Declaration of Future Commitment

A biometric device is a hardware terminal designed as an instrument to solve clocking problems, and its complementary software is a program designed as a tool to solve operational problems. In this biometrics clocking system, clocking plays a lesser role in the entire operating system. Software is indeed pivotal in almost every business system. While FingerTec seems like a hardware’s brand name; we have been preparing ourselves and dispensing more resources in software development for our brighter future. 

Clocking device vs Operating System

When the iPhone debuted in 2007, and later the iPad in 2010, they made a huge paradigm shift in the IT world that was once dominated by personal computers.  The computing power that normally stayed intact on a clunky desktop had been shifted into the hands and pockets, which came with them the term ‘mobility’.  Obviously, size did matter; an action used to transfer software from a CD to a computer simply couldn’t be performed for a tablet and smart phone anymore. 

However, that was only a bump in the road, since almost all devices are network connected nowadays; you just need to download any software directly from the Internet. The aggressive ones came with another great idea, “Why do we need to download software to a device? Isn’t it easier to log in to a website and use it there?” Hence, the Web and Cloud program were created. And, another smart guy would reply, “Since everyone is carrying a smart phone and staying connected 24 hours now, why don’t we create some specific Apps with different function roles for employees to collaborate at all times?”

Add mobility to liberate computing power 

And we, as one of the market leaders in time & attendance industry and an innovator ourselves, started to think that since everyone carries a handset, do we really need a special device to do time clocking? This is just like how digital camera became quite irrelevant when the smartphones can take high quality picture. Instead of letting the newcomers phasing out your products, you may need to take the initiative to kill your own products with newer inventions.  

We predict that the industry would inevitably be drifting slowly away from the clocking terminals and, the initial software that runs on Windows Operating System that were usually used by a few administrators, seemed inadequate when the business owners want to tap on the computing power that is within the employees’ grasp.  The software has to reinvent itself and become more accessible among staff, more collaborative among peers, more communicative among superiors and subordinates; and to notify irregularities in real time.

Then, abruptly, the software-as-a-tool’s era is over and software pulsates like a central nervous system, transmitting signals into your business operation.

When the trend is shielded away from a specific hardware but offered other probable methods for clocking, and demanding all of the abovementioned features to be available in the BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) era, another great time of IT for corporations that unavoidably based on cloud computing and business model based on SaaS (Software as a Service) is declared arriving. 

This trend supported by Computerworld's 2015 Forecast predicts that 42% of IT decision makers are planning to increase spending on cloud computing in 2015, with the greatest growth in enterprises with over 1,000 employees (52%). By 2018, 59% of the total cloud workloads will be Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) workloads, up from 41% in 2013.

We have another chart to strengthen the upward trend for adoption of Cloud Services. As normal software application users, you just deal with SaaS providers, and can ignore Platform as a Service (PaaS) and IaaS (Intrastructure as Service) where SaaS providers will deal with them to park their cloud applications onto it.  

At FingerTec, we noticed the trend and set our transformation plan since we adopted Salesforce.com as our Cloud CRM system in 2008. Today, we have launched TimeTec, cloud-based time and attendance system (www.timeteccloud.com), and EpiCamera, cloud-based surveillance system (www.epicamera.com), and we continue to add features and refine the systems to meet market expectations.

In the pipeline, we have TimeTec Cloud Visitor Management System, TimeTec Cloud Patrol System and TimeTec Cloud Recruitment System, and TimeTec Cloud Leave Management System. The former three Cloud Services will be introduced in early next year, and the fourth Cloud Application is expected to commence in the third quarter of next year.

Our determination can even be observed by the change of the company’s name from FingerTec to TimeTec to mark our commitment in this transformation. The transformation will not only happen on the product level, but our business approach as well in the foreseeable short future.   

Shaping Corporate Culture One Article at a Time

From 2008 until recently, in seven years, I have written a total of 138 entries for my blog posts. Now it’s time for me to bid farewell to my readers, which mainly consist of our staff, resellers, customers and people who are curious to know what’s inside a CEO’s brain.

But what’s the reason for this farewell? My answer is simple, because I have extensively covered most of my views regarding corporate culture and the future; it has become increasingly harder for me to churn out new points without repeating some old ones. And, I hate repetitions.

