 19 hours per day.

If the sky is gloomy, it's alright, have your umbrella ready. We are not immune from the economic slowdown. When the subprime crisis hit in 2009, our turnover was recorded only slight increase as compared to the previous year, but while being prudent we carried out all activities like normal and we didn't even cut the annual trip to Shanghai.

This year, as usual, our staff who receive an incentive trip to Gold Coast, Australia is about to depart this evening. On advertising and promotion, we just signed up for advertisement packages on two prominent security magazines, A&S International and Detektor International for the whole of next year, and we plan to take part in more than ten tradeshows worldwide.

More new products are in our pipeline, with one particular 7-inch touch screen new iKiosk that runs on Android platform to excite everybody and I. This would mark a new milestone to our product line, because besides the bundling of standard applications, customers can now have more control of their own terminals, and download Apps they feel useful from the Google Android Apps Store. It would serve as an amazing administration kiosk that does multiple purposes for office environment.

Artist impression for our upcoming new iKiosk

When you are a start up company, struggle is normal even during the economic booming years. But for established companies, if you are only making good money during good times and losing money, having to cut costs and retrench workers during bad times, then I don't think you are competent enough companies.

To continue making money during bad times, a company should take various aspects other than only sales figures into account during good times. Instead of focusing on only sales growth, one should think of its biological growth as well. Without one holistic perspective, your business field may remain barren even during the harvest season.

What About Changing The World

2011-10-19T23:37:00.003+08:00

We all know that a great man has died earlier this month. We have little doubt the company he led; Apple Inc would overshoot Exxon Mobil to become the largest market capitalization company in the world anytime soon. We all know the reactions to his death were awe-inspiring, with mourners leaving candles and flowers outside Apple stores around the world and the Internet was humming with tributes. As consumers, we all like the gadgets that the company produces be it iPod, iPad, and iPhone that are managed by iOS, iTunes and iCloud.

Yes, Steve Jobs indeed was a great man, and he had made the world a better place with his incredible electronic products. But if anyone says that he had changed or reshaped the world, I think it is an overstatement. Without Apple, the world would still be conquered by smartphones, tablet PCs, cloud technology, voice-command devices and digital music players, perhaps by different brands with a slower pace. Jobs perfected these gadgets; either he took the lead or fell behind in the game, eventually he succeeded in arousing consumers with a vast magnetic impact to the market.

Steve Jobs (1955-2011)

The Economist concluded that Steve Jobs had ignited a revolution in sparking a trend towards personal technology. The weekly also praised his non-engineer background as an advantage, which redirected him to be obsessed with product designs and aesthetics, and made advanced technology simple to use. He took the readily available yet half-baked ideas i.e. the mouse driven computers, the digital music players, the smartphones, the tablet computers – and he showed the rest of the industry how to make them properly. In the process, he triggered upheavals in computing, music, telecoms and news business that were painful for incumbent firms but were welcomed by millions of consumers.

He combined an emotional spark with computer technology, and made the resulting products felt personal. Despite all these achievements, he still didn’t change the world even if his fans would like to think so.

If I have to quote a person that had really changed the world in the modern history, Sir Timothy John Berners-Lee would definitely be the person. Born in 1955, the same age as Jobs, he is a British computer scientist and MIT professor, credited as the inventor of the World Wide Web, making the first proposal for it in March 1989. On the 25 December 1990, with the help of Robert Cailliau and a young student at CERN, he implemented the first successful communication between Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) client and server via the Internet.

Sir Timothy John Berners - Lee (1955- )

How the Internet has changed the entire world since then? How many Internet giants have emerged or companies like Apple have reemerged on the foundation of the World Wide Web? It is needless to mention because the rest is history. Although Berners-Lee is the director of the World Wide Web Consortium (M3C), which oversees the Web’s continued development, and holds many other positions as far as the Internet is concerned, he remained anonymous to many people. If he has to claim IP rights over the Internet licenses, he would probably become the richest man on earth.

When we mourn Steve Jobs, we shouldn’t be overzealously deified him and forgetting the real heroes behind all his successes. I always feel that changing the world shouldn’t be our ambition. Anyone can make the world a little different, but it should come with the intention to make the world a better place. Sir Isaac Newton who discovered the gravitation had changed the world, and Albert Einstein who developed the theory of general relativity also had changed the world. Those incidents were accidental without an attached ambition to start with. A man who had the ambition to only change the world could become as ruthless as Hitler.

We are not that ambitious to be as great as Steve Jobs, but we can make little positive differences in the company or in the industry we serve. And with all the little differences we gathered over times, we could improve our products to be great products and help our company to emerge as a great company, and eventually we could become a great person in the process. That’s the way FingerTec soared beyond Biometrics.

Charity Work

2011-10-05T16:03:00.000+08:00

An audit officer from the Brand Award Committee asked uswhether we were committed to any charity work in the past three years. And ifyes, they needed us to show them proof. In fact, I kept no proper receipts eventhough we have regularly donated to some organizations and on and off sponsoredsome charity activities.

Back in the day, I came across bitter experiences whensoliciting donations during my school days. “Can my donation be exempted from tax?”was the very first question most company bosses that we approached would ask eventhough they donated to our extra-curricular activities.

During my university years, the funds allocated by the authorityto each society were peanuts for the whole year’s expenses, far too low to meet the balance for the largest and most active society, which I joined and was acommittee in my sophomore year. And the state-owned university made thefundraising harder when all societies were prohibited to open their own bankaccounts, and all public donations had to go to a centralized university account.

Channeling the donated fund back to your society was thehardest process, we needed to file a lot of papers and answered a myriad ofqueries; furthermore the Student Affair Council had the rights to redistributeyour fund to other societies. Evenwhen you were lucky, the “discounted” fund would reach you definitely longafter the activities had ended.

To solve the ‘problem’, we had to use our personal bank accountswhen soliciting donation. There were some donors who agreed to donate withouttax exemption letter but they would eye us suspiciously when we told them to issuethe cheque to a personal account. As a result, we always had to work harder oron a tight budget to support our activities.

Hence, when big corporations make some annual tax-exempteddonations usually to the orphanages and old folk homes, or much willingly participatein some high profile charity events that would be placed their photos in the papers, I chooseto donate to societies and activities that are under privilege and low profile,or to some NGOs that promote human rights or some minority rights programs. Andof course, the society that I joined during my university days is also in therecipients list. But it was sad to learn that after so many years, their predicament persisted.

Yes, I have more to say when it comes to charity work aspart of the integral social responsibility. For example, the world applauded theformation of Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation initiated by Microsoft boss BillGates with an endowment of USD33.5 billion as of 31 December 2009, to enhancehealthcare and reduce extreme poverty, and in America, to expand educationalopportunities and access to information technology. Nevertheless, I still thinkit would be better if Bill Gates can do more with the resources his companyowned.

Become a philanthropist only after retired?

In fact, the devotion to charity work shouldn’t have come only afterBill Gates retired from his corporate life. It can always be a part of it. Forinstance, why not have Microsoft give away their older versions of theoperating system and software to the people of the poor countries to narrow thedigital gap between the rich and the poor? As Microsoft has still been dominatingthe PC market in the last two decades, this would be a more practical aid tohelp the world.

You might be a nobody or a somebody, you might earn only a littleor you might be a multimillionaire, but when the conscience bell is tolled,don’t wait until someone entices you with a tax exemption letter, and don’t waituntil you become a retiree; contribute in whatsoever way that fits you. Justlike the Google Executive Wael Ghonim took the online activism to a new levelwhen the revolution erupted in Egypt earlier this year, he doesn’t wait whenhis countrymen needed him.

And, I joined the Bersih 2.0 mass rally to call for a cleaner and fairer election in Malaysia on 9th July. Who says a Chief Executive Officer can’t take part in a street protest?

Who Is Your Customer?

2011-09-21T14:46:00.003+08:00

Who is your customer? I still remember this question asked by theconsultant who coached us to obtain the ISO 9001 certification in 1998.

Our staff knew the customers well enough to blurt out their names effortlessly.The consultant then stopped and questioned one staff, asking him whether hisdaily duty was to serve the customers directly, or some other immediate“customers” within our own company? After one round of the same question, ourstaff finally found that indeed, they had “customers” within the company aswell. Even the sales and technical staff that are constantly in contact withour regular customers have other “customers” that serve their priority listwithin our organization.

Definition of Customer

So, who IS your customer? Eventually, the answer points to yoursuperior within your department, or the peer that you report to in the nextdepartment. Anyone who demands something from you is your “customer”. Anyonewho has some expectations of your work is your “customer”. The job you’ve justcompleted and handed over to the next guy - this next guy is your “customer”.

You have to ensure that the quality of your job consistently meetsyour "customer’s" requirements. I like this definition of CUSTOMER ina wider context. We often hear companies claim to deliver quality products that meet customer satisfaction astheir mission statement, but more often than not, we see finger-pointing flyingaround, with blame for other departments or co-workers for some fault or theother. If the internal “customer” satisfaction couldn’t be achieved within acompany, the mission statement is just another blurt-out slogan without anysubstance.

When our ISO 9001 certificate expired in 2007, I decided to forgorenewing it as the changes and growth in our internal quality system isoccurring way too fast to be picked up by the documentation requirement of theISO 9001. In my view, it wasn’t a big deal to acquire the certification - ourblood constantly flows strong with quality management regardless.

This Monday, a group of officers under the Ministry of InternationalTrade and Industry of Malaysia came to our office to conduct an audit-visit, aspart of their procedures for the Brand Excellence Award short-listingcompanies. After the factory tour, one officer observed and mentioned that weshould have implemented the 5S methodology. My response to her was that as ofnow we don’t specify, we have learned and adopted all kinds of good practicesthat benefit the brand.

With Matrade Brand Excellence Award audit committee

And that’s the concept of JeetKune Do that I have written about in my previous blogpost , ….. style without style, moving fluidly insteadof following rigid styles and patterns.

Yes, learn howto satisfy your other “customers” within the company; only then will youachieve the real satisfaction for your customers in a broader perspective.

Jeet Kune Do

2011-09-06T16:07:00.000+08:00

Ihave re-acquainted Bruce Lee (1940-1973) from an iconic fighting Kung Fu starto a more complex personality. What was new for me was, he studied philosophyin university, and had a book collection of around 2500 pieces, which wasapparently more than mine. He authored 3 books to introduce martial arts. Hedefinitely had the brains AND brawns, ironic to the image we normally know andaccept for a Kung Fu star.

Mysudden interest in reading his biography was aroused by the new book entitled,“Political Jeet Kune Do”, written by my friend, Dr. Hew Kuan Yau, who hascommitted himself in the opposition political movements, and is also known asa huge fan of Bruce.

Political Jeet Kune Do, a book written by Dr Hew

Jeet Kune Do is a hybrid martial arts system and lifephilosophy founded by Bruce Lee, with direct, non-classical and straightforwardmovements. Tapping on the cultural symbols that are broadly recognized, and the concept of Jeet Kune Dobelieves in minimal movements with maximum effects - Dr Hew has definitelypicked up a good weapon to attack his political opponents.

And,he is quite successful in this area. A few smartly re-edited and re-dubbedexcerpts from Bruce Lee's films that ingeniously associated with some hotpolitical issues have showed a high view rate and plenty of thumbs-up commentson YouTube. Some of his strategies have proven effective in the Sarawak StateElection in April, as the head of Publicity Bureau, he had helped his politicalparty make the biggest breakthrough gains in constituencies in history.

A re-dubbed excerpt for Bruce Lee's film

Dr.Hew, apart from an avid martial arts lover is also a cartoonist, an eloquentspeaker and an author for several comics and commentary books. Before hepursued his Master’s Degree in History and Doctorate in Philosophy studies inGuangzhou and Hong Kong, we had the opportunity to co-author and published acomic cum critic book. While in Hong Kong, he led the fan club initiating aproject to erect a Bruce Lee statute with a classic pose, at Avenue of Stars,near the waterfront at Tsim Sha Tsui in 2005, which has now become one of themajor attractions for tourists to admire the legendary Kung Fu star anddefinitely a photo op spot.

Unlikemost of the traditional Chinese martial arts that highlight specific moves andmethods, Jeet Kune Do is not fixed or patterned; it was named for the concept ofinterception, and it is more like a philosophy and a guiding thought. Thetechniques of kicking, punching, trapping or grappling are smoothly flowing inwhenever they are needed in a fight. Bruce Lee believed that combat wasunpredictable and swift, a good martial artist should "be likewater", a style without style, moving fluidly instead of following rigidstyles and patterns.

Bruce Lee statute with a classical pose in Hong Kong

Oneof Bruce Lee famous quotes, I have notinvented a "new style," composite, modified or otherwise that is setwithin distinct form as apart from "this" method or "that"method. On the contrary, I hope to free my followers from clinging to styles,patterns, or molds. Remember that Jeet Kune Do is merely a name used, a mirrorin which to see "ourselves". . . Jeet Kune Do is not an organizedinstitution that one can be a member of. Either you understand or you don't,and that is that. There is no mystery about my style. My movements are simple,direct and non-classical. The extraordinary part of it lies in its simplicity.Every movement in Jeet Kune-Do is being so of itself. There is nothingartificial about it. I always believethat the easy way is the right way. Jeet Kune-Do is simply the directexpression of one's feelings with the minimum of movements and energy. Thecloser to the true way of Kung Fu, the less wastage of expression there is.Finally, a Jeet Kune Do man who says Jeet Kune Do is exclusively Jeet Kune Dois simply not with it. He is still hung up on his self-closing resistance, inthis case anchored down to reactionary pattern, and naturally is still bound byanother modified pattern and can move within its limits. He has not digestedthe simple fact that truth exists outside all molds; pattern and awareness isnever exclusive. Again let me remind you Jeet Kune Do is just a name used, aboat to get one across, and once across it is to be discarded and not to becarried on one's back.

The easy way is the right way. Ah, how itcoincides with FingerTec philosophical guidance, we make things easy.

Beit political arena or commercial world, the environments are constantly andrapidly changing, reacting to the changes shouldn't rely on some rigid methods,and it should be like water, move fluidly within some external constraints,more importantly, maintained a "fighting" spirit. Dr. Hew appliesJeet Kune Do to achieve his political ideal; in fact, the concept is suited tocompanies that want to expand their brand markets too.

Technology Transformation

2011-08-18T16:08:00.013+08:00

I lost my digital camera, a Canon Powershot in my last trip to Hong Kong & Shenzhen in May. I didn't feel sorry, but in reverse, I felt relieved because I don't have to carry an extra charger and an adapter for the memory card to transfer photos into my notebook.

Of course, if your smartphone can do the job as good as a digital camera, why do you need to burden yourself with an extra device and some accessories for the same purpose? If you aren’t a professional photographer or enthusiast that needs a Nikon D90 plus its special lenses, you really can say goodbye to a digital camera. No doubt, when digital camera versus smartphones, we are almost certain that sales for the former decline and the latter prevail smartly as a result of technology convergence.

The Information Technology has started revolutions in many industries, ruthlessly killing and wiping out the dominant players of the old market. Even in photography industry, the two big names, Fujifilm and Kodak that once monopolized the film industry, have been buried forever in the history when photographs were no longer need to be developed, but simply downloaded from cameras and uploaded them to the computer or website or even send them to direct printing.

When the new players for digital cameras were still excited about the technology transformation that brought them lucrative profits, and flooded the market with all kinds of choices, suddenly the boon became a bane. The foray was from other industry players. When the cell phone makers started to include camera as a standard feature, and the boom of smartphone indirectly declaring the doom of digital camera.

Technology transformation is a cruel fact, fast reshaping the marketplace and creating new opportunities. At present, we witness the PC and Notebook sales in a stagnant stage; and a new tablet, or we can call it the enlarged version of smartphone, led by Apple iPad, followed by Blackberry PlayBook, Asus Eee Pad, Samsung Galaxy Tab, Motorola Xoom , HTC Flyer, Viewsonic ViewPad, HP TouchPad, Acer Iconia Tab, and plenty more, thoroughly sweeping the market. And Apple iOS and Google Android becomes the new dominant operating system replacing Microsoft Windows for the new breed of products.

