FingerTec Website’s Facelift

After 6 long years of having the same look, for the first time our website went through a total facelift. Let me walk you through its major changes. We consolidated the initial two front page contents into one page, and rearranged the scattered icons in a more orderly manner. We also adopted SEO (Search Engine Optimization) concept and integrated its elements holistically.

Our website never had a conventional structure that incorporated our company profile as one of the major features, even when its appearance was minimalistic. When we first started the simple look, I even calculated to reduce the total wording for the front page just like Google’s striped bare search page. I also removed the lengthy company achievements, investors’ relationships and the content I felt was unnecessary.  I wanted the website to be a fully useful and straightforward e-commerce site. And I did all these for another reason: to reduce the burden of translations for our multilingual contents. 

My SEO consultant friend who is famous in his profession once reminded me that our website was not SEO-enabled. After I explained the rational, he agreed that our website should stay as it is. The unconventional design had attracted more customers than what I had expected. We prosper in business, and I attributed the success to the practicality of the webpage and its component sites. 

The Old

The New

Unlike many B2B websites that focus more on resellers and particularly sales but with minimum support, our major efforts went into technical support for resellers, and it has been extended to the end-users as well. 

Our contents swelled over the years. More functional icons were created. The initial simplified design could no longer accommodate our advancement, resulted in some new icons landed on unsuitable spots. It had also becoming difficult to keep pace with various translations. And to maintain simplicity on the first page, we have to expand to the second page. But it had cost users a few more clicks to get to the target. Eventually our website’s concept of simplicity had lost its original appeal. The worse part is, this is just the present, how about two years down the road when our contents doubled?

Hence, the restructuring of our website became inevitable in our case. This time, we had to embark in a different direction. We had to fix the existing weaknesses. We had to sacrifice some ideologies. We had to consider conventional wisdom. But we still have to uphold the ultimate objective of providing sufficient service to the resellers and end users. The consolidation and restructuring should help us enhance our objective to a greater extent.  

In the process of creating a new front page, we debated endlessly about the new order - what would be primary, and what should be secondary? What would be the buttons with reduced point size, and what should be kept as icons? What would be in the drop-down menu, and what should take center stage? We had brainstormed extensively to come up with this new look. And Tamy Phoon, who has been assigned to head this revamping project, had, and still has to take care of the SEO efforts at every turn taken. 

Replacing the old with something new is always an excuse for pride. But for a website that had done so much for us and carried a houseful of meanings and oversaw the growth of our brand, I felt nostalgic for the farewell too. 

by Teh Hon Seng, CEO, FingerTec HQ

CeBIT, Losing Its Clout

I think inevitably the influence of CeBIT is declining over the years. Undeniably, CeBIT is still the world's largest ICT Trade Fair but I just didn't feel like I walked into the cyclone of the digital world. It showcased a little bit of everything - a little bit of tablets, a little bit of communication, a little bit of security, a little bit of cloud computing, a little bit of social media, and a little bit more on business applications, but hardly was there any stimulant strong enough to excite me. The show felt like a weak theme song with disappointing lyrics.

CeBIT, a little BIT of everything

I didn't see much coverage of the 6 - 10th March CeBIT Hannover on any online technology media like TechCrunch, AllthingsD or Wired. In fact, the launch of the new iPad in Cupertino on 7th March, easily received more attention. And if I am not mistaken, there weren't any star products using CeBIT as their launching platform.

There were, however, old boys like SAP, Microsoft, IBM and Intel that played it big and dominated some halls, while new boys like Google and Salesforce tagged along halfheartedly with moderate booths spaces. In recognition of this post PC era, PC giants like Dell and HP knew their place and played a much lower profile in CeBIT, while other PC big boys had shied away from the show.

Many influential big names were missing from CeBIT this year, which made the show less attractive. At its peak during the dot-com boom, CeBIT grossed visitors up to 850,000 and pulled almost 8,000 exhibitors, but declined half for both to 334,000 and 4,000 in 2010. With only 15% foreign and diversified visitors, exhibitors might not get their target audiences easily.