Yes, I talked a lot about corporate culture in my blog entries. It’s well reflected that I place very high esteem to shape better corporate culture in running the company. I always believe that if a company has a good culture, it makes things right. Just like the book I recently read, “How Google Works”, co-authored by Eric Schmidt (Google Executive Chairman) and Jonathan Rosenberg (former Google SVP of Products), both stressed that when starting a new company or initiative, culture is the most important thing to consider.

They’ve collectively mentioned, “The founders didn’t care about maximizing the short-term value and marketability of their stock, because they knew that recording the company’s unique values for future employees and partners would be far more instrumental to long-term success.”

And I saw those companies that truly value corporate culture, not just the ones which superficially display something to uplift their company’s image, would normally place long-term development before the short-term profit.

Our Practical Branding and Internet Ecosystem efforts, which I had elaborated in my previous blog entries, clearly were the two pillars we laid in our foundation to face future odds and challenges. Besides, focusing on building a Great Workplace and centering on the User Experience in our products are the other two pillars to ensure that we capture the brightest talents, and produce products that are welcomed by the customers. 

These are the topics I shared in my blog posts. Those who expect me to share more industry and product know-how would be disappointed. Even the handful of my commentaries on these topics were mostly conceptual, rather than factual.

Without my contribution, our official blog site will still be continued, but it will head towards the direction of factual information, which will be contributed mainly by our marketing team.

I’ll select some of my articles, edit and compile them into an e-book version. Not only for the purpose of recollection, but more importantly to remind ourselves from time to time not to lose our bearings. 

My blog posts end here, but the FingerTec story continues…..

The “Predicament” of the Mid-Range Market

I recall the day when I was involved in selling newspaper electronic publishing system some 15 years ago, there was this famous true story circulated among the insiders.

An ailing newspaper kicked off a rescue plan to boost its readership, and they engaged a market research company to offer them some constructive advices after a thorough market survey.  Their analysis summed up that X newspaper dominated the high-end market, Y newspaper conquered the low-end’s; there was still a vacuum of the untapped huge mid-range market.

The conclusion drew so much laughter, because the fact was, the assumed of vast mid-level customers simply didn’t exist.

Stuck in the middle?

Their new strategy based on this market report failed flat and landed them with receivership eventually. I told this story because it seems like we are very much situated at the same “predicament”. We have been sandwiched by the high-end system providers from advanced countries and renowned brands, and the low-end system providers from the Mainland China.  If the mid range market was non-existence for the newspaper industry, does it exist for time attendance and access control industry?

And I conclude that it definitely does. 

The content and presentation style in a newspaper are easier to devise to suit the taste of its readers in larger market coverage; hence to leave a vacuum of an untapped market is almost out of the question. But for industrial products, it’s pretty much different. If marketers aim for the low-end market, their costs and profits have to be squeezed to the least; hence it’s hard for them to provide quality software and services, or even more features have to be sacrificed for the sake of their low price.  In contrast, high-end marketers target big corporations that allow them to charge exorbitant fees, and pay high maintenance cost for scrupulous solutions and services; they’re unlikely to lower their postures for less profitable market. Even if they want to their system would not permit them to be mid-range or low-end friendly.

Stand tall in the middle 

And, our company is destined to apprehend this large amount of mid-to-high and mid-to-low market. While I’m writing this article, these three emails caught my eyes and it is in my opinion, best illustrated our position. I summarized it as follow:

An ERP solution provider wrote to us, saying they are in the midst of implementing their solution to one of their customers that currently using a HR solution provided by one of our resellers that using our biometric device to track time attendance. The reseller has difficulty to solve their problem when they want to retrieve time data from our device to be further processed by using their ERP software. And, they hope to establish a meeting with us to discuss about the data interface between our device and their system. They stressed they are in urgency because the technical team from India would only be in town until end of the week.

They received an email from our Assistant Sales Manager, the reply went like this, 

I’m Ms Fazalina from the sales department of FingerTec responding to your inquiry. We have read and understood your requirements and FingerTec has prepared many applications without any costs for you to use. Please go to www.fingertec.com and click on software icon at the bottom. There you can find FingerTec Data Processor (FTDP) for the data interface between FingerTec terminals and your application. FTDP is a free application at your disposal.

http://www.fingertec.com/images/w_brochure/FTDP_e.html

If you want your solution to be able to connect directly to FingerTec terminals, please use the SDK instead. http://www.fingertec.com/images/w_brochure/software-biobridge_e.html

While you are at that, take a peek at FingerTec Developer Program and see how this can help you: http://www.fingertec.com/developerprogram/

Therefore depending on your requirement you may choose between the FTDP (data has been processed for you and you just select which you require) or SDK (for system developers and they need to integrate FingerTec readers into their system for a solution).