The digital storage is in transition too. Floppy disk is a bygone. And under the cloud-computing concept that promotes cloud-drive, even CD, DVD or USB flash disk would soon extinct, when the new tablets and notebooks are shipped bare without such ports and drives.

We are fortunate to enter the security and office automation industry that transformation occurs much slowly. But we did notice some subtle changes like communication from RS 485 to TCP/IP, and some adoption of IT advancements that benefitted the industry.

As a market leader, you have to embrace and spearhead the technology transformation instead of sit back and wait for the changes. This year, we schedule to phase out some black and white models like AC100 and TA100. And for some models, the coreboard would be upgraded to a more powerful CPU to improve the speed and capacity. And to reduce the FRR and FAR in our readers are also continual effort to improve the algorithm.

And, I recently added a new paragraph in our Vision and Mission Statement, which stresses Technology Transformation as our major focus to envision our next 5-year roadmap perspective.

"To further strengthen FingerTec's global position, the third phase 5-year plan was introduced in 2010 with a transparent objective to achieve business and technology transformation. We aim to climb the vertical ladder to provide comprehensive solutions for access control market, and to employ cloud-computing technology for deployment in time and attendance industry. The use of Android platform and other Biometrics features such as face and vein recognition would be a part of FingerTec technology transformation plan to enhance our new product lines."

Casual Sales Approach

2011-08-05T16:42:00.006+08:00

I encountered an unstable Internet access at my hotel in Paris and the problem wasn’t resolved until I left the country nine days later. My problem is, I couldn’t be totally shut off from the outside world, even during my family vacation.

Lo and behold! An Apple Store across the Paris Opera House, nearby the hotel where I stayed, saved me.

In the evening, after we completed our daily excursion, and emerged from the subway station, my daughter and I headed straight to the Apple Store. We picked our devices to go online from the many Apple Macintoshes, MacBooks, iPads, iPods that were displayed on the simple wooden benches, with each device being wired to a charger and a theft alert alarm.

Outside Apple Opera Store

Inside Apple Opera Store

Although the “customers” took most of the devices for all kinds of purposes, often times we managed to find ourselves the unoccupied iPad or MacBook Air to go online. My daughter went straight to Facebook, and me, got into the business of reading and replying tons of email. As long that there was no alarm being triggered from your unit, no Apple staff would come and bother you, or sales talk you into buying any of the products. After the store-closing hour at 8 pm, the WiFi signal was still strong for my smart phone to tap on it outside of their building.

The same experience we had in Carrousel du Louvre, where one of the high-profile flagship Apple Stores is located. Right after our Louvre Museum’s visit, the moment we stepped out of the historical and ancient artifacts, we indulged ourselves into the modern and technological artifacts the next.

The casual style in the Apple Store is appealing. Alas, the Apple retail outlets in Malaysia that are run by distributors, do not replicate the casualness of the Apple stores owned by Apple. Earlier this March, I missed my opportunity to enter the Apple Store in Ginza due to the earthquake that hit Japan so badly.

No cashier counter, no sales person cajoling around, the staff were wearing casual blue T-shirts, and they would only attend to your sales or technical enquiries as and when needed. In short, they let you minded your own business, be it listening to music, playing games, or doing some serious stuff with the Apple devices, renewing the typical rigid image we used to have for the conventional retail shops.

And the casual environment in the retail outlets that Apple created is able to generate sizeable income rather than “casual” money to compliment their serious business. According to a report, the largest Apple Store located on the Regent Street London was the first outlet opened in Europe in November 2004 and also the most profitable shop in London with the highest sales per square foot, taking £60,000,000 pa, or £2,000 per square foot.

The Apple Store’s current design with the wood tables and stone flooring, and Genius Bar for technical supports and repairs, were the results of some outside design firms and Apple’s in-house design team. Originally, the Apple Stores contained dedicated Point of Sale stations. However, in 2006, the new store design replaced the POS stations with the handheld EasyPay system.

I like the casual and cozy sales environment as offered by the Apple Store, where you are welcome by a nod and a smile from the sales person and he/she lets you walk around freely to browse through the shop without interruption. A shop that makes a sales person follows you around from the moment you stepped into the shop, disrupts your shopping experience the moment it happened.

Apple does not really need any sales person to talk you into buying their products; the casual atmosphere in the retail outlets that they shaped just fit to promote their products even more, and stretching their brand influence to a greater extent.

At FingerTec, our Sales and Marketing personnel are not tuned to conduct conventional sales, they are encouraged to help the partners understand the products, the brand, the support system, the value, and guide them to tap on our online resources to expand their business. They spend time helping resellers to produce successful installation stories, encourage them to create Facebook and Twitter for better communication with the local clients.

The casual approach never fails to deliver satisfactory sales performance for us. I always believe that a good brand doesn’t need a lot of convincing; it sells itself so to speak. And in reverse, too much of sales talk normally carry some hollow promises.

Philosophical Guidance

2011-07-25T16:42:00.014+08:00

My wife, daughter and I arrived for a vacation in Paris on the 15th of July; a day after the French celebrated their National Day.

In 14th of July 1789, exactly 222 years ago, the people of France staged a rally to storm the notorious Bastille fortress-prison to release the political prisoners, and the date was celebrated as a notion of uprising of a modern nation, and sparked a Revolution that resulted in the collapse of the French monarch (although democracy republic of French was truly achieved in 1875), and eventually sent Louis the XVI and his wife, Marie Antoinette to the guillotine 4 years later.

I stayed within walking distance to the Paris Opera House, the Phantom of the Opera echoed beautifully in my ears

The modern era unfolds in the enlightenment of the French Revolution. The growth of the republics and the liberal democracies, the equal opportunities and the human rights, the spread of secularism, are all the outcomes of this Revolution that took place 200 years ago.

When a lot of people admiring the magnificent edifices that are left behind by the rulers such as Palace of Versailles in 1682 by King Louis XIV, and Arc de Triomphe monument commissioned in 1806 to celebrate the victory of Austerlitz by Napoleon Bonaparte, or the iconic Eifel Tower to mark the 1889 World’s Fair, where tourists snap pictures to prove their presence in Paris, it seems to me that the real contribution to the development of modern civilization lays in the four volumes of book, The Social Contract, or Principles of Political Right, written by a French philosopher, Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778), which heavily influenced the Revolution, and became the ideology guidance to the French people.

Philosophical guidance is always present in building of a great nation, and it is true for the successful brands too. For example, the French-made famous top fashion brand Louis Vuitton or largely referred to as LV, leading the trend for more than a century, persists in its own brand as the philosophical guidance, taking pride of the only leather-goods firm, for instance, it never puts its products on sale at a discount. It destroys stock instead, keeping a close eye on the proportion it ends up scrapping, which they called “destruction margin”.

Because of the persistency of its own brand, LV never gives licenses to outside firms, to avoid brand degradation. Besides, its factories adopt techniques from other industries, notably car making, and even hired quality supervisors from auto-parts suppliers to oversee the quality control. The result is fashionable handbags combined with long-lasting utility.

At FingerTec, We Make Things Easy has become our philosophical guidance. Our vision and mission are centered-around this ideology, to ensure easy deployment of our products in different levels of users and in almost all kinds of industries. With a clear guidance, the marketing and technical supports strategies also can be smoothly drawn and formidably followed by the FingerTec team.

The new Arc de Triomphe in La Defense?

One Finger Solve it All

In July, the weather in Paris was unexpectedly cold. We have particularly enjoyed the French’s culture, exquisite culinary and breathtaking scenery. I spent two days in the labyrinth of mammoth Louvre Museum for the Renaissance’s art paintings and antique sculptures, half day in Orangerie Museum mainly admiring Impressionist artist, Claude Monet (1840-1926) collections - Water Lilies series, depicted in varying time and weather. We also didn’t miss the opportunity to join a local tour group to visit Monet’s mansion at Giverny, where we found the garden pond filled with water lilies that inspired his painting works.

Monet's Water Lilies in Orangerie Museum

When most of the modern cities around the world compete to build the tallest skyscraper, Paris keeps the old and the new separated, and its buildings low (except for the La Defense business district at the Westernmost part of Paris) to maintain its legacies. I assume a proud nation with a wealth pool of history and culture, when heard about a tallest building being built somewhere in the world, can simply disregard the news with an enigmatic smile just like its invaluable painting collection, Mona Lisa, in the Louvre.

How I lost appetite to admire Mona Lisa in the Louvre

In fact, when we decided to create our face recognition reader, some suggested that we upload a high-tech look of digitalized human face as the startup image and when the reader at the idle mode. But Mona Lisa immediately prevailed without a second thought. And when our new Face ID 3 model is about to take its debut, we will maintain the tradition. Whose face would be more recognizable than the classic Mona Lisa?

Unfair Competition

2011-07-06T08:53:00.006+08:00

Yellow badges inscripted with the word 'Bersih 2.0' (a mass rally planned on 9th July, also known as the Walk for Democracy) flooded Facebook, since a large number of Malaysians responded and supported the call for a clean and fair General Election, and added the yellow badges onto their profile pictures.

Bersih rally in 2007 to call for a clean election

The first Bersih rally was organized in 2007, and ten of thousands of Malaysian citizens joined the march to the Palace to hand over the memorandum to the King. This version two is jointly organized by over forty non-government organizations for the same objectives. Despite the government's clamped down on the pre-launch activities and arrested dissidents and detained opposition party leaders on top of imposing threats, the call for a clean election is still well received by the people.

When the Jasmine Revolution aimed to topple the corrupted governments in many countries in North Africa and the Middle East at the beginning of this year, this yellow Chrysanthemum movement in Malaysia is not a drastic political action, but rather to urge the Election Committee to ensure that no dirty tactics and to create a fair ground for the people to elect a government that truly represents their choice.

Fair ground, that is the punch line. Without the fair ground, there would not be a fair competition. Unfair competition twists the ballot boxes, which would result in political power to fall into the wrong hands.

In the business world, if an entity or a few entities control over the market through monopoly or oligopoly, consumers would be the victim of substandard products or services, or we are forced to pay a higher rate for the same products or services.

When there is an unfair competition, ethical issue would normally arise. Fraudulent, deceptive, or dishonest trade practices are the main causes that give rise to the unfair competition. Competition creates incentives for businesses to earn customer loyalty by offering quality goods at reasonable prices.

And I always thought that the business world was much cleaner than the political arena. My jaw dropped last week when Norana Johar, our COO passed me a document she got from one of our overseas distributors. It was about a Chinese biometrics supplier that launched a poison pen email attack to another Chinese biometrics supplier, with the intention to switch the rival's resellers over to them.

But I dare say that even if the strategy worked, the resellers that this company recruited would not be of any good quality. The malicious attack might damage the competitor's image at a certain extent, but it could also backfire to ruin one own's reputation. Furthermore, accusation without solid ground would expose oneself to some legal risks too.

Even if there are some truthness in the allegations, the market would soon find out. The better way of winning customers to your side is never by assaulting your competitor, but to build on your own competitive strengths.

Innovation is the key element for technology industry, where one has more options to draw out his plans and directions, and build his own blue ocean strategy market more easily than other industries. I always believe that if a technology company sought to use unethical dirty strategies, they chose to walk on the dark side of the moon, never would they see the brightness of the sun.

Frugality in Exhibitions

2011-06-24T17:59:00.008+08:00

Many were huge and luxurious. Over the years, I've been to numerous shows and I always observed some extravagant booths erected for the pleasure of the visitors. At the ISC West Security Trade Show in Las Vegas in 2007 for example, before the Subprime Mortgage Crisis, exhibitors competed to show who could play it bigger, regardless the risks of the impending storm. My opinion has always been this - It was a huge waste for just a three-day show.

Some giant companies, mainly through mergers and acquisitions, went a great length to entertain their invited guests and some really turned their booths into a mini casino, or into a lounge to serve beers and snacks. They were putting up a show, convincing everybody that they were still in good shape, and business was still burgeoning. But was this represent the true picture of the situation?

Extravagant booth

A few hundred thousand dollars good money was poured into the gutter just like that. These companies certainly would not agree with my opinion and may simply rebuke it as my defense mechanism.

But the truth of the matter is, many of the companies that were putting up extravagant booths were no Microsoft, Apple, Oracle or Google. Most of them debt-ridden, have poor profitability, some even have red ink in their books. Throwing a big party, inviting their clients to Vegas for networking purposes? When there could be other economical means to achieve the same objective. Some argues that it has always been the business culture to establish 'close-tie' relationships with their clients in the project-based business. But I think for a good sense of a corporation is the ability to stand firm, and have the responsibility to right the wrong. Was it necessary to commit 'sin' in the Sin City?

There is a simple psychological logic for organizers to entice exhibitors into having a larger commitment. Are you sure you want to look modest when your competitor is setting up a huge booth with grandeur design just next to you? Many were not willing to admit 'defeat' and ended up with bigger booths, taller renovations, prettier and sexier models walking around the booth.

For me, I'm okay with having humble exhibition booths, mostly we book 9 square meters, or sometimes 18. There are some of our partners that took larger space than us for their exhibitions.

All we needed to complete our shell scheme booth included a gorgeous backdrop, a few appealing posters or buntings, some FingerTec readers with display stands, a laptop computer, some gifts, product catalogues and two stand managers to take care of visitors. Simplicity. This is what FingerTec strives for. You may call it frugal; I prefer to call it the "Zen" concept.

FingerTec's exhibition booth

I encourage our staff to stay longer to tour and explore the country for a few more days on leisure at the company's expenditure. What a waste to rush back for such a good opportunity to travel overseas! Traveling light makes them easy to move around especially after the show, with brochures all gone and sample units all sold. It is my belief that one has to admire and understand the culture of a country and be able to absorb the findings to improve the products and systems to better be accepted by the local people. That's one of my goals for having my people take part in overseas exhibitions, besides gaining the global market exposure for some technology trends.

It's a common belief that a smaller booth would help sending away the prospects to your opponents; simply because the booth is not visible enough and it doesn't project enough confidence. I can't dismiss this statement all together as totally nonsense. But you can't judge a book by its cover, and furthermore, unless more values are added, nobody can deny that the overall impact can be expected from an exhibition is declining.

When information can be obtained easily and instantly from a website, through Internet anytime and anywhere; surely exhibition is losing its ground. But even though in the Information Age, you would see how little some businesses spend in Internet, but willing to churn out big buck for some less effective expositions.

I don't have an exact figure for the number of customers we yielded from exhibitions, but no doubt it would be much lesser than our Internet marketing efforts. And nowadays, nobody will just hear the bragging in the exhibition and signed up some contracts without thoroughly checking your background in the Internet. But in reverse, a good website alone can deliver sales. We sold our products to 120 countries, only participated exhibitions in less than 20 countries. The virtual power now is much stronger than the brick and mortar.

We have two exhibitions in this month-end. SME Solutions Expo 2011 in Kuala Lumpur and SecuTech in Bangkok, Thailand. “Since FingerTec is making money, debt free and cash rich, why don’t you book a bigger booth?” Please, don’t ask this question again.

We welcome you to come meet us, talk to us, feel our products. Never mind our booth's size, we are whole-heartedly present to serve you, our esteemed clients.

Dealing with Trivial Details

2011-06-12T23:12:00.013+08:00

Yes, we all know the importance of details when it comes to term with efficiency. Yes, we split all matters into two main categories. The topmost important versus the least important, and the topmost urgent versus the least urgent. And they crisscross to 4 permutations in total: important and urgent, important but least urgent, urgent but least important, and least important plus least urgent. When asked to list according to its priority, anyone with common sense will give you the sequence as above with the second and third place interchangeable.

big vs trivia

But when ones follow the sequence in practice, they always end up not so efficient. Why? In fact the reality doesn't backfire, but there is some underlying truths that escape our eyes. Sometime you might have to reverse the sequence to achieve efficiency. You may ask why do you have to bother with the unimportant and the least urgent when you have more pressing matters in hand?