Some says that CeBIT is meant for B2B and it is not a consumer technology trade show like CES in the United States. They continue to argue that this is a good platform for CIOs to meet up, to exchange views and sharing experiences. If so, CeBIT is indeed a very expensive gathering event for the IT guys. IT guys are a bunch of people that could find all their stuff over the Internet, and communicate to the right personnel online.  For example, if their company wants to implement Cloud Computing ERP, they would know where to look for the right solution, where to do thorough research and comparison, and where to get a free trial before making any decisions.

CeBIT is obviously more focused on B2B, but when personal technology is becoming the trend of the digital world, business computing has to rethink on how to accommodate personal technology into their offices. For example, when fewer PCs and notebooks were sold, we had no doubt that more and more consumer gadgets like tablets, iPad and smartphones are appealing for office purpose. Since digital technologies have become a part of everyone's lifestyle and the convergence with consumer electronics, smart gadgets and the home entertainment market, the line for personal devices and office devices can no longer be drawn.

I finally found this Van Gogh's Sunflowers 
in Pinakothek Art Museum in Munich 

To visit Mozart's birthplace in Salzburg is a bonus 

When Norana told me to forego CeBIT due to its diversified audience, we decided not to take part last year after our first participation in 2010. But being the largest ICT trade fair on earth, I was still pulled by its magnet. Hence, I came to see for myself this year as a visitor with the hopes to get a first-hand feel and figure out how to reposition or to blend ourselves into it.

My interest waned after the visit, and I had to agree with Norana to drop the idea to rejoin the show entirely. What can visitors expect out of an IT Show when the leading companies from Silicon Valley show a lukewarm response while China companies overwhelm the exhibition halls?

by Teh Hon Seng, CEO, FingerTec HQ

The Complexity of Translation

Due to my trilingual background, I don't read translated Chinese, English or Malay literature, I prefer the original languages. We all know that literary works and creative writings are the hardest to translate. It might not be so much the case of misinterpretations, it is more about the tone ended up feeling differently from its original version. To indulge in literature, unless you have no command of its original language, avoid the translated version, perhaps at all costs. 

Every language has the substance of its own culture

It’s simply because every language has the substance of its own culture; the complexity of the culture is even extended to the names of its people. For some famous Chinese writers who originally write their novels in English like Jun Chang, Ha Jin and Geling Yan, when their stories set foot in China, the Romanized Chinese names of the characters still bother me. Not only that they're hard to remember, the vivid meanings behind a Chinese name can no longer be discerned. It's the same effect when I read celebrity names like James Watkins, Daniel Craig, Tom Cruise or Cameron Diaz in Chinese, you have to sacrifice extra brain cells to figure out who is who.

We are lucky because our commercial products have nothing to do with literature. The language we use to explain our products can be very simple and straightforward, users do not need to read between the lines. But still, you simply cannot trust any machine or software or Google Translate to do the job; to translate accurately, human factor is crucial.

We have no doubt that translations and localizations are vital for business to compete successfully in the global market. According to 2006 Common Sense report that surveyed more than 2,400 consumers in eight countries, in fact, 52% of consumers will only buy something from a website in their own language. In France and Japan, that figure increased to more than 60%. We have to bear in mind that consumers who do not speak any English are six times more likely to avoid English websites altogether. 

Can you speak my language?

Customers would perceive companies that can speak in their native tongue as more credible, but that’s not the reason why we privilege translations and localizations. As we steer our practical branding in full gear, we don’t want language to become the barrier for our customers to understand and to use our products.

And for that particular reason, we are managing a large volume of contents for translations everyday.

Let me explain why our translation work is complex. We have websites, software, hardware, usual manuals, video guides, technical tips, training and marketing materials, voice clips and etc, and for some materials, we translate them to more than 10 languages. We also frequently upgraded our software and hardware, and improving all kinds of support materials all the time. The contents around the products have to sync with the latest upgrades, hence the translations need regular updates as well.