We have also contacted our reseller regarding this matter and he will revert back to you shortly.

Later, we got his email saying:

Thank you for your prompt reply and support rendered right away.

My team believe what your solution has offered should be sufficient for us to proceed with our work.

We have also got in touch with your reseller.

We shall seek your support should we encounter one. We look forward a good partnership, where our product will be work well with Fingertec products.

This is how the magic is done with our “We Make Things Easy” strategy. Our products come with the comprehensive features and sell at affordable prices and extensive supports are provided without any further charges.

Yes, in our case, there is really a huge untapped market for the middle range. 

User Experience and Employee Experience

Nowadays we often heard about the importance of user experience, it’s a step further than of quality products and services.  Because even when you have achieved certain quality standards, it doesn’t mean that your products are appealing amongst the customers. If the experiences from the users were not pleasant, even if your products passed the ISO 9001 certification, or received high praises from your business guru, that doesn’t guarantee that your products will sell well.

Customers will complain if they found software bug or hardware glitch, but they are usually not vocal if they don’t get a good user experience. It is rather the issue of the “sense”, immeasurable like look and feel, the challenge for business owner is far too great; hence only great companies manage to handle the issue of user experience well.

Happy staff contributes to producing quality product that will achieve better user experience 

When a company determines to go for ISO 9001 certification that’s meant to produce quality products, consultant will hand-down a checklist that emphasizes on processes, documentations, and etc; there is never a stress on the quality of personnel to produce quality products.  The role of employees is shrunk to some little tiny screws that bind the processes.

How could companies come up with ideas to upgrade their quality products to a level of lovable products based on user experience? In my opinion, you need to upgrade your workplace to a level of lovable workplace based on your employee’s experience. If whether a product is great or mediocre is determined by its user experience, producer should have no say in it; then whether a workplace great or mediocre is determined by its employee experience, boss should have no say in it.

A lovable workplace or a great workplace, according to Michael Burchell and Jennifer Robin that co-authored the book, The Great Workplace, is where people trust people they work for, take pride in what they do, and enjoy the people they work with. Employees at great companies also say that they want to work for their employers for a long time. It is not uncommon for employees at great workplace to say that they even want to make careers there, and stay for the duration of their work lives.

If quality staff contributes to produce quality product; hence happy staff contributes to producing quality product that will achieve better user experience. This is because the highest sensational feel will spread around the products that only can be detected sensationally by the customers.

To attract more top minds that can produce high quality products to work for us, our company starts to offer scholarship to eligible IT students.  But to build a great workplace that can produce quality products to match better user experience, we have to improve our systems continuously, and a working environment with a culture that radiates the desired work ethos.

Professionals Mix in Research & Development

I’ve been complaining about the speed issue over and over, yet the improvement is still a little far from satisfaction even though TimeTec Cloud development team has poured vigorous efforts in tackling the problem.  

And, I suddenly saw the light when I tried out one of TimeTec Cloud newly launched features. I immediately called the head of development team to discuss my idea and the existing blind spot.

“Yes, it’s achievable, but don’t you think the real-time function is more important as a cloud application?” R&D Head replied.  

“But user profile or configuration won’t be updated too regularly.” I said.

“If they do?” Ha! What a typical response from an R&D team!

“Then that’s something extraordinary, our priority should set on the majority first.” 

At the end, we came into a conclusion that only the present day’s attendance records require real time, and the system should automatically perform data retrieval from the server every time upon request; but for the rest, once downloaded, the information should be kept on the cache memory on local CPU for recurring use until the user logs out.

Technical problem solving does not only depend on how advanced one possesses the technology know-how, but it’s rather more often resort to rational thought based on the user experience. Like in our case, speed versus real-time, we asked the same question for all the features, and we were surprised to reverse our initial priority for most of the answers.