A lot of people tend to ignore the thread that sews the permutations, which is, the required time to complete one task. The logical fact is, if a lowest in priority ranking's job just takes 10 minutes, to compare with a top priority that needed 10 days, why not squeeze a negligible ten minutes to tackle it first?

time to complete one task

We all know that when a person follows the priority ranking to finish the highly important task, the insignificance that required only 10 minutes would completely be forgotten after 10 days. Not many customers will make a fuss or lodge a complaint over a trivia, let alone to pursue the matter any further. Of course your boss would not notice or would hold you responsible for not responding to the matter, or sometime even some bosses will agree with you that these are some kind of "distractions" that should be brushed off!

But when we think it in reverse, if a company or a person is taking trivial matters seriously, how would they handle issues that require more attention?

In fact, the irony for a company to emerge as a great company is not because it has plenty of great ideas or great plans in its pipeline, but normally it is due to how good it deals with details than the rivals. The tinier the details of daily operations a company taken care of, the more successful it will become. The same goes to a successful product, two smartphones might look similar, the superiority of one over the other could only be experienced when you own one. And the words spreads.

When a product is serious about its tiny details, besides the cores, it discerns itself and it creates better value. For example, to create a real good user experience and greater user interface for iPad, Apple undergone tens of thousands of discussions. Does it worth that amount of exhaustions? A total of 10-million iPads sold in 2010 sent out a thunderous answer!

How to distinguish FingerTec and other biometrics products? Our resellers and customers have always been impressed by how we dealt with details in everything, be it hardware terminals or software products, user manuals, logistics, support systems, customers feedbacks, or even just a piece of brochure, the customers would see the continuous improvement in details of everything.

This month, we took a step forward to improve the quality of our corrugated carton by redesigning it to endure rougher condition. With about 80% export sales and more FingerTec products travel farther away either by sea or by air around the globe, we have to take extra care in transportations. And as a part of our Going Green effort, we are about to release the Apps for iPhone and iPad version for user manuals with the enhancement of chaptering and user warranty registration. And we have more plans to make FingerTec a great product and a great brand by attending to all the details.

More Than How to Fish

2011-05-20T22:17:00.010+08:00

Give a man a fish, you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish, you feed him for a lifetime. This ancient Chinese proverb by Lao Tzu became one of the famous teachings applied by companies or marketing gurus as bait to fish followers. People always believe in proverbs that project sensibility and intelligence, hence many use these wise words to lure newbie to sign up for courses; to make them join as member of clubs; to engage them as franchisee; and all of the newbie with a high hope that they would learn the mentioned skills, or some new techniques that “guarantee” them a lifetime of success.

But these wise marketing phrases are like half-baked dishes; to chomp and to swallow them all could give you terrible stomachache or worse food poisoning. The business world is volatile, full of uncertainties, and the availability of technologies worsen the situation by accelerating the environmental change. The fishing skill will never be enough to feed you for your whole life; your knowledge would be outdated sooner than you think.

It’s no doubt that you may benefit from the teachings in the beginning, but it is still far from the comfort zone that could bring you financial freedom; and the business ‘pond’ would soon be too crowded when more ‘anglers’ joined in for the same catch. Your chances of catching a good fish would be slimmer, and soon you would be starving again. I’d followed exactly the methods you taught me on how to fish, but …..? A good but, but why does it surprise you?

I’m discussing this topic here to provide our resellers with a conceptual advice. Our motto, We Make Things Easy is just like giving fish to our users. We aim to ease our users when dealing with our products, free them from all the troubles. And because they are end-users, it would be much preferred if we could feed them fish even without teaching them how to fish. The lesser the problem they have with FingerTec, the better. We just need them to enjoy the tasty fish. Period.

For our resellers however, the motto We Make Things Easy is more than just giving them fish, and it is even more than to teach them how to fish.

A lot of resellers prefer FingerTec because we make their life easier in two ways, easy to sell and easy to support our products. But disadvantages always come parallel with advantages, when FingerTec takes care of almost everything, it obscures part of the vivid role played by a reseller.

How to distinguish yourself, instead of being overshadowed by a brand? That’s the question of more than “how to fish”. But some of the resellers don’t mind this, they want to be a part of FingerTec, proudly embracing and carrying the brand around. And this is also a question of more than “how to fish”.

If you are a solution provider, if FingerTec is a part of your solution, you have to build your own reputation, and with our branding efforts and reliability of the products, FingerTec may enhance your solutions. How to make FingerTec works for you, and how to brand everything in your solutions, that’s no doubt, is more than teaching you how to fish. We hope our more-than-just-a-product’s holistic branding efforts can be of helpful reference to build your own fame.

And for the second scenario as a distributor, you have to think on how to add local or regional substances into the brand of FingerTec, more than just to “distribute” as merely a product.

If the local or regional substance is your own efforts, like you’re maintaining a local FingerTec Facebook or Newsletter to actively communicate with your customers, or to add local language in the software and hardware that make things even easier in your local market, or to improve your website to be more dynamite or plug-in with some of our functional modules, these are more than just “how to fish”, and you would be surprised of what it might be harvest in the long run.

In short, with the impending competition, teach a man how to fish would no longer feed him a lifetime. In fact, by adding more values or renewing your learned skills or knowledge, why bother to fish when you can breed the whole pond of your unique species of fish?

Labor Day, Diminishing Labor Class

2011-05-09T12:42:00.008+08:00

This Labor Day, Hong Kong’s first minimum wage came into effect amid the rising public anger over sky-high rents and a growing income gap in the international financial hub.

This Labor Day in Australia, between 20,000 to 30,000 workers turned out for Labor Day marches across Queensland celebrating workers' rights.

This year in Turkey, Labor Day was celebrated on Sunday with mostly peaceful demonstrations attended by the country’s major labor unions and political parties, a definite contrast if compared to the bloodshed that happened in 1977 during the marching procession in Taksim Square, causing chaos that resulted 34 deaths.

This Labor Day, two Kazakh activists were beaten by police and hospitalized after the police forcibly dispersed groups marking Labor Day in Almaty.

This Labor Day in Malaysia, a demonstration calling for minimum wage saw 21 people being arrested in Kuala Lumpur. They were later released.

This Labor Day, downtown Manhattan was filled with thousands of people from labor and immigrants’ rights groups Sunday, as they manifested to celebrate May Day, an international celebration for workers’ rights annually commemorated on May 1.

This Labor Day holiday, I stayed at home reading “The Rise of Creative Class”, a book written by Richard Florida which discusses the emergence of a new social class, where they use creativity as a key factor in their work in business, education, healthcare, law or some other professions.

The author said in the preface, “human creativity is the ultimate economic resource. The ability to come up with new ideas and better ways of doing things is ultimately what raises productivity and thus living standards. The great transition from the agricultural to the industrial age was of course based upon natural resources and physical labor power, and ultimately gave rise to giant factory complexes in places like Detroit and Pittsburgh. The transformation now substituted one set of physical inputs (land and human labor) for another (raw materials and physical labor) while the current one is based fundamentally on human intelligence, knowledge and creativity”.

The numbers of people doing creative work has increased vastly over the past century and especially over the past two decades. And the norm of this class is, you would hardly see any worker strikes, for example IT industry that housed mostly creative workers.

For the same reason, when the creative class or knowledged worker number is climbing, you would see Worker Union shrinking naturally, even without any suppression from the government or employers.

I agree on the proposed minimum wage, and support the under privileged class to fight for higher wage from the heightening living burden. And to offset the gradually increased labor costing, employers have to upgrade themselves from a labor-intensive business that is based on price competition to become a creative organization that can improve profitability. And for workers, they have to upgrade themselves too to join the creative class in order to upgrade the quality of lives. That’s the trend, brainpower is always stronger than the labor power, and applies to everyone in all industries.

If you are a creative worker, you don’t need minimum wage to protect you, and you don’t need a Worker Union to shelter you; your knowledge and creativity would become your own bargaining power. You have to upgrade your knowledge and creativity at all times, to avoid slowly falling back into the labor category again in any industry.

As we are in the tech industry, this year we celebrated the Labor Day by giving away an iPad 2 to all our staff as a token of appreciation.

Having the Cake and Eating It Too: Sales vs Marketing

2011-04-27T22:13:00.006+08:00

When a discussion yields a fruitful outcome, it just makes my day. Norana came to me the other day to discuss a campaign to boost sales. The idea was good; the details were flawless. I was about to give it a nod, but deep down in my heart there was still something deterring me from doing so which I couldn’t figure out at that moment. Then we drifted away discussing some other topics, and the answer suddenly hit me when our conversation arrived at the subject of how resellers place our products in their websites.

immediate result vs long term impact

Yes, that’s the difference between sales and marketing. One focuses on delivering an immediate result, another looks for a broader aspect and a longer-term impact. Sales activities are good to generate extra income in a very short period, but at FingerTec I'm always inclined to the latter.

I understand that psychologically, customers welcome sales or promotional activities such as straightforward price cuts, 10% discount, 20% discount, and so on; the more the better. We do witness some products or shopping malls starting with a monthly or festive season sales, only to eventually become all year long sales. You can't help but pity them because without any promotion, their business would be seriously affected.

As we are not selling consumer products, I perceive more value can be added, and by adding these values, resellers are building up their own strength too alongside FingerTec products. The value might not turn into instant sales, or some resellers might think of the process as “a waste of time”, but with the right ingredients and direction, it will set you apart from your rivals and make your sales and support easier.

Sales activity short-lived; the money value ends together with the activity. However, long-term marketing activity accumulates value that remains for a long time, and the value even works for you even if you're not aware of it.

One might ask, “Why not do both to boost sales and yield longer term value?” Yes, it’s good to have both, but as a Chinese saying goes, you can’t have both the fish and the bear paws at the same time. When you launch a sales activity, you’ll drive away the resellers to aggressively sell your products, they will not spend time writing their successful project story, they’ll not bother to gather customers’ email addresses and etc. So how about slowing them down in sales, speed them up in marketing? (Some people might think I’m crazy)

I always think pragmatism should be mixed with a touch of idealism; only then we can expect more surprises.

A lot of businessmen on one hand think it’s good to tap on the social media tool, but on the other hand think Facebook and Twitter can wait, but sales cannot. And they also feel a standard website with a URL printed on the name card should be good enough, and regular contents update and upgrade of the website is a waste of investment. Once, there was a “pragmatic” businessman that laughed at us for having a big team to maintain a website.

Yes, we do a lot of “unnecessary” tasks from some people's point of view, but all these “unnecessary” would eventually turn FingerTec to be a great product and a great brand in the Biometrics industry.

We urge our partners to write us stories, to send us some successful projects as a case study, to set up their own Facebook and to maintain it, to keep their website active and plug some of our sales and support modules into their website. Create more local contents in the local language. This month, we have substantial growth of Facebook members from Malaysia, because we gave away a special discount for resellers who joins us at Facebook as a member. And our records show us that partners who have their own Facebook and actively manage it also perform well in sales.

My urge is, spend some time and money on marketing, by adding little more value of your own, you would unlock all the hidden values beneath a great product.

And, we should be having very clear direction for future marketing campaigns after my fruitful discussion with Norana.

Environmental Footprint

2011-04-10T22:46:00.009+08:00

I always believe that the more we do for our products, software, sales and technical support system, the less our partners and customers need to do.

If the concept is applied to B2C system, it could be translated to good online retail shopping experience where customer sits back in his cozy home, a cup of coffee in hand, and a few clicks to complete his virtual purchase. The impact of this simple process is tremendous. He actually saves transportation costs, save parking fees, save unnecessary out-dining money, save himself from long queues, and eventually save a lot of time and money.

And for a B2B system like us, due to its complexity in system operation, more can be done. Why do you want to settle on just a corporate website that brags about your profile and products, your mission and vision, your awards and achievements, and your intention to foster investors relationships? Why don't you use the website to serve your partners better, or to extend the service down to the end customer level?

When we extended the usefulness of the website(s), it magically transformed us from a commonly "push" sales strategy company into a magnetic "pull" marketing-driven company. When we started to draft FingerTec Environmental Footprint after the launch of our "Going Green" campaign, it suddenly dawned on me that, our environmental efforts should be retraced from where we try to make everything easy for our resellers and customers years ago, and where our multipurpose websites tell a lot of stories.

And suddenly I got an idea to complete the environmental statement smoothly:

"Every time we burn fossil fuels such as gas, coal or oil, carbon dioxide is released into the atmosphere. Easier to measure are the direct carbon emissions that we are responsible for. This includes the amount of gas and electricity we use in our houses, the amount of petrol or diesel we burn in our car, and the number and distance of flights we take. The Carbon Account is a tool to help us measure these direct emissions.

At FingerTec, we're constantly looking for ways to further reduce the impacts our products have on the environment.

While there are some study reports that explain online shopping is inherently more environmentally friendly than traditional retailing methods, FingerTec is constantly taking extra effort to deliver all our resources via online means to carry out business operations and ultimately achieve the same goal.

Lowering The Carbon Account

FingerTec has set forth two main objectives for our brand, first is to help our resellers market our products easier, and second, is to help them reduce their dependency on technical support.

These objectives, heavily furnished with our extra-ordinary online resources plan, have successfully and tremendously reduced unnecessary sales visits or technical traveling on the roads for our resellers around the world over the years. All the needed resources can be easily accessed on the web, including comprehensive online training materials, and technical tips, which has proved helpful to the customers and resellers in reducing transportation costs.

Besides that, our products are not only designed to have low energy consumption; we also work towards utilizing web-enabled technology to improve remote communications and achieve long distant technical support. Furthermore, the introduction of online tools such as TeamViewer for remote desktop support, has helped to further enhance these objectives.

Reducing Packaging Waste

We have worked to see that some of our FingerTec products and accessories are designed to be collapsible, to be able to reduce packaging size and also to ease transportation.

Since early 2011, FingerTec has made significant progress to reduce excess packaging in its shipments to customers and has introduced additional types of recyclable packing materials to protect items while in transit. The resizing of our packaging also plays a big role in reducing waste as well as transportation cost.

Most FingerTec orders are shipped in corrugated packaging, which on average contain 43% recovered fiber content. Once used, these containers are 100% recyclable for use in the manufacturing of other paper products.

At the start of 2011, we started a “Going Green” campaign to further reduce the use of paper in our products by putting a stop to all user manual print-outs for FingerTec‘s hardware and software, replacing them with an all new DVD which contains everything the customers’ need in one disk. All contents are professionally paginated, and designed to be easily accessible.

Continue Efforts To Go Green

At FingerTec, we will be continuing to implement environmental and energy-saving initiatives across all parts of the company. FingerTec employees at all levels dive deep into every nook and cranny of the process to identify waste and design alternative solutions that are more energy efficient."

Social Responsibility 2

2011-03-28T11:38:00.016+08:00

I wrote Social Responsibility in my blogspot last April when Google announced its decision to withdraw from the China market. I continued this topic this time around after the two seemingly not related disasters struck early this year.

Egypt's Jasmine Revolution

The political Jasmine Revolution sprouted beginning of the year in Tunisia and widely spread across North Africa and Middle East countries; successfully ousted the president of Tunisia, Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, and Egypt, Muhammad Hosni Sayyid Mubarak. The heat continues to influence and arouses the people of the neighboring countries, Yemen, Iran, Libya, and Saudi Arabia etc to go on the protests. The street chaos, affecting some of our partners like Al-Azzahra in Yemen that had to stop their order, as they’re afraid that they might not be able to claim their consignment from the custom.

A mother tries to talk to her daughter who has been isolated for signs of radiation after evacuating from the vicinity of Fukushima. (Reuters)

Later on 11^th March, an earthquake of magnitude 9.0 hit Japan, and the devastating Tsunami it triggered, paralyzing four of the six reactors in Fukushima's nuclear plant, radiation risk quickly becoming a domestic catastrophe in Japan and later on spreads across the ocean as a foreign threat.

