Social Responsibility 2

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.

by Teh Hon Seng, CEO, FingerTec HQ

Preparedness For The Nature

1.

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 rate 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.

2.

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.

3.

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.

4.

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.

by Teh Hon Seng, CEO, FingerTec HQ

Music to My Ears

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.

by Teh Hon Seng, CEO, FingerTec HQ

Greener Campaign

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!

by Teh Hon Seng, CEO, FingerTec HQ

Immeasurable Growth

(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.

by Teh Hon Seng, CEO, FingerTec HQ

Couldn't Be Better

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.

by Teh Hon Seng, CEO, FingerTec HQ

Amplify Your R&D and Be Surprised!

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.

by Teh Hon Seng, CEO, FingerTec HQ