When it comes to details, we know that translators always stumbled at literary works and sometimes decided to rephrase the sentences to bring the gist out rather than translating them directly, the same might happen to our products as well. For example, when we created some usernames as the sample data in software user manual; translators would need to be reminded to create different set of localized usernames instead of using the same names for translation. Isn’t it weird for users in the Gulf to read Wong Ah Kow as a name even if it is written in Arabic?

To manage contents and translations more professionally, this month, we have promoted Nattalina Zainal to this new position, Content Manager, to oversee the market and support of FingerTec products across languages. 

by Teh Hon Seng, CEO, FingerTec HQ

Build Your Internal Strengths

During Secutech Taipei Show, in April 2010, a company’s sales director approached me and he invited me to visit their HQ in Beijing to explore the collaboration opportunity on face recognition technology. When I finally paid my visit and stepped out of their HQ in June the same year, my instinct told me that they were not the right company we should be working with, even though they had just been listed on Shenzhen Stock Exchange early that year, and their initial share price skyrocketed. 

Their flamboyant marketing approach didn’t make me feel they are a company with strength. I  was less impressed when I later read in a magazine about how their CEO put up a frivolous show before the media by smashing an ice-sculptured apple to assert their confidence and smashed an iPad with their tablet products. 

It seemed like they discovered a gold mine when Kindle was proven to be a huge success in 2007, the sudden upsurge of demand of eBook readers in China tremendously uplifted the sales of their eBook readers as well. 

Unfortunately, their sales slumped last year. And in reverse their tablets were 'smashed' by Apple and to add salt to injury, their eBook reader sales dropped sharply due to the lack of ebook contents to support users like Amazon has. To make matter worse, their biometrics division was never really took off.

I have always believed that companies without internal strengths would have a short life-span. A lot of companies just bet on sales and sales strategies to grow their business, the rests to them are just costs, so the lesser the better. Many short-sighted businessmen are hoping to maximize profit, hence they cut down budget on trainings, administration and technical supports, not to mention the investment for the future i.e R&D.

Once, I met this typical businesswoman who said that every square foot of an office space counts when she visited our office, shaking her head in disagreement. For her, maintaining a cozy working environment should never be a consideration.

When Amazon.com hemorrhaged in its first ten years, why were the investors not losing their faith, and continued to support the company? Simple, because everybody knew that it was just a matter of time for the company to make a turnaround.

And when Amazon starts to make profit, everybody believes it would continue to make profit forever (or at least it seems so). My perception is, other tech giants may one day be losing their momentum, but not Amazon, because they had built an internal strength that could almost last them forever.

You can't talk about Apple without talking about the iPad, iPhone and iPod, however for Amazon, it's a different case. Even without its Kindle or Kindle Fire, Amazon will continue to expand mammoth-like, swallowing any merchandise that may come their way. Their internal B2C platform encompasses with layers after layers of service system that they built over the years, has become a fortress for them to stand for any challenges, and selling anything that they want, from a toilet roll to an airplane.

After in-depth analysis and a long list of comparisons, we have decided to choose Amazon as our cloud computing platform partner to jumpstart our SaaS for TimeTec Cloud. In general, we are confident to select Amazon as a partner, that is famous for their customer service. Go figure!

by Teh Hon Seng, CEO, FingerTec HQ

The Downside of Low Price Attraction

My wife swore she would not revisit Japan at least within 5 years after having experienced the earthquakes and the Tsunami and the scare of the nuclear radiation risk last March in Tokyo. 

But when Airasia offered low price tickets for their debut fly to Osaka last August, my wife conveniently forgotten all her fears and booked the air tickets right away. Hence, Osaka was the destination for our family's Chinese New Year holiday vacation this year. And, we were back in Japan not even a year from her last vow.

That’s how sales and promotions having their effects on women mostly and make her (my wife) forgot the pain that came later. She didn't take any considerations (or she intentionally forgotten?) about the high living standard in Japan, about the expensive foods, accomodation, transportations, local tours, theme park, shopping; all in all, the additional high costs made the low offered airfare insignificant.