There is a dotted line that ties these two different political and natural disasters in nature, when we look at them in social responsibility perspective.

After the first disaster, my question is, why the governments in the West showed their support to the dictators in the past but when push came to shove, put pressure on them to relinquish power? Why did the foreign banks help the dictators to stash their corrupted money in the past, but were so quick to freeze their assets now? Why did they not do all these much earlier to help the poor people? The answer is simple; the social responsibility issue was not a priority at all until the chaos started to snowball, which in turn might hurt their interests in the long run.

And on the nuclear energy threat issue, we witnessed combinations of governments and corporations whom teamed up to "educate" the people of the importance of nuclear power to generate cheap and efficient energy for the country's future development. They always downplay the risk in their propaganda.

Under the name of development, nuclear power may benefit the country, but it also benefits the corporate or some individual politicians staggeringly. When the same power causes an environmental failure, it is collectively borne and rescued by the ordinary people.

One of the common examples I like to quote is the Kuala Lumpur flash flood problem that hits the city whenever there is a heavy rainfall. It is obviously the impact of inadequate city planning, where the involved companies are happily enjoying the profits, but eventually the government is left to solve the ongoing problems it causes using the taxpayers’ money to improve the drainage system. For this recent nuclear power leakage disaster, the Japan government does not only have to utilize the taxpayers’ money to clean up the mess, but more disastrously, millions of lives, humans, animals and plants are now endangered by the radiation.

Jared Diamond, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author, discusses why do some societies make disastrous decisions in his bestseller, “Collapse – How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed”. One of the reasons he said was the clash of interest between people. That is, some people may reason correctly that they can advance their own reasons by committing behaviors that are harmful to others.

He analyzed, “A frequent type of rational bad behavior is ‘good for me, bad for you and for everyone else’ – to put it bluntly, ‘selfish’. A further conflict of interest involving rational behavior arises when the interests of the decision-making elite in power crash with the interests of the rest of society. Especially if the elite can insulate themselves from consequences of their actions, they are likely to do things that profit themselves, regardless of whether those actions hurt everybody else.”

We know that all companies have three groups of people that they need to serve—customers, employees, and shareholders. We also know that most companies would prioritize shareholders first, customers second, and employees the last. If a company keeps the ranking list that way, I doubt that their claim of concerning social responsibility carries any weight. Even their charitable activities or good deeds they may have done are more for the purpose of maintaining their company image, rather than to sincerely fulfill their social responsibilities. Also please bear in mind; the so-called public listed companies are actually serving the minority public rather than the majority. For example, the shareholders for the affected listed power company, if given a chance, would still woo the hike in electricity rates; regardless of whether it will hurt the entire country's economy or not.

Jack Ma, the Chairman of Alibaba.com once proudly announced that he ranked customers first, followed by employees and then shareholders, but to me, this statement was meaningless, merely a hypocritical pretense. Because I always believe, as part of cause and effect, that employees should come first rather than customers. Just as the ISO9000 is a standard to improve product quality, you should ensure the quality of your staff is improving as well; only then will they produce the targeted quality of products or services to benefit customers.

Customers first?

Jack Ma’s way of “priority ranking” backfired last month when Alibaba.com found that over 100 employees are suspected of abetting fraud. And the CEO David Wei and COO Elvis Lee had to take the fall and tender their resignations.

I always think that a responsible company has to arrange their priority to put employees first followed by customers, and profits should only come in the end to benefit shareholders. From how a company places its priorities, we know how seriously a company takes its social responsibility on its shoulders.

Preparedness For The Nature

2011-03-14T17:50:00.016+08:00

A scene in a flight headed to Tokyo from Kuala Lumpur: Those who were reading books are mostly Japanese, only a few Malaysians were seen with books on their hands.

The similar scenes were observed in metro trains in Japan, passengers were absorbed in their readings. Hardly you’ll find such scenes in metro Hong Kong, or in Moscow, Russia. In Hong Kong, passengers are into mobile phones.

reading in the metro train

Japan is a nation with a high percentage of reading habit amongst its population, a culture that yields hope. Despite the country facing economy stagnation for over two decades, the city of Tokyo still looks vibrant with radiance and exquisite civilization omnipresence.

I believe that a nation that has a high reading rate will never run out of stamina.

I was in Tokyo last Wednesday attending a Security Trade Show, to survey the market opportunity of civil and commercial biometrics industry. And I was in a similar famous situation that marketing gurus like to quote when motivating their students:

Two shoe salesmen were sent to Africa. The first reported a problem - all of the natives went barefoot - and thus he believed that there was no market in Africa for shoes. The second salesman reported an opportunity - all of the natives went barefoot - and thus he believed that Africa held a tremendous untapped market for shoes.

Of course, when there is a forked outcome likes this, marketing gurus would appraise the latter, encouraging the students to take the problem as an opportunity to be seized, because “positive thinking” always prevails in any marketing teachings.

But I despise this conclusion out of sheer simplicity. Because when we go deeper, you know you have to invest a lot of money and time to change the habitual barefoot culture of the natives with no guarantee of success. Are you prepared for this? And even if you have successfully changed their lifestyle, but footwear is a low-tech products, other footwear companies would easily foray to seize on the emerging opportunity, which may not necessarily benefit the early birds.

Big Sight, Tokyo International Exhibition Center

The Security Tradeshow confirmed my view that Japan is "barefoot" for the commercial biometrics market, despite it was commonly deployed at the government level.

I dropped by at the only two small booths that were displaying China and Korean fingerprint products respectively, and both affirmed the lukewarm response. Other countries can easily draw a larger crowd with more biometrics exhibitors. Japan is a unique and closed market for foreigners, with privacy concerned, it takes extra ordinarily hard to penetrate into this market. That’s why our online marketing activities draw a large pool of inquiries from other countries from all over the world, but very little comes from Japan.

Our permission marketing strategy discourages us from taking an aggressive approach. And I would not want to forgo this market either. I would rather use some softer approaches and let the nature takes its course. If there is a need in biometrics products, I always believe we will get a knock on our door.

That's how we expanded our business to over 100 countries. And we have to always get ready, even for the Japanese market.

A devastated Earthquake (magnitude 9.0) struck Japan on March 11th, Friday, during my stay there and had caused the worst Tsunami in a part of Japan as well as in a few countries along the Pacific rim.

The violent water, Tsunami Japan

The earthquake has caused major damage in broad area in Northern Japan; I felt the building where I stayed shook rigorously during the quake and the aftershocks. The death toll rose to more than 800 now and it's still rising.

From the TV, I could see the violent water swept away houses, cars and ships, fires burned out of control. Power to a cooling system at a nuclear power plant was knocked out, forcing thousands to flee.

But I have to admire the resilience of Japan in facing geological disasters. It shows how efficient and effective their government is and the cooperation and discipline of the people to minimize the destruction.

The second day, most of the activities and subway operations in Tokyo were restored, and I observed the Japanese with their reading habit as usual like nothing major happened yesterday.

FingerTec Alert:

Kindly take note that due to the thermal power plants on the coast that are damaged by the Tsunami, leading to an unprecedented shortage of its power supply capacity in Japan, this has affected FingerTec production in the coming two months, as we are using 40% components made in Japan. This incident may cause an unexpected shortage of our stock in the following months.

Music to My Ears

2011-03-01T11:39:00.011+08:00

It’s music to my ears when a customer, Tim left his comment on June 26, 2010 on FingerTec TA100 at Amazon.com.

“Best Time clock

I bought this time clock about a month ago & never had such a good experience like this, Very simple Software & easy to use . I recommend it for every business .... Great price & fast Shipping .... & FREE TEC SUPPORT IN GUIDANCE..............”

Another two customers, Mobilitytheraphy and Mike, reviewed on FingerTec TA300 on Nov 13, 2010 and Jan 31, 2011 respectively:

“Fingertec - Great Time Clock Machine, Superb Customer Service

This is a great machine! It's affordable, easy to use and superb customer service. Just one phone call to customer service and they did the whole set up configuration to our computer system.”

“Very user friendly; Amazing customer service

Though the initial software install was a little tricky--2 phone calls to technical support fixed it right up. Surprisingly tech support answered after almost no wait time, took the time to help me set up the entire clock schedule for my employees. Entering fingerprints is a breeze. This should solve all my payroll woes.”

All the three reviews with full 5-star rating thrilled me two weeks ago when I bumped into our own products in Amazon.com, whereas some rival products received harsh and thumbs-down reviews. I attributed the credit to the diligence of our partner in the US and also our effort to deliver good quality products.

I have a friend who owns a factory in Penang, a Northern state of Malaysia. Whenever I visit him, he would proudly show me his new machines, or new expansions of the manufacturing building. But one of his customers whom I happen to know complained about his stagnated service and product quality despite his business growth. We reckon his success is mainly due to his right investment at the right time for some emerging technologies. Yes, a lot of monopoly or oligopoly businesses are still making tons of money even though they do very little to improve the product and service quality.

What good is it to the customers when you buy a new building to yourself? What benefit is it to the customers when you install a new production line to boost the output? A picture of a swanky office block printed on a brochure or on the web would certainly impress customers, but they welcome high product and service quality even more.

With the introduction of TeamWeaver in February to support our customers, we took another step further to improve our service.

And this is how we impress our customers.

Greener Campaign

2011-02-09T14:28:00.009+08:00

I was not a fan of the term “Going Green” when we decided to reduce the use of papers in our operation. I personally felt that we were trying to wear too big a hat but actually doing too little to preserve the environment. I also observed that too many companies loosely use the term “Going Green” as their marketing campaign without having real substance to the environment; this fact bothered me too.

Truly love green?

But when we finally decided to stop printing manuals, I didn’t stop my COO, Ms Norana from using the term. I said yes to "Going Green" with some hesitation. My submission was due to the following reasons:

Firstly, I always thought life without a larger meaning is a waste. The same goes to activities. Activities can only be lifted to the height of a campaign by some underlying values or given meanings. Larger meaning is always associated with larger responsibility, and I thought, if our staff are willing to bear a larger responsibility, I shouldn’t discourage them.

Secondly, we did not simply dump everything into a DVD without any concern of its presentation to our clients. Users would find our content in this single DVD much more comprehensive than what they can hope for in a single user manual. All in all, it took the Brand Building Department three months to complete the task.

Thirdly, once we want to upgrade an activity into a campaign level, the "Going Green" concept should also be enlarged to a wider scope, not just confined to user manuals and boxes; hence, it will slowly be extended to products and system process in the company level, in order to cultivate the lifestyle in one’s own private life. You have to lead by example; that’s the way I count it.

Going Digital

Fourthly, “Going Green” for user manual means “Going Digital”. Besides the digital format in DVDs and in websites, we should also think of extending it into an eBook format too, which can be accessible by an iPad, a Kindle reader or any tablets that are using Android (Honeycomb). That should be our next step.

But irrespective of all the above reasons, when Ms Nisha, our copywriter forwarded me the draft announcement to be printed on the inlay of the DVD cover, I needed to confess that, “Years ago, we began this discussion on "Going Green", but eventually dropped the idea for we thought that without a printed user-manual in hand, we may cause some difficulty among our users. But when eBook/digital books were reported outsold hardcover books in the year 2010, this idea of Going Green quickly rekindled.”

And the money we save from this Going Green campaign would definitely be used to enhance and speed up some of our FingerTec Practical Branding process which I’m very much looking forward to!

Immeasurable Growth

2011-02-07T15:40:00.010+08:00

(This article is rewritten based on my speech at the FingerTec Annual Dinner, which was held on 28^th January 2011)

FingerTec achieved a 30% growth rate last year. And, growth is the keyword for which I would like to share with you here.

We like to measure growth. The measurable growth is normally compressed to become a figure or a rate. For example, in measuring physical growth of children, we would measure how many cm they grew taller, or how many kilos they grew heavier each year. The growth rate of a company is always established by referring to the revenue you make in a year corresponding to the previous year, and of course in the form of money.

But this is not the growth that I want to share, instead I would like to talk about the immeasurable growth, the abstract growth or biology growth or system growth that can’t be measured by any ruler or scale or any measurement instrument. Just like we grow older every year, which can be measured by age, but do we grow wiser as well? Whether or not you become any smarter when you grow older is hard to measure.

Are we grow wiser when we grow older?

I have read a book Obliquity written by John Kay, in which he promotes a concept of why the goals are best achieved indirectly. He says, paradoxically as it may sound, many goals are more likely to be achieved when pursued indirectly: the most profitable companies are not the most aggressive in chasing profit, and the wealthiest men and women are not the most materialistic, and the happiest people do not pursue happiness. This is the concept of ‘obliquity’, if I translate it to fit into my topic, it means the measurable growth should be best pursued through the immeasurable growth.

In a company, besides the measurable growth, there are a lot more immeasurable growths people tend to overlook. And I treat these growths as more important than the measurable growth like sales revenue or net profit. Because, the money you made could easily be utilized, the immeasurable growth is the added value that’s always going to stay to create a brighter future.

Without these immeasurable growths, I don’t think a company can sustain future measurable business growth.

What are those immeasurable growths that I’m hoping for in this year for FingerTec? Or more specifically, a goal for each department to achieve.

I had a growth list with me.

For Sales & Marketing Department, growth means they should add more marketing substance in their sales approach.

For Logistics and QC Department, growth means they have to upgrade their discipline to a military level in their day-to-day operation.

For R&D Department, growth means they should accelerate the maturity process for the two new products – Webster and TimeTec.

For Brand Building Department, growth means they should be more text-sensitive on top of being image-sensitive.

For Admin and Finance Department, growth means they should achieve the integration of our account and inventory system with the FingerTec support system to improve automation.

For Technical Support Department, growth means they should build a formidable admin & monitoring system into their support system.

Visionary companies or pure profit driven companies?

Jim Collins and Jerry Porras say in their best-selling title, Built to Last, “Visionary companies pursue a cluster of objectives, of which making money is only one – and not necessarily the primary one. Yes, they seek profits, but they’re equally guided by a core ideology – core values and sense of purpose beyond just making money. Yet paradoxically, the visionary companies make more money than the purely profit driven companies.”

To me, the measurable growth of FingerTec is just another evidence of our immeasurable growths were achieved all these years. And this year, it would be no difference too.

Couldn't Be Better

2011-01-14T10:15:00.007+08:00

Humans can think. That distinguishes us from animals. But it’s sad to learn that in fact, the civilization of mankind is mainly dependant on some brainpower of minority elitists, and that the vast population is merely the recipients of the results outputted from these great human minds.

We are lucky to be born in the Internet Age, which I refer to it as the “couldn't be better” era in mankind history, and I even think that there would be no other era in the future that could possibly be better than now. The good thing about the Internet Age is, to participate you do not necessarily need to be a computer genius, or a wealthy capitalist. There is never a civilization revolution of mankind's history that invites such vast mobilization.

In the few thousand years of our long Agricultural Age, the ordinary people made a living by contributing their manual works in the farmland. They benefited from the Agricultural Revolution; they grew the livestock and cultivated crops in a more efficient way, but the rulers enjoyed the largest pie. Even when you’re smart, it’s hard for you to change your fate as a peasant.

Agricultural Age

When James Watt invented the steam engine in 1744, which led to the Industrial Age for the next two hundred and over years, Science and Technology started to play an important role. However, the capitalists were the ones that dominated the society by setting up manufacturing plants; ordinary people shifted the form of labor from farmland to the factory. Unless you owned a factory, it would have been hard for you to move up to the top of the social ladder.

Industrial Age

In the earlier age of the computer era, those who prospered were computer geniuses like Steve Jobs and Bill Gates, not the ordinary people. Intel, IBM, Apple, Microsoft emerged as the new giants that rule the world. And even when you’re smart, it’s not easy for you to become as rich as Bill Gates in such a short period.

The world advanced, but most of us were only bystanders who drooled to see the opportunities slip away because we chose the wrong profession in our lives.

Until, at the arrival of the Internet Age, all of a sudden the gloomy sky brightened; the doors opened wide for those who are willing to participate regardless of their profession. Yes, the computer geniuses still have the edge, however you’re welcome to feast.

Internet Age

Because, the Internet reshaped the world, interweaving the virtual world with the real, making any wild dreams possible. It invites new concepts, overrules the old rules, topples the old systems, restructures societies, revitalizes the businesses, renews the approaches, rejuvenates the models, reengineers the methods; and in short, the weirdest ideas can be materialized when you have the right ingredients.

Instead of just being a recipient, you can become an active player by adding Internet substance into everything that you do, and the more the merrier. Although we claim that the Internet technology is presently at the post-Web 2.0 stage; the world wide web (www) is still in the Wild Wild West state, you can continue to shape it into anything you like. And, I predict, restructuring a society is quite a hard task; the Internet will take another twenty years to shape the new world. You may find that the opportunities wither after that.

We are a company that relies heavily on the Internet technology. Without the Internet, I reckon FingerTec would go nowhere instead of traveling to over hundred countries the world over. The products can be killed easily by the hefty technical supports of the old-world’s way. We deploy the Internet technology in our sales and support system, and will continue the R&D to embed the Internet technology into our hardware (Webster) and application software (TimeTec) which are about to be launched this year. And, another new idea that has always been lingering on my mind, a whole new business concept based on Cloud Computing technology. Should we call it Software as a Service (SaaS), Security as a Service (SaaS too), or Platform as a Service (PaaS)? Whatever the name is, the important thing is we should never let the revolutionary opportunity slipping through our fingers.

And, we can expect the next wave of technologies to come along e.g. robotic technology, nanotechnology, biotechnology, quantum technology and etc., but the light would dim again for the ordinary people, because the role of participation obviously would revert as normal recipients. Unless, someone really invented a Time Machine, in which another new world could exist where the present is parallel with the past and the future, then imagination could be stretched to infinity.

Amplify Your R&D and Be Surprised!

2011-01-03T18:12:00.010+08:00

When the rest of the fashion industry players rely on their top designers to lead the trend; Uniqlo, a Japanese brand collaborated with a university years ago to set up its R&D centre for some researches to improve its fabric quality and versatility. What could the purpose of that be to a fashion company, you might ask. Uniqlo shocked the market with a stunning natural growth in revenue for the past five years that made the successor of the family business, Tadashi Yanai the richest man in Japan.

Apart from Uniqlo’s sales strategy to focus on the mass market and “slow fashion” that worked well, a lot of customers including my wife were surprised to get some extra fine clothes and super-light winter wear at a comparatively low price, thanks to Uniqlo’s continuous efforts on research and development. When Uniqlo opened its first store two months ago in Malaysia, the queue was obviously longer than the local launch of the iPhone 4 not long ago.

Long queue at Uniqlo Opening in Malaysia

Research and Development (R&D), is a substance a lot of businesses tend to ignore, with the exception of technology companies.

When a technology company like Apple emphasizes on design while others do not, it helps catapult Apple to be the most valuable tech company in the world. In contrast, for a design company like Uniqlo, emphasizing on R&D definitely worked to their advantage too.

In the business world, we have less hi-tech companies, and to most of other non-tech companies, an R&D department usually has never crossed their mind. The big corporations like the banking industry or newspaper companies that do maintain big IT teams, have a main function of maintaining the server and to ensure computer systems are up and running at all times, and R&D would not be in their priority list.

When a half-century-old banal family business like Fast Retailing Group - Uniqlo rejuvenates itself from a nobody to be a somebody through its R&D efforts, it should tell a lot.

Indeed, if we broaden our minds a little further, the concept of R&D does not necessarily involve programmers or scientists. In reality, we need R&D, when we need some sort of improvement in the company. We need R&D, when we have a problem in our system. (If you think your system is perfect and does not have any problem, then perhaps you have become one of the problems in your system.)

R&D not necessarily hi-tech

Certainly there would be some discontentment in one’s system. Do some research, identify the problem, develop some solutions, execute the solutions according to a plan and the practice should become a regular scientific internal process for any good company. And it’s not necessary to confine R&D to company products or services, any improved method towards efficiency or cost saving can be considered an R&D process too.

In fact R&D should be everywhere. The spirit of R&D should be cultivated at all levels in a company.

And, in a tech company like us, we have a formal R&D department to produce better FingerTec hardware and software. At the same time, we have non-R&D department heads to think about delivering better services, and improving administration processes. I am proud to announce that FingerTec has managed to reduce the technical response time from 24 hours to 12 hours starting this month, and we have revamped the Advanced Repair Program to further benefit our technically apt resellers. We also have released our improved version of installation guides for almost all FingerTec models.

When a company amplifies the R&D spirit, you can expect more surprises.

Microwikinomics - Building on the Sharing Spirit

2010-12-15T16:57:00.010+08:00

The Internet Guru, Don Tapscott has published a new book Macrowikinomics in 2010; it is not really a sequel to his previous book, Wikinomics that was published four years ago, it is a continuous observation for an expansion trend of the mass collaboration.

Don Tapscott

The term Mass Collaboration, popularized by Tapcott in his book Wikinomics is defined in Wikipedia (one of the most successful projects of mass collaboration, where the Wiki-nomics get its name) as a form of collective actions that occur when large numbers of people work independently on a single project, often modular in its nature. Such projects typically take place on the internet using social software and computer-supported collaboration tools such as wiki technologies, which provide a potentially infinite hypertextual substrate within which the collaboration may be situated.

And, in the four years of penning the idea, the author observes that the wikinomics has gone beyond a business or technology trend to become a more encompassing societal shift. He says, wikinomics, defined as the art and science of mass collaboration in business, becomes macrowikinomics; the application of wikinomics and its core principles to society and all of its institutions. Just as millions have contributed to Wikipedia – and thousands still make ongoing contributions to large-scale collaborations like Linux and the human genome project, he urges, why not open-source government, education, science, the production of energy, and even health care? I believe these are not idle fantasies, but real opportunities that the new world of macrowikinomics makes possible.

Mass collaboration

But, just as the macroeconomics reduces its size to economics, and further down to microeconomics, I would like to scale down Tapscott’s macrowikinomics idea to microwikinomics, where mass collaboration does not only apply to those “think big” projects, but to be adopted in a lot smaller communities.

Just like most of the countries, their economies are not driven by a handful of conglomerates; but by the vast number of SMEs (small and medium enterprises), whom are commonly facing the scarce-of-resources problem, the concept of mass collaboration should be strongly promoted in this community.

I actually promote the same concept here within the FingerTec context. Buying and selling of FingerTec products is merely a business activity, to reach the state of mass collaboration, we anticipate resellers to contribute contents to enrich our resource pool. Over the years, we have built the resource pool of the microsites, mostly on our own, only a handful of our resellers contribute marketing stories, technical tips, translates TCMS V2 software or FingerTec hardware into their local languages, and etc. And in FingerTec Distributor Guidebook, I strongly encourage distributor to tap on our resources to edit their own version of newsletter to enlarge the clout in their local market; this is also a spirit that is derived from the microwikinomics.

I’m not partial to business agreements that bind each other. At FingerTec, we don’t initiate distribution agreement, because the commitment is not all defined by a simple sales figure. If some distributors or resellers continuously contribute to enrich our resource pool, they are like family members to us, rather than sheer business partners. Even if their sales figures are still far from satisfactory, I believe it is just a matter of time before we could observe improvements; and as a family member, we have the patience.

Tapscott lists these five important elements: collaboration, openness, sharing, integrity and interdependence to ensure a successful macrowikinomics. But when I think through, it applies to FingerTec microwikinomics too.

Reversing Business Concept

2010-12-12T10:52:00.009+08:00

When we ranked the Top 10 Events of FingerTec in 2010 in the recent newsletter, most of them are tangibly measurable. But to me, the silent revolution that successfully took place in the company, which I couldn’t phrase it in any official milestone document should be more worthy to report.

I would like to start my explanation with this idiom, If the mountain will not come to Mohammed, Mohammed must go to the mountain. It taught us if things do not change the way you want them to, you must adjust to the way they are. This is something about reverse thinking that leads to a reverse operation that yields a positive result.

What I want to convey here is that, when you think differently, act against all odds, the pay-off might be much higher than the conventional way.

The conventional and common practices that most businesses have include having sales people running around chasing customers, whereas technical guys would passively wait for customers’ calls.

If I were to ask, “Why don't we do it the other way around?” I'm sure to get this rebuke, “You mean the technical guys would go out chasing customers and the sales people could sit back and relax? Are you out of your mind? Now you really want the mountain to come to Mohammed.”

Why not? I'd insist adamantly, “Most people loathe spam mails, why should I act one like a Chinese company? If we have agreed on permission marketing, we'd need to get a ‘yes’ from them first.” And we often heard this complaint, “To conclude sales, they'd come anytime even at midnight; but come to after-sales services, they’re nowhere to be seen.”

Could I reverse the common business practice? This would make the technical department plays a more active role, and the sales department be a little laidback and less aggressive when it comes to pursuing customers. “Less aggressive? Without a sales quota, of course your sales department is too relaxed.” One of my business friends strongly opposing me.

To transform supposedly passive technical guys to be more proactive was not an easy task. The silent-revolution took me quite some years. Now, our technical department has been trained to promptly respond to all technical inquiries; has to ensure the offered solutions really solve problems; has to categorize type of technical issues for further analysis; has to gather customers’ requirements for further developments; has to work closely with R&D in fixing software bugs; has to compile technical tips for monthly newsletter; has to provide assistance in producing user and technical video clips; has to maintain two technical microsites, and help in another six; has to repair hardwares and, all in all, has to upgrade the service quality from time to time to a higher customer care level, rather than to stay merely at the problem-solving stage.

When I slowly reversed the business strategies and operations in 2005, it naturally occurred to me that this should be the right way for any ethical business practice, not the familiar one that has long been distorted by the shortsighted businessmen.

By reversing the priority, it seems a lot easier for us to build a satisfied and devoted customer base. And instead of trying hard to look for new customers, we often attracted them to come to us. The sales figure grew by 575% in the past six years (95.8% per annum in average) proved that my strategy was working fine and it matches well with the Blue Ocean Strategy that promotes “demand is created rather than fought over”.

The cornerstone of Blue Ocean Strategy is “value innovation”. A blue ocean is created when a company achieves value innovation that creates value simultaneously for both customer and the company.

Yes, the mountain finally came to us.

Standard vs Passion – Who Wins?

2010-11-26T13:21:00.011+08:00

Dabbawallahs - Lunch box delivery service

A lot of management gurus like to refer the Bombay Dabbawallahs operations as an outstanding example of excellence in logistics. The 120-year old business operation is often quoted as compliance to the 30-year old six-sigma business management strategy implementation standard in the India context. I couldn’t help but to laugh out loud when I heard the statement.

I didn’t laugh at the homegrown lunch box delivery service model, which was developed and perfected by a group of individuals who have very little or no formal education in the area of logistics; I laughed at the management gurus. What I have witnessed so far is too much of theories and standard management procedures that have jammed up the thinking process, especially for managers who supposedly need to think out of the box to improve their daily operations.

When a crude system like Dabbawallahs can meet the so-called six-sigma standard, it doesn’t mean that the management gurus have to pack and go home, it sparks another interesting topic that worth to ponder.

A lot of big corporations are willing to pour millions of dollar for experts to guide them through, yet they’re still struggling to comply with the ISO 9000 or six-sigma standard. The question is, why can an illiterate system in Bombay easily achieve the standard and yet they’re not bothered to claim the pride, or care to be audited by any International Standard Organization?

Many MBA graduates like to boast all sorts of jargons and buzzwords in their conversations, ROI, SWOT, SMART, sometimes even FART and etc to show-off their management knowledge, but what I see is a lot of mediocrity, ordinary managers who proud to follow the plain rules and running the daily errands, and for the bosses, please don’t hold your breathe for any breakthrough from them soon.

Even though they are stuffed with knowledge, they are like zombies without PASSION, the key element that leads to any success story. Yes, passion is what most of the career managers lack of in today’s corporations. It is clear to me that ones get jobs done with knowledge, but ones deliver distinct results with knowledge and passion.

Excellent result is driven by passion; it is not driven by six sigma or ISO 9000 standard. And sometimes you even have to bend some standards to achieve success.

It’s just like a famous quote of Dr Ian Malcolm in the movie Jurassic Park, "If there is one thing the history of evolution has taught us, it's that life will not be contained .…….. life finds a way." If you’re longed for improvement, of course you will find whatever way to improve it, be it six-sigma or zero-sigma.

The Bombay Dabbawallahs are hiring 5000 people, and dispatch 300,000 lunch boxes to and fro on a daily basis. With a huge 7.5 million transactions in a month the system averagely only reported 3 errors per month. Of course they deploy a fantastic system of their own, but the system is definitely driven and perfected by passion, and not by any international standard.

I like to bend some business standards myself, and set my own standards. I don’t hold any company meetings all year long, I don’t need marketing manager to produce me a business plan that should send a shock to some MBA students. And our official FingerTec website is surely not fit to any corporate standard.

An article, “Being Steve’s Boss” in Bloomberg Businessweek the October 25-31 issue interests me. Somehow it assures that my being not standard shouldn't be a barrier to me achieving success.

“An anecdotal story: A friend of mine was at meetings at Apple and Microsoft on the same day. And this was in the last year, so this was recently. He went into the Apple meeting (he’s vendor for Apple) and as soon as the designers walked in the room, everyone stopped talking because the designers are the most respected people in the organization. Everyone knows the designers speak for Steve because they have direct reporting to him. It is only Apple where design reports directly to the CEO.

Later in the day he was at Microsoft. When he went into the Microsoft meeting, everyone was talking and then the meeting starts and no designers ever walk into the room. All the technical people are sitting there trying to add their ideas of what ought to be in the design. That’s a recipe for disaster.

Everyone around him knows he beats to a different drummer. He sets standards that are entirely different than any other CEO would set.”

Aha, I’m not the only CEO that requires the designers to report directly to me, Steve Jobs too. :-)

Special Experience

2010-11-10T16:44:00.011+08:00

My wife and I had totally forgotten that we needed to use the aero-train at Incheon Airport to reach Gate 110. We were already late at that point in time and this would add some extra minutes, which we didn’t have. When my wife realized this fact, she quickly made a decision to send our daughter to be led away by one of my colleagues, Nisha to the Gate, while I was still in the washroom, feeling at ease, mixed with a sense of loss after the 6 days 4 nights' company trip to South Korea was finally over.

Group photo at Everland

We were amongst the last few passengers who raced onboard after the final call; we saw our 9 years old daughter sitting timidly at the window seat, looking worry and sobbing in silence.

I could imagine her heart must feel like riding a roller coaster at famous Everland Theme Park, right up to the peak at one moment, because 4 hours earlier she was crowned the champion in the ice sculpture contest at the Ice Gallery most probably due to her fighting spirit and youngest in age; and plunged to the pit the next moment when she thought we might miss the flight, and she would have to travel back home alone with my colleagues; and felt relief again when we finally boarded the plane.

Overall, I still think this was a very good experience to her, because the whole journey might become a blur after many years, but the special moment would live vividly in her memory for her whole life.

Winners of the ice sculpture contest

A month earlier, I received Patrick Ku and his wife, a Taiwanese couple for their first visit to Malaysia. When I drove them around to Twin Towers and PutraJaya, they were amazed by how advanced my country is, if compared to the Philippines and Indonesia which they had been to many years ago. But along the journey to Malacca, Patrick said a monkey that snatched his waist bag that contained of passport, cash and travel documents and disappeared into the jungle in a botanical garden in Indonesia was the most unforgettable experience for him. He was later approached by a peanut hawker to use peanuts as bait, and successfully luring the same monkey out of the woods and exchanged the packet of peanuts with his waist bag. “Whether the monkey was trained by the hawker remained a mystery to me," said Patrick, but the episode would last forever for him.