For consumer products, the pain hurts you once and you regret it after but it may have a smaller effect in a small circle of people; but for an industry product, when low price prevails without comprehensive considerations, greater suffer might need to be borne by the whole company for a long period of time.

Imagine buying a machine that is not really suitable to uplift your company’s efficiency? It could easily jeopardize the business's operation and the whole business in general.

I was involved in the business of supplying Electronic Publishing Solution to the newspaper industry before I ventured into Biometrics industry. And I’d witnessed how one of my clients, due to the cost-saving purpose, had bought a third party part to support its web printing machine. The part had caused the machine to hiccup once in a while too often to keep up with the race for the deadlines.

Save money that end up costing you more

Of course low price is not necessarily equivalent to low quality product. But hi-tech products nowadays have become too sophisticated that hardware alone would not be the only determining factor in their performance. Just as the success of iPhone, iOS and Appstore should be taking the bulk of the credit.

Yes, we packed FingerTec biometric terminal into a small box with some accessories and a CD that contains TCMS v2 software and all type of user guides. When all eyes are on the hardware which obviously take up the major space and weight in a box, we shouldn’t and couldn't ignore the software, the firmware, and the support system built around the hardware.

When pricing is the only considering factor, some customers would easily end up having to endure permanent glitches of their system every single working day, even though time and attendance system is just a threshold for workers to start and end their work by clocking-in and out.  We should be aware that when more rules apply, the calculations would be more complicated for time and attendance, besides extra issues of integration or export of data to your payroll system. To top that of, working hour is a sensitive issue and human resources is always one of the major costs for most companies.

For any industry products, don't get too caught up in getting the best deals in price in the procurement process.  No matter how low the price a product is, it is always wise to research before making any decisions. As the saying goes, there's no free lunch. 

by Teh Hon Seng, CEO, FingerTec HQ

My 2011 Read List

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

Last year, I bought about 100 books in total and a few eBooks from Kobo and not counting my magazine subscriptions. Some books are for references; some are trashed after a few chapters, and only 30 or so that I read 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. This MacroWikinomics should be an extension of his observation for mass collaboration, in a larger scale after the published of Wikinomics in 2006. In this book, he gives some true examples on how MacroWikinomics happened in business, government and civil society.

2.  A World Without Islam - Graham E. Fuller

This book is NOT about criticizing Islam. In fact it concluded that the 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 a lot of analysis and proofs that the conflicts and tensions that exist between the West and the East are geopolitically mounted, rather than caused by religious origins. The discussions are not confined to Islam only; in relation to Islam, it broadly covers the Christianity, cultural, politics, economic, history and more.

3. Steve Jobs - Walter Isaacton

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

4. The Takeover  - Stephen Frey

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

5. Fall of Giants - Ken Follet

I have a full collection of Ken Follet’s books. This is the first book of his trilogy about the change of the major world powers before and after the World War 1, written in a style that gives it a lot more fun than a history book. I would definitely consider 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. I bought 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 like Rohinton Misty who beautifully and powerfully depicts the harsh life in India.

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

7. The Fear Index - Robert Harris

In my view, I found Ghost Writer more interesting in film rather than a read, but nevertheless, Robert Harris is still one of my favorite writers. His latest work, The Fear Index, 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 the tale of Cicero’s slave secretary, Tiro, is another intriguing piece although it seems like Robert Harris has totally forgotten his mission to complete the trilogy - after the publication of Imperium and Lustrum, I, for one, have been eagerly 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 was first published in 1948, the famous prophetic haunting tale about the “Thought Police” and the “Big Brother”. This novel was first published in 1946; and I bought the digital copy, as the printed copy is a rare in major bookstores. Both Animal Farm and 1984 criticize totalitarianism, and the author uses animals as characters in his Animal Farm.  

by Teh Hon Seng, CEO, FingerTec HQ

Historical Record For Every Terminal

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. 


by Teh Hon Seng, CEO, FingerTec HQ