When a story is worth telling, you might like to share it with others. The same with any special experience either good or bad one ones had encountered. I still recalled two years ago, I met a new customer from the Middle East who intended to purchase two units of FingerTec readers as samples. But he was not impressed when we sent him the wrong models. We couriered the correct models quickly and told him to keep the wrong ones as compensation because of our fault.

He wrote to thank us for our swift rectification for the mistake and said he would happy to deal with a trusted company like us, and if his biometrics business venture didn’t work out, he will definitely introduce FingerTec to some other interested friends.

And I particularly like Abbas Mukadam’s First Prize tagline in FingerTec Tagline Contest that goes, "The Touch of Assurance". Besides telling the outright characteristics of FingerTec products; it also appropriately summarizing in metaphor the characteristics of FingerTec as a brand too.

A better dealing experience, this is how we gained more happy customers. And a treat of company incentive trip to Korea; certainly makes happier FingerTec staff too. :)

Webster, Revamping FingerTec Support

2010-10-18T17:41:00.009+08:00

The moment I thought about how to explain more on Webster in my next blog entry, a compliment letter landed on my desk. In this letter, a local client, Advance Lens Trading, appraised FingerTec technical support for the unexpected prompt replies that had solved his critical problem at a critical time, when our reseller, or his vendor, took a longer time to respond.

Yes, we receive compliment emails quite regularly on our swift and precise solutions in tackling technical issues. I particularly like the way my senior marketing manager, Norana Johar shared the pride with the sales and technical staff. She wrote in her email:

“Yesterday we received a compliment letter from our satisfied client on our prompt technical support service, the compliment is particularly directed to Hasrie for the job well done. The management would like to congratulate Hasrie and we hope that you keep it up. In the meantime, we also hope that our FingerTec teams would make prompt replies as our standard practice at all time. Please keep in mind that a delay from our side could cost clients a significant amount of lost and our concern on their issues could save them a lot of trouble and money. This letter is a confirmation that we are doing something right but it doesn't mean that we could take a breather and relax. There is still more room for improvement to keep our promise to make things easy for our clients.

But for now, please do enjoy the compliment, as we deserve it once in a while. :) Have a good weekend.”

I exchanged experiences with a good friend, whose company also implements Customer Relationship Management (CRM) System in their daily operations. The system is deployed merely in his sales department to improve their sales. But in FingerTec, even though our Salesforce CRM covers both sales and technical support, we prioritize technical support.

As our business grows rapidly in these past 5 years, technical support is always our major concern. While most suppliers channel technical inquiries of end-customers back to their dealers, we printed a noticeable line that says, “For enquiries on technical matters, please forward the email to support@fingertec.com", in our user manual. Besides solving technical problems received from our resellers at a regular basis, we are also willing to take direct technical inquiries from end-users. By doing this, we help our resellers to shoulder some of the their support burdens, and in return we get two happier customers.

And, I always want to go a step further in solving technical problems. One of the best solutions should be a direct login into the affected terminals to avoid inaccurate elaborations of problem by any non-technical end-users.

This time, with web technology, we develop Webster, with three clear objectives. First, it would be a fundamental tool for customers who opt to use our web application, TimeTec. Second, it is for big corporations to enable centralization of the terminal data management in many branches in remote locations. And third, it could be used as an effective technical support tool as mentioned earlier.

When a reader comes with Webster, authorized personnel can remotely talk to the machine. Therefore, authorized staff, resellers or suppliers can diagnose the machine from far away to correct some settings or to update a new firmware that is meant to fix the problems, without having to return the terminal back to us or to send any technicians to the site, if the errors are not caused by the hardware failure.

I really am excited for the development of Webster, and stay tuned for the official release date.

Social Media Tool – Like it?

2010-10-06T20:41:00.005+08:00

I came across this full-page recruitment ad by CIMB Bank on a daily in Malaysia, hiring someone to fill up a new position, which did not exist in the past. The position is known as a social media executive or manager or director, for some big organizations, it might even evolve into a large department.

There is another interesting article, titled “Twitter, Twitter Little Stars” in Bloomberg Businessweek (July 19-July 25, 2010 issue); it is not a special report to cover Twitter, a mini blog engine, but it is intended to discuss the rising needs for corporate to include social media in their daily operation.

The article quoted Felix Gillette, a media reporter’s observation, “Layoffs? Not in the social media departments of corporate America. As customers make or break brands online, companies are rushing to hire social media directors … ” Quite a number of the big brands in the market have hired social media experts. And all of them tap on the online social media tools like Facebook and Twitter, and some even include RSS, YouTube, or Flickr to build a closer tie with their customers, and some may use the social media engine as a direct marketing tool to promote their products.

The change is fast happening. Today’s business has to build a better relationship and to have a more straightforward contact with the clients such as posting customers the latest news, or having their feedbacks read by the people at the top. Yes, it’s time for shopping malls to scrap the less efficient drop-off message boxes.

The outbound advertising media like newspapers, TV or billboards used to be popular for advertisers to broadcast their one-way message to customers, becoming old fashion nowadays in a more interactive-demanding Internet Era. In the past, not many big organizations would want to entertain customer that has zero complaint. Survey form is circulated whenever they need to gather customer’s opinions, and Customer Service Department is set up as a formality and normally only receiving and dealing with barking customers.

The arrival of Web 2.0 and Internet social media tools have changed the way we communicate. Businesses fast detected the opportunity to improve the conventional lopsided communication with customers by adopting the new wave of social media tools. Some activities (like FingerTec tagline contest) were organized within the social media sites to lure customers to “like” them in Facebook.

We are not selling consumer products, but as one of the world’s leading biometrics product suppliers, we do know the important of social media tool in helping us enhancing the way we communicate with customers.

It’s not hard to “like” us on Facebook, as we like to have many FingerTec customers riding the latest technology with us; “follow” us at Twitter as we also would like to follow you; and “subscribe” our video clips at YouTube, as we subscribe to improve ourselves for you.

Family Matters

2010-09-12T12:37:00.019+08:00

Naturally, everybody would want to be with their family during any holiday and festive seasons. Be it Christmas, Eid, New Year, Diwali, Thanksgivings for example, they have never ceased to gather families near and far. Work becomes secondary in holiday seasons; family is always priority. We saw tens of millions of Chinese pack train stations in big cities of China to return home for Lunar New Year’s family reunion, and the same trend infected the world during these joyous occasions.

At the time I'm writing this entry, the country is celebrating Eid ul-Fitr, the biggest Muslim celebration in Malaysia and other Muslim countries, which creates a huge balik kampung (back to hometown) wave. The traffics on all highways are heavy and bumper to bumper from north to south, and most of our Muslim colleagues are taking extra leaves, and non-Muslim staff have to shoulder more responsibilities during this period.

In FingerTec “family”, the non-Malay staff would willingly help with the workload of the Malay colleagues that have to fulfill their family obligation during festive season; and likewise, in Lunar New Year celebration, Malay colleagues would do the same for the Chinese co-workers.

Over the years also, we have gradually developed FingerTec products into a kind of family concept. For example, card access control models, the Kadex series comprising of Kadex, m-Kadex and i-Kadex, is not only having similarities in function, but the outlook also make it easier for customers to identify them from the same family.

For our R2 and R2i models, not only that they resemble each other in appearance, the R2i also has to be paired with R2 to bring it to life. Now, we are ready to extend these two bestseller models with another two more family members named H2i and FaceID 3.

Same family?

The attempt to produce H2i was far than easy. We had scrapped the prototype a year ago because two must-have features were absent. A new mould was initiated to accommodate the crucial features, after relentless discussions and arguments with the R&D and marketing department. The only consensus we have is that the H2i should be in the R2 family because of the R2i design resemblance.

For FaceID 3, it will be grouped together with FaceID 2 under the same category in all-model brochure, but I purposely place it side-by-side here with R2 series because it inherits the same design concept to strengthen FingerTec image for access control industry. FaceID 3 is not having a fingerprint module; it focuses on face recognition and RFID card module, a decision confidently made after our market research.

We would still need a few more months to deliver these new products. I can imagine how our sales team hates the fact that I disclose this information early because they would have to answer incessant customer inquiries about the price and the actual release date, which currently they do not have. But as family members, they would understand my decision eventually. :-)

One Thing Leads To Another

2010-09-03T16:55:00.006+08:00

One thing always leads to another. It started with Norana Johar, our FingerTec Senior Marketing Manager who wanted to conduct a simple Reseller Survey from what she had learned after attending a marketing seminar.

Anything good for FingerTec always gets a green light. Our findings were eventually published in our last month’s newsletter issue.

But the story did not end there.

There was one feedback from a reseller in Latin America that particularly bothered us. He said he was happy with our prompt reply within 24 hours, but sometimes realtime handholding supports through Skype or MSN is important to solve certain technical problems. With a different time zone of 11 hours, he has never had the chance to enjoy a virtual face-to-face support.

So, we retrieved all the necessary data from our CRM system, and analyzed the support pattern, and eventually found out that the inbound emails from 6pm-10pm are quite significant in quantity; and approximately 40% of inbound mails are received throughout the non-office hours and 17% throughout the entire day.

We concluded that by extending our support hours until 10 pm, we could provide longer and prompter support to customers in the Middle East and Europe during their office hours, and this could also cover at least a few valuable morning hours for North and South America customers after they step into their offices. With an increasing number of customers around the world, the decision is timely.

This is one of the good news’ published in our newsletter this month. And we have already put it into action since the 1^st of September 2010.

One thing leads to another, this time, I am glad that we have again improved our support system to better serve a vast growing customer base.

Comparing Apple to Apple

2010-08-20T16:46:00.004+08:00

A lot of products claimed to have plenty of features to spoil your choice. One of the common strategies marketers often used is Features Comparison Table.

“With the impartiality by comparing apple to apple”, the salesman says, how their products are far more superior than the rival’s in terms of value for money.

And you fell for it. Happily you brought home the gadget. After two days of toiling with it, you noticed that the touch screen needed a bit more effort to make things move; you have to reboot your handset every couple of days to boot some functions; or you have to hold it in a special position to not lose your signal.

Comparing apple to apple, so they say.

Unless you are a diligent customer willing to do some extra research, similar sales strategies have been proven to work effectively in today’s marketing gimmick.

In delivering a feature in their iPhone, Apple says that they have to go through tens of thousands of discussions to achieve better user experience and greater user interface.

If a company can pick up the tiniest detail in delivering a product’s feature, of course it can produce greater products than the rivals.

And that’s why you hardly see Apple customers make features comparison with other brands and no brands dare to compare them to Apple. This is the only Apple; apple-to-apple’s comparison is invalid here! Irony.

“Delivering the tiniest detail” is what makes a product superb. And we at FingerTec always bear this in mind.

Unforgettable Moments

2010-08-13T18:31:00.015+08:00

Among the many places that we went, my wife suddenly asked me last week: which was my most memorable moment? Without a second thought, the image of dusk at the River Nile during our stay at the Sofitel Resort Hotel, Luxor, Egypt, popped up. And my wife agreed that the same moment would last forever in her memory too.

What a scenery!

The setting sun slowly descending below the skyline. Clouds hanging low. Strings of smoke swaying upwards at the far opposite riverside of the Land of Death. A gust of wind wafts through the palm trees. Waves rising and subsiding. Chirping birds flapping home. Extraordinary serenity derived from the scene of two yachts moored side-by-side to quay. We strolled on the manicured lawn along the riverbank. That was the moment our minds easily dissolved into; an atmosphere that was shrouded by an ancient pharaoh history.

What an unforgettable moment!

The pharaoh history in Luxor, Egypt

And this year FingerTec celebrates its 10^th Anniversary. Overseeing the high and low moments for the last decade, what are my unforgettable moments for the history of FingerTec?

I had, in fact, more than one. So I listed it down as a remembrance of our journey toward glory.

Year 1999 – The trend showed high growth in the Biometric industry especially for the commercial sector. Excitedly we decided to move in to capitalize on the huge potentials. And that’s the one decision that later led us to suffer for a long five years.

Year 2000 – We received the approval letter from the government for an R&D Grant worth approximately RM1 million to develop the first ever fingerprint reader in Malaysia.

Year 2004 - After our first and second model the AC600 and the AC700 hit the road respectively, the response was unexpectedly lukewarm. The high return rate was another big blow. The staff spirited at an all-time low. When R&D staff started to resign one after another together with the executives in charge, I thought our days were numbered.

Year 2006 – When my accountant knocked on my door to announce the improvement of cash flow and that FingerTec sales increased by two folds, I nodded happily and knew the new products, new policy and new sales strategy we introduced in 2005 started to get a positive impact.

Year 2007 – Our marketing manager tabled a statistic to show that our export sales achieved 70% from our total revenue.

Year 2008 – We finally completed the 8 support microsites with a CRM system sitting at the back to ensure service quality. All I knew was that our operations could be kept very slim while the business continued to grow.

Year 2010 – Webster, an integrated product is scheduled to launch by the end of this year to work wonders for customer service; and we expect it to lift us to another level, and to distinguish us from our rivals. A highly hopeful moment started to form in my mind.

But why dwell on the unforgettable if you have a whole future awaiting you?

Management by Objectives

2010-07-28T14:08:00.003+08:00

There are still many old-fashioned bosses who cease to allow the staff from using Facebook or MSN during office hours. They are afraid that the staff would spend time not for the company but for their own leisure. But today, it’s really difficult to block these personal activities in the office because to be able to do that, not only computers should be refrained from being connected to the Internet, they also need to confiscate the smart phones whenever the staff stepped into the office too.

The “work is work, personal is personal” era has long gone. The once very clear line separating these two different activities for an individual has turned into a blur in the past ten years to a further dotted line in the future. Unless you are running a labor-oriented factory, the mix of office and personal lives are inseparable in today’s working environment.

When the bosses helplessly have to accept this fact, they start to worry that the “inseparable” would severely affect the company’s productivities. It’s no doubt that modern technology can be a safe hideout for employees to chat away with friends online without being caught.

Management by Objectives, popularized by Peter Drucker (1909-2005), a modern management guru, should be the answer to their worries. Because the essence of Management by Objectives, is basically participative of goal setting, choosing course of actions and decision-making. With the responsibility assigned to employees, you no longer need to aggregate the actual time they spent for company or for their personal leisure. The objectives should be achieved within a reasonable time for the assessment of an employee’s performance; the mandatory office hours become a sheer complimentary for disciplinary guideline.

The understandings of Management by Objectives, aided by modern technology, some companies even make the Work at Home model viable. Office hours become home hours, self-discipline and self-motivation become the driving forces that make things work.

Management by Objectives is essential to run a knowledge-based company; but to ensure a successful paradigm shift, to win the hearts and minds of employees, is the first and foremost after all.

FingerTec has long adopted the Management by Objectives as our practice of management. When FingerTec customers receive our replies within 24 hours all year long, our office still open 5-day a week, not 7 days. The rest, we work from home.

World Cup

2010-07-13T15:40:00.013+08:00

The World Cup has finally over. I’m not a football fan. I did play footie during my school days complete with a numbered jersey No. 3, which gave me some pride at that time, because the then Malaysia National Team’s captain, Soh Chin Aun, was also wearing the same number.

Soh Chin Aun

The World Cup turns up every four years, and the heat creates a lot of pseudo-fans who spend a lot of hours watching games that they may not fully comprehend, including my sons and my wife. Being active in soccer in my youth helped me to explain simple rules to my sons, like offside, a goal kick, a corner kick, a penalty area and its impact, or when doing a throw-in, player’s two feet should not leave the ground, and etc.

“Daddy, do you sell FingerTec to X country?” My daughter would ask this very practical question whenever two countries came into a match. With more and more countries we exported our products to, this World Cup, my mind automatically counted, England, Chile, Mexico, Nigeria, Australia, USA, Spain, Portugal, Ghana, Algeria, Italy, France, Greece, Serbia, Paraguay, … those we already have representatives; and we still have Cameroon, Japan, Uruguay, Brazil, Holland, Germany, Korea, Japan…. to go.

The organizing country of the World Cup 2010 is South Africa. The place does not only reminding me of a great man, Nelson Mandela, an anti-apartheid leader who was elected the first President in a fully representative democratic election from 1994-1999; or diamonds (especially for the ladies), but also to me, Time & Speed, a company that has been selling FingerTec products for four years, with an average sales growth rate of 40% every year.

I still remember the time Mr. Tomas Sardinha and Mr. Donovan Bird flew to Malaysia in 1996, came to make a decision whether to continue selling China products that kept giving them problems, or to switch to FingerTec products that they have known only from our website.

Tomas, Toli Meimaris and Donovan, the three musketeers

The decision they made at that time should have free them from the troubles they used to have, I reckon. Because if their problems persist, they would probably jump to another ship, no longer working with us to promote FingerTec in South Africa, or proudly taking part in the Securex Exhibition every year, held in Johannesburg, the largest city in South Africa.

By spending a few nights watching the World Cup matches; at least, my second team, Spain, is crowned the World Cup championship in South Africa.

Then, you may ask my most favorite team. Paraguay, a switch from Argentina ever since Larrisa Riquelme, a Paraguayan lingerie model (become famous after placing her cell phone between her boobs) announced that she would run naked if Paraguay won the tournament. And Maradona’s similar promise, I think, backfired. :-)

The lucky Nokia mobile phone

Good To Great

2010-06-24T11:31:00.005+08:00

“Built to Last” and “Good to Great” are the two-bestselling corporate titles written by Jim Collins. Both books are interrelated, centered on how great-companies triumph over time and how long-term sustained performance can be engineered into DNA of an enterprise.

I couldn’t agree more on most of the contents of the books and indeed, those are the ideals that I uphold at all times to run this company.

Jim Collins emphasizes on fundamental concept a lot, he said, “The world changes – and continues to change at an accelerated pace – but that does not mean that we should abandon the quest for fundamental concepts that stand the rest of the time. On the contrary, we need them more than ever!”

“The biggest problems facing organizations today stem not from a dearth of new management ideas (we’re inundated with them), but primarily from a lack of understanding the basic fundamentals and, most problematic, a failure to consistently apply those fundamentals. Most executives would contribute far more to their organizations by going back to basics rather than flirting off on yet another short lived love affair with the next attractive, well-packaged management skill.”

“Visionary companies distinguish their timeless core values and enduring purpose (which should never change) from the operating practices and business strategies (which should be changing constantly in response to a changing world.”

“They first got the right people on the bus, the wrong people off the bus, and the right people in the right seats – and then they figured out where to drive it. The old adage “People are your most important asset” turns out to be wrong. People are not your most important asset. The right people are. ”

But irrespective of how great a book is, inevitably it still would have some blind spots.

Jim Collins did not appraise celebrity leaders, and said most of the good-to-great leaders are self-effacing, quiet, reserved, even shy – these leaders are paradoxical blend of personal humility and professional will. I agree on his points, but not completely, because it doesn’t apply to technology companies. For the great technology companies like Apple, Microsoft, Google, FaceBook, and etc., their leaders are automatically made celebrities, no matter how they want to stay away from the media, or keep a very low profile life. Or frankly speaking, these great technology companies won’t exist without the invention of these celebrity leaders.

And his definition of good-to-great company is narrow-mindedly based on utilitarian hypothesis, the ratio of Cumulative Stock Returns to General Market, which means the assessment of a company solely relies on the ability to generate maximum profit to the shareholders. This is the biggest flaw of the book.

Because a casino or a tobacco company can easily score high according to Collins’s definition, even when they do more harm than good to society. And I don’t see any great loss to the civilization of mankind if some great companies like Coca Cola did not exist. And shouldn’t we consider the not-so-successful company built by the great inventor and scientist, Thomas Alva Edison (1847-1931) should be greater than those who are given high ROI (Return On Investment) but with products that provide very little value “built-to-last” companies?

Due to the fact that he keeps ignoring social responsibility, when his third bestseller, “How The Mighty Fall” was introduced during the economic crisis in 2009, I lost the appetite to own a copy.

Knowledge-based Company

2010-06-07T14:43:00.011+08:00

Foxconn: workers committed suicide at workplace

In speeches during annual dinners, most bosses by default would thank their staffs for their contributions over the years. The sincerity of the gratitude might not extend equally to the entire staffs. I’m convinced that the gratitude is given more to the knowledge workers, rather than the entire labor force.

“Without your collective efforts, the company would not achieve the new height in the past year”, I almost can imagine the rhetoric of Terry Guo, the boss of Foxconn as the largest contract manufacturer in the world, when addressing his employees during the auspicious night, with the hinted underlying false sense that was overtly too loud.

Because, 11 Foxconn’s workers took their own lives by jumping off their workplace in Shenzhen in the past four months is the satire to his Thanksgiving, and 25 year-old Sun Danyong, committed suicide after the lost of an iPhone 4G prototype during transportation to Apple last July.

General investigation exposed Foxconn employees to have constantly living in dire working environment, under the pressure of stringent competing in the firm. If to compare Foxconn’s workplace with Google’s that is full of amenities and freedom, we could conclude the two extreme treatments are due to the former belongs to the labor-intensive industry, and the latter represents the knowledge-based company.

Bring your pet to work

Indeed we have to accept the fact that any bosses who own factories, would not hesitate to axe labors to a minimum, and boost automation to a maximum. Labors to them are merely the trivial bolts and nuts, tightening any loose ends to complete machinery cycle. The reason is apparent because unlike laborers, besides regular maintenance and mortgage repayments, machine neither utters any complaint nor launching a strike, let alone demands for higher wages or better welfare.

Just like exploitation that is more susceptible at the labor level, I believe labor-intensive industry is easier to be replaced in this competitive world.

Workplace at FingerTec

I am against treating human beings like bolts and nuts; hence I have to ensure more knowledge is required to produce FingerTec products. Our factory is mainly involved in assembly works, quality control, customization and activities that elevate the value chain. And I believe more value added to a product would require more human brains, eventually would create a better working place.

When we claim We Make Things Easy, we actually have a lot of hard thinking process at the back.

Leap and Bounce Beijing

2010-05-21T17:56:00.012+08:00

This month, I went to Beijing twice for business meetings.

I first stepped onto Chinese soil in 1992. Beijing at that time had much lesser automobiles. Bicycles simply took charge of the roads by a majority-win game. The word of fashion had yet to be introduced, total colors appeared on men and women’s clothing were limited to two and a half; black, white and gray. I recalled my color T-shirt as a gift for an engineer was returned just because there would be no appropriate occasion to put it on. The PCs they were using were a generation behind. Taxi drivers were more talkative; once you confirmed you could understand Chinese, they would switch from stuttering English to a staccato Beijing accent bombarding you along the journey. There was no product packaging concept, I received an IT interface card that cost me USD10,000 but wrapped in a piece of old newspaper. Any meals hosted by Chinese if for only two persons, would serve with dishes that could only be finished by ten. Sales strategies? They argued, “How could you upgrade a color TV with a black and white?” Trade-in concept never crossed their minds.

A famous Chinese writer, Yu Hua in one of his best-selling novels, “Brothers”, stretched a storyline for a period of 30 years from the beginning of Cultural Revolution in 1966, across the Economic Reform in the mid eighties, till the modernization of China in the nineties. It begun with a “butt-peeping” boy and his non-blood tie brother story staged on conservative sixties with a string of absurdity events that led China to a modern world in the nineties. In an interview Yu Hua told reporter, “To accommodate such a huge change, other countries might take 300 years, however in China, I saw it happened in a blink of just 30 years.”

The appropriate word to describe the changes of China is Leap and Bounce development, while most of other countries took it in a progressive manner. That’s why China stunned the world by growing into the second largest economy powerhouse, overtaking Japan this year within such a short period. When comedian Joe Wong entertained his American audience by saying “I grew up in China. Who didn’t?” It stirred laughter but in unanimous “agreement”.

Nowadays, the flamboyant colors crawled out from the Chinese peoples’ clothing reaching their heads; the latest gadgets can be acquired easily; the taxi drivers keep silence unless you start a chatter, or perhaps an inquest; bicycles become the underdog on the roads; all kinds of inventive marketing strategies barking out from the billboards; hosting feasts are no longer extravaganzas; the contemporary art in 798 Cultural Park in Beijing full with talented Avant-garde art pieces.

But, are there any downside caused by the fast growing of China economy? YES, I saw plenty. No doubt, Chinese has advanced technologies that landed the astronauts on the moon impeccably, but the same act shouldn’t be replayed too many times. That’s quality control issue, a general perception that haunts Chinese products for their inconsistencies in quality. And the Political Reform still staggering to keep pace with Economic Reform in China, if the politic echelon refuses to relax its grip, it may invite havoc in the future. Increasing polarization between the rich and the poor also threatens social stability.

In today's business world, we have no choice but to compete with the ubiquitous low-price Chinese products, the same applies to biometrics industry. No sweat, to know their strength, to spot their weaknesses, despite fierce competition, you still might stand tall.

Writing Skills Exceed All

2010-05-08T01:34:00.005+08:00

A lot of people misunderstand the meaning of IT Age and call for learning of computer to equip for the future. In fact, the keyword of IT is “Information”, “Technology” is just a tool or a medium to carry the explosion of Information that flooded our daily lives.

My opinion about learning computers has always been very clear. Parents need not have to worry about their offspring’s skills in computer. For nowadays kids, computer skills are natural. If you don’t believe me, let them play online games and they turn into a master in a few sessions even without guides from anybody.

Improve Your Language, that’s my call. Only with high proficiency in language, ones can easily and quickly comprehend information, and turn the information that cocooned them into the wings of knowledge and wisdom, to fly them to the gardens of wealth and opportunities.

Given this scenario: two persons, one piece of article, and one solution. One person reads but struggling to comprehend due to lack of language proficiency and the other one finishes the article in no time and solves the puzzle. Who wins?

When the Internet Age comes, people need to upgrade the proficiency of language from reading to include writing too. For example, as a technician, answering calls solve one problem at a time, one to one. But when you write the solution and publish it online, that piece of the solution serves many. Considering the cost of phone calls and the efforts it would take to explain, wouldn’t this be a better choice?

People write more than ever before.

In the past, social life involved much talking than writing. Now, we are using Facebook, we Tweet, we blog, we MSN, my conclusion is, we write more than we talk in the Internet Age and in the Internet World. If ones can polish their writing skills, who knows there might be another J.K. Rowling in the making.

Since 1995, when we started our unique way of global marketing strategy, our criteria of employment was not how good my sales people can talk, but I emphasized on how good they could write. And I even want this requirement extended to the technical team as well.

I read a book and discovered that theorists make a summation on our strategies and our Practical Branding efforts as “Inbound Marketing”. No matter what terminology they’re using, theorists and marketing gurus collectively agree that “writing skill” within an organization is one of the important criteria for “Inbound Marketing”.

Thanks to my staff who can write, with their contribution over the years, we have built a knowledge-based garden that prosper our business and benefited our customers all over the world.

Butterfly Effect On Secutech, Taipei

2010-04-25T00:20:00.013+08:00

Butterfly Effect: change one thing, change everything

I used to think that the “butterfly effect” based on Chaos Theory was exaggerated. How could one possibly imagine a butterfly flapping its wings in Southern Hemisphere, may eventually cause a tornado in Northern Hemisphere?

But a more plausible version of this theory is proven true when the far away Icelandic volcanic ash emission gave great impact to the Taipei’s SecuTech Show.

Icelandic volcanic ash eruption

Volcanic ash forced cancellation of thousands of flight around the Europe countries. The effect was obviously seen with the thinning of the crowds at the exhibition hall this year. Mickael from Denmark emailed Tamy a day before the Show to cancel a training we supposed to arrange for him in Taipei; name cards we received from Europe leads are almost none. The sales reps from the organizer, Messe Frankfurt were busied tendering their apologies to exhibitors.

Robert Z. Heymann, a visitor from Paris, when asked about how he managed to be in Taipei, told us that he flew to Taiwan before the Volcano eruption, stranded here for almost two weeks. Another visitor from Europe told me he was forced to extend his vacation from Thailand to Taipei.

It was unfortunate that many potential buyers were not able to meet us during this show. I however, had more time to wander around the Hall, studying some new products showcased by other exhibitors, and of course, had more time to concentrate on fascinating ‘promoters’ around the hall.

Preparing for the Show

Despite of the whole lukewarm turnout, FingerTec managed to get good contacts during the show, which I hope, would yield a long-lasting and fruitful relationship with us.

Mr Castro from the Philippine bought 3 sample readers

Taiwan has always been one of my favorite countries because of the richness of their publishing industry. During the trip, I took the opportunity to visit bookstores and bought some books. No doubt, Taiwan has culturally influenced me a lot. Want to see what I have bought? Feel free to visit my online bookshelf, http://www.anobii.com/honseng/books

Meeting The Legendary Guy of Bangladesh

2010-04-12T11:12:00.022+08:00

Last week I met a great guy. Mr. Abdul Khaleque Pathan looks like an ordinary person in his late forties or early fifties. The difference is, he is a self-made billionaire with a success story that’s legendary in Bangladesh.

Mr. Khaleque (middle), Mr. Saiful Kamal (right)

One of the largest garment factories in Bangladesh

It all started with a very humble beginning. Right after high school, he worked as a truck driver. Many years later he started his own business, and now he owns two listed companies, and one of the largest garment factories in the country that are hiring over 13,000 workers. His Khaleque Group of Industries is also producing detergents, soaps and a series of cosmetic products, named after his youngest daughter, Keya.

"I began the business with 20 dollars (1,380 taka) in my pocket," he told me. With no collateral, bank loan was out of the question. Having no willing relatives and friends to lend him a helping hand, hopelessly he turned to the lowest of the low, beggars on the street, and begging them for some startup money.

“Every dime I borrowed from them, I make sure to repay them with interest in the following month. And my beggar friends trusted me.” Who would have thought that the beggar's ‘financial system’ had helped the ambitious and visionary young man overcame his hardest time in life.

He built the business empire in this outskirt hometown of his, Gazipur, which is 40 kilometers away from the big Dhaka city, and still headquartered his whole operation in this small town till now, with the main purpose is to provide more job opportunities to his fellow poor villagers, a fact which I learned later. The welfare he provided to the workers is highly praised in this little township.

Mr. Khaleque’s management discipline was shown by the rows of FingerTec TA103R readers that are laid orderly along the production lines.

"A total of 170 units so far and we expect more to come," Mr. Saifulhaque Kamal, Managing Director of General Automation Ltd., our distributor in Bangladesh, said proudly while walking with me from one end of the production plant to another.

“The automation of time and attendance process has been proven worth the investment,” said Khaleque Group Asst. IT manager, Mr. Nasim "It prevents fraud and saves us a lot of time and money.”

Mr. Nasim(right), and FingerTec TA103R reader

Saiful wasted no time from taking advantage of the meeting rather than it just being a courtesy meeting; he struck a deal with Khaleque Group this time for the maintenance contract. It is no surprise his sales of FingerTec improved by 30% each year.

Garments being Bangladesh largest products and exports, the factories are seen mushrooming over Dhaka in the last few years. “Khaleque Group is our biggest single installation so far. Besides, we have a few smaller installations in garment factories that are closed to a hundred units. And we are expecting more projects this year.” Although the traffic is always hectic in Dhaka, where the General Automation office is located, that news felt like the pleasant evening breeze, soothing me in our way back to Dhaka after the visit.

The welcoming was really warm from General Automation

Thanks to Saiful, and his two partners, Mohd. Reazuddin and Shamima, for all their hospitalities while I was in the country, making my two days stay in the land of the Bengalis fruitful and memorable.

Social Responsibility

2010-04-08T14:53:00.009+08:00

Don't be evil

I have to admire and give a big salute to Google for their bold decision to withdraw from China while others come in flocks to grab the huge market potential. I think the Google’s decision is the highest social responsibility one has ever shown in the history of the business world.

“What’s the big fuss if a government wants to crack into some dissidents’ Gmail accounts?” Some might ask. “Let them have what they want, we are here to make money, not enemy, to uphold of a principle doesn’t make you look more saintly in the business world compared to others,” and they might say.

There is this famous China local search engine that has been making a lot of extraordinary money to help advertisers concealing search results containing bad publicities. The manipulation of media had delayed the exposure of China Poisonous Milk Scandal in 2008, which in turn had caused more infants to suffer from kidney stone disease.

“Don’t be evil” is not just a framed motto that overhangs the wall of Google, they really believe in the motto and they put it into action. For a lot of corporate, social responsibilities are confined to those donations made to the old folk homes, orphanages, or some charity organizations, or boasted their products are environmental friendly with the objective to boost sales rather than to concern about the mother Earth. Some people even narrow the scope down to “as long that you abide by the law, have a decent job, you are no sinner and you have fulfilled your social responsibility.” Is it really that simple? How about those who work for a tobacco firm or a casino? And don't you polluting the air by driving to work everyday?

Go green to boost sales or to fulfill social responsibility?

Social responsibility is not just about paying your taxes, making some charity contributions to the needy, or claiming no emission of toxic during production, but it is also about your willingness to say no to any kind of bribery or kickbacks from any projects you handle.

With the FGW (Fire GreatWall) stands on guard, the access to Youtube, Blogspot, Facebook and Twitter is nearly impossible in China. But similar websites run by the local operators flourished due to lack of competition from the outsiders, but they have to succumb to the ‘agreement’ made between them and the authority. Removal of whatever articles or video clips deemed sensitive by the authority is a must. You could post articles online; and these pieces also could simply vanish into thin air in the next few hours.

“Even Microsoft takes no risk to enrage a government,” you might say. Of course not, from the retreat of a strong opponent, Microsoft benefitted by gaining more share for its Bing search engine in China.

No corporate would want to sacrifice their future prospective market to upset their shareholders. There is no financial analyst that would praise the move of Google’s withdrawal, that’s why I extend my respect to Google for their greater social responsibility and for their higher level of integrity.

Think Out Of The Box

2010-03-11T10:01:00.005+08:00

Based on my many years of working experiences, I have made an interesting observation. I noticed most of the academically sound or straight-A students are struggling to think outside the box. Their superb accomplishments in school turned out to be a stumbling block in their career advancements.

I blame the exam mechanism in school, which I think have refrained the students from thinking further. If their aims are higher academically, the more they will be trapped by the retarded education system. I’m not saying that academic is not important, that you should be taking academic for granted, but ironically to a certain extent, being too academic numbs your minds.

“Don’t waste your time. You can skip these two chapters, they won’t come out in the exam,” I recalled one of my teachers advised us NOT TO LEARN. And most of the bright students purposely refuse to enter into an argument when the not-so-smart answers perfectly suited the teacher’s taste.

Good students almost always are obedient; they follow the ‘rules’ leading to the road of success. They always thinking inside the box (scope of the exam), and don’t see a point to learn more, as yet the rewards they receive are commendable. In the contrary, the ones who think outside the box will always receive punishment for not following the ‘rules’ set by the academicians and always end up with substandard performances.

Most of the good students tend to inherit the same “good” nature when pursuing their careers. They figure, if they were to follow exactly the instructions given by the boss, they could anticipate huge rewards, as received in the school days, but this time in the form of high salary, fat bonus and promotion etc.

But unfortunately, the working world does not always have the textbook or a set of rules that you can follow to gain rewards. The business worlds these days need you to think outside the box, the peek on the weird opportunities. Then, the normally outstanding students in the eyes of the teachers would turn out to perform like a mediocre in the employer’s eyes. Timid, play safe, afraid to make mistakes and taking no risks are becoming their common characteristics. Their adaptableness to the working environment is pathetic especially in the fast changing world.

The Internet age has provided the world with vast opportunities. There is no past experience or textbooks we can refer to when entering the new virtual world. You HAVE to learn from the mistake(s). No matter how conventional your business, you can revitalize it by tapping on this new technology.

I am always proud of our unconventional website approach and the 8 microsites we have for support. It helps us to grow our business across the border, and serve almost all purposes around the clock for our reseller ranging from technical tips, warranty claim, training, sales resources download and etc. All these efforts require a lot of out-of-the-box’s thinking process.

And after many years of having the training website; it is time to give it a complete overhaul. We are adopting “Flash” technology to make the website appealing graphically. Moreover, we include the online examination, for technical personnel who care for a FingerTec Qualified Technician Certificate. Sit for this exam, and we will mail you the Certificate once you have passed.

And again, a certificate doesn’t make you an excellent engineer if you don’t have the out-of-the-box-thinking mindset at work. The exam is just a basic knowledge for you to be more prepared when it comes to dealing with FingerTec products. The scope of the industry is much larger than that.

I’m proud to announce that our new training website is due to be released this month end.

To Avoid Long Tail

2010-02-22T11:20:00.012+08:00

The Long Tail Theory popularized by Chris Anderson saying that a powerful new economic force in the world of Internet allows almost unlimited choices. This is particular true for the new era where you’re a retailer and you offer your items over the Internet. The display of your products on the Internet is practically costless if compared to a brick and mortar retail store that involves high operating costs. At the end, the additions of small quantity sales of long-tail niche products maybe larger than the total small percentage of hottest mass selling items.

The Long Tail Curve

For slow moving products, this is a really good news. Amazon.com can offer endless list of book titles, but Barn and Noble chain stores have to make a wise selection of titles for display in their limited shop space.

The Internet has given us a lot of dreams, and proven some old theories wrong, and created some new ones. Unfortunately the Long Tail Theory sounds great for online retailers, but not for manufacturers.

We are the one who still have to abide by the conventional Pareto Principle’s 80-20 rule. We may tolerate 80% of slow moving items in our product line against the 20% of the hot items i.e. FingerTec TA100 and R2 model, but no manufacturer can afford to produce endless niche products that sell very little.

From product design, to structural design, to molding, to prototype, to sampling, to mass production, to A&P, the investment is snowballing, if the new product is not making a hit, producers have to lick their own wound.

Everyone dreams to become Apple, just one model of iPhone versus a plentiful of Nokia models and still making tones of money. We are no Apple, but what we can do is to limit our new products to a few models every year to avoid long tail, and pray for the newbie to rewrite the Pareto Principle to 70-30, 60-40, 50-50….

And come back from the Chinese New Year, we have finally unveiled the latest three models:

1. FingerTec FaceID 2

Yeah, it should be released last December, but to make you look good in color on the screen and not just you in black and white image, we had to hold it back until R&D department removes the final hurdle. It’s worth the wait. You can compare it with some of the rival’s products and notice the striking difference. The first batch of the Face ID 2 are all booked, we hope the good news would sustain in a longer period.

2. FingerTec Keylock 8800

This is another much awaited product. To lift the standard of conventional and high-tech fingerprint door lock combined, the effort and investment are three times higher than a normal fingerprint reader. We hope the market proves that it’s worth the economy of effort.

3. FingerTec TA300

It showed up in my plan a year ago. But the designs were shot down many times until I’m almost given up. But the tireless R&D team kept on trying to keep it alive, and we finally have a desktop standalone fingerprint reader. TA300 is meant for no-installation and low price easy market.

We would release 3 to 4 additional new products this year. To avoid the long wait and the grumbling resellers, this time I have to keep it confidential until it nears production.

But all in all, the more pressing matter now is, forget the Long Tail, what’s in my mind is to beat the damn Pareto principle’s 80-20 rule!

Is Santa Claus Real?

2010-02-07T20:24:00.013+08:00

The secret that had been safely kept for nine years was revealed last week.

Coming home from her school, my daughter, in a serious tone, asked me, “Is Santa Claus real, or Daddy is the Santa Claus?”

“Why you suddenly bring this up?” I replied uneasily.

“My classmate told us that Santa Claus is actually daddy and the whole class agreed with her. I’m the only one who insisted that Santa Claus is real. They laughed at me and told me to ask my father.”

The family had worked hard to keep this secret. For a while I wanted to keep it that way. But if I continued the white lie, she would be a bigger laughing stock in her class later on. Since she would soon discover the truth from someone else, it’s better to come from her dad.

So, I told her the truth.

She laughed out loud at first, but later I saw tears welling up in her eyes. I threw my arms around her. What a cruel truth.

She told us that she feels happy and sad at the same time. Some of her long unrequited doubts are cleared now, but the anticipation for Christmas would be diminished.

I convinced her that all children would grow up to discover the truth sooner or later, but Daddy will always get Christmas presents.

“But I have to cut my wish list shorter when I know that Daddy is paying for the presents,” she replied glumly.

Santa Claus is children’s best fairy tale, most parents are willing to keep the secret as long as possible. When the real identity of Santa eventually unveiled, the love between the two generations grows stronger.

“That’s why I didn’t get my elephant (toy) last Christmas which I thought supreme Santa should know what I wanted,” she said with a bitter smile.

“I really went to the zoo and asked the keeper to sell one of the baby elephants to me, but he refused,” I joked.

The whole family broke into laughter, and hers with more tears in the eyes.

This episode happened a month after Christmas. And now Chinese in Malaysia are preparing for Chinese New Year celebration, which’s just around the corner. I would be taking a week holiday to be with my family starting from 13^th February. Despite the two days public holiday in Malaysia, all sales and supports enquiries would be replied within 24-hours. No worry, that’s our promise.

Wishing you A Happy Chinese New Year!

The Perils of Low Price

2010-01-26T16:10:00.009+08:00

They invariably invaded the market vehemently, with promotion price that seemed to last forever. Low price was their only “weapon”. They swept the market and left the branded but less competitive products wept at a corner, praying for their lives.

Their success has made them stand tall for quite some times, until the next low-price predator marched in to give them a blow. There’s no loyalty, the market will embrace the predator without hesitation, turning the predecessor another vulnerable prey. Their dying cries of so-called better “quality” and “support” than the new rival has no appeal, because it never was in the consideration list and it was never offered before.

The truth of the matter is, price beats price.

There will always be some cheaper priced products out there. Big companies manufacture low price products by running production 24-hour a day, volume component purchases and low labor costs. Size does matter; that’s the economy of scale.

But small companies can sometimes do things miraculously. They offer almost the same quality products with even lower prices. They're like cockroaches when the mighty falls; they’d survive for another million years. To them, size does not matter; survivor instinct prevails.

Whether size does or does not matter, the logic is, price is easily beaten by price. Since price is their only “weapon”, the strategy of the battle has always come down to price war and instead of bringing them benefits; they gain so little even they won the battle.

I was informed that in some countries where price is being made a more sensitive issue than religion, due to the economic downturn, new competitors can easily pound on the same door using the same strategy, initiating a fiercer price war than ever.

Desmond Wong (left) and me

Desmond Wong, executive director of AMTC, a distributor, flew from Sabah (East Malaysia) to visit FingerTec last week, told me that they have been approached and offered with some products from China frequently, undoubtedly lower price than FingerTec.

“I welcome their price discount, but afraid the same discount would apply to software features, service and product quality and reliability.”

After we chatted a little longer, he finally broke into a big grin. “I can make better profit with FingerTec because the customers could feel the worth. If I sell China products, I have to succumb to market force by lowering my profit margin.”

And now it was my turn to break into a big grin thinking of the reality of the situation. Despite the economy downturn, AMTC's FingerTec sales improved by 60% last year.

FingerTec is not an alliance in the price war; in fact we choose to stay impartial. When two China products engage in a price war, we are always not included; but when the sales being awarded, we are not always excluded.

Why so? Because price is not our only strategy, we have many.

Is This A Farewell?

2010-01-11T18:02:00.003+08:00

Ms Regielou Rolloque

FingerTec threw a farewell party for Regielou Rolloque last month, but this farewell seems a little weird to me. Yes, she left, flew back to her home country the Philippines on 2^nd January 2010; but she’s not actually leaving us; she is in fact still working full time for FingerTec.

As usual, she has to write a weekly report to the management, follow-up the sales inquiries, handling her Spanish-speaking clients through MSN, Skype and email.

I remember the first time she arrived in Malaysia two years ago during Christmas Day; she appeared timid and introverted. Was she going to survive for two years?

No problem, the friendly working environment and the helpful colleagues here would melt her heart. I told myself.

In two years, her soft-spoken Spanish tongue has melted the Latin American’s hearts too.

Whether she works from Malaysia or the Philippines, there seems to be no difference to our clients. And to us too. It’s just that, without physical presence, her colleagues need to assist her in some administration works from Malaysia.

This is the power of the Internet. And FingerTec sales and support system centers around it, tightening the screws at all ends, fine-tuning the user-experience for both resellers and end users, adding more value from time to time to the platform.

The result is apparent. The virtual has delivered more tangible results than the brick-and-mortar.

One day when Regielou came to me and told me, she missed her home, and she likes her job. Immediately I knew my answer.

You’re free to go home, and you can keep your job.

But you have to visit us once a year, because the colleagues here miss you, too.

Consistency Paid Off

2010-01-07T12:50:00.011+08:00

I have a few weekly columns in some local dailies. And the longest period of column I had ever written lasted three years, published every Monday, totaled 156 articles without a single lapse. Despite my busy work schedule, I still accepted an invitation from a tabloid to contribute critique once a week, and it has been a continuous eight months now.

Inconsistency has always killed any brilliant new plan halfway through. In the contrary, consistency is THE key to a successful implementation of any plans. I'm proud of our FingerTec monthly newsletter, since the first issue was published and disseminated in February 2007; we never missed a single issue over the past 3 years, despite the extra workload and rushing for deadline drew excessive pressure to our staff, when their hands were usually tight, and minds were usually prioritize with some other promises to customers.

Because of our persistence, we maintain consistency and we take care of the content’s quality at the same time. I witness many companies much larger than us, even with a team of dedicated sub-editors, normally had a fine start but slowly lost their momentum and passion as the time went by. We only have our team of sales and technical personnel contribute their writings and assist with the editing of the FingerTec monthly newsletter for the past three long years; and my gratitude to them is beyond words.

One close friend of mine once commented, “Consistency is important, but the virtue can be more valuable if you tie it with some sales strategies rather than a mere newsletter.”

“But newsletter is one of our very effective sales strategies,” I rebutted. The consistency of the newsletter is not just the only one thing we pursue. The fact that we never overlooked other areas such as the handling of sales and supports through our CRM system proves consistency. People shouldn’t be too shortsighted in business. Newsletter is a long-term commitment; an intimate relationship we build with our customers; the results might not be as straightforward but it’s beneficial in the long run.

FingerTec Newsletter, January 2010 issue

In fact, besides the regular updates of our latest developments, Newsletter helps us to win over some potential leads that are selling other biometric products. It also serves as the checkpoints for our staff to contribute technical tips and marketing information to enrich our support websites regularly. Without the monthly newsletter, I can expect very rare updates of our relevant support websites, and the excuses would never be short of supply. Our Newsletter also provides a platform for our resellers worldwide to publish their stories, to announce their successful projects and have the opportunity to share with the others their FingerTec experience at no cost at all.

We improve the contents and design of our newsletter from time to time, and we have been meeting our deadlines earlier in order to publish the volume from the middle to early of the month. Furthermore, the consistency we pursue has slowly turned the process of publishing our newsletter into a habit, and the burden also has been replaced by responsibility. And we expect reading of the newsletter would also become a habit to our resellers.

I dare say that the consistency of our newsletter has improved FingerTec® image tremendously. A distributor from Africa came to the office every half year and she brought with her printed pages of our newsletter and asking for further explanation and updates on various topics. I don’t have a statistic to prove my bold statement, but from feedbacks I received and from my gut feelings, I know that this is true. My logic is simple, I reckon many people believe that, if FingerTec is serious about something they deemed less important, what about those significant matters? Go figure.