Sometimes, you may not have to be a technician to solve a technical issue. The same goes to R&D; a non-programmer with the logical dissection can unravel some entangled codes. Problem solving always requires different mix of professionals. Especially when we aim to develop a system that can meet world-class standard; besides technology, we have to be more holistic. One way to achieve this goal is to channel more expertise from different fields into the same development. Therefore, we have people from different departments getting involved in research and development ‘assisting’ software engineers.

And, this mix is not an ad-hoc task in FingerTec; we have adopted it as part of the routine duty in our business operations.

Hence our regular usability meetings for any added new features for TimeTec Cloud continue…..

Hence our Big Data analytics to improve user experience continues….

Writing Skill is More Important than Talking Skill in Today’s Business

Digitization in bits and bytes was the fundamental activity for the Information Technology revolution in the 80s and 90s of the last century. In the new millennium, connecting the world to the Internet became the main role for the Information Technology development.

For the former, we witnessed contents readily loaded in its carriers, be it papers, films, cassettes or tapes, be it in text, voice, image or animation format, the contents had vastly be converted into digital data, laid a strong foundation for the information boom and tremendous cost cutting measures for knowledge transfer. While in the Internet era, the latter, by connecting computers and IT devices, the web technology virtually removed all borders and physical distances between customers and companies.    

Digitization & Globalization

For the former, we observed INTEGRATION in different job functions due to digitization. However, for the latter, GLOBALIZATION is the keyword when distance is being compressed to virtually zero.

In the past, you had to setup plenty of physical overseas branches to qualify you as an international company. But in the present days, your business operation can reach every corner of the world even if you are a minute below-10-employee company. Micro-international company is the new vocabulary to describe a small yet Internet savvy company that can achieve global business goal, even without setting up any physical business operation abroad.

Speak & Listen

From digitization to globalization process, there is a change of emphasis in communication skill too from speaking to writing.  This new trend can simply be verified by how we use our mobile phones today.  Mobile phones used to serve human’s mouth and ears in the past, but now had switched to eyes and fingers, a clear sign of speak and listen transiting to write and read. And smart phones are no longer merely just any phones, they are also handheld portable computers, it means the ubiquitous and network connect at all times, plus the mainstream social media apps like WhatsApp, Facebook, Twitter and WeChat etc., the time we spend in reading and writing is much longer than we do in tele-conversing.

Talking and writing are two basic communication skills, but in the midst of the transformation from productivity economy to the service industry economy in the 80s and 90s, the socio and economy activities were basically confined to more local vicinities. When face-to-face or telecommunication is required to get the job done, talking is definitely the king. The criteria of employment especially in sales and marketing personnel emphasizes on eloquent speaker.

Writing, writing, writing

When the Internet era arrived, it dismantled all borders between countries and it shrunk the physical distances, sparked a new perspective in communications, writing proficiency had suddenly becoming more important than talking. Since distant had been virtually removed, overseas business expansion did not require physical store anymore, however, a virtual store is still pivotal to display your products and services with or without an option to online purchases, or at least a website that provides training and technical support, elaboration on warranty claims, policies, services and etc. All these, you need excellent writing skills to produce contents. Besides, you also need your sales and technical personnel to be able to answer customers’ queries in emails or Skype; and again, writing skill is inevitable. And to take advantage of the social media like Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, and other engines to engage your customers, once again, you can’t ignore writing skill.

In short, to build an Internet ecosystem in your company, a strategy that is probably not an option anymore for nowadays businesses, you require more staff that can write well. Good writing skills definitely produce better quality and more useful contents. This is what we believe in FingerTec.  And, I also believe that writing is so fundamental in today’s organization that one shouldn’t outsource it to any third party. 

Internet Exploration: Sky is the Limit

My Facebook friend published his first book recently to indulge his 47th birthday. Writing has always been his hobby, but never his career. The book was produced from his chronologically compiled self-written articles that he posted on Facebook.  Surprisingly, his first print of 5000 copies sold out even before the book hits the bookstores.

How did he make it? Thanks to Facebook, the same social media site where he has been posting his articles; it is also used as a marketing platform where he sells his books. He ecstatically shared an incident where the bank froze his bank account momentarily until further explanation was given as to why a sudden surge of remittances from all over the place happened in his account.

In the past, as an amateur writer, there was no way you could collect pre-orders to justify whether or not to publish a book. Let alone to convince a publisher to put your work on to print; many of them ended up forking out their own cash to fund the publications. Other challenges were to get the book dealer to distribute your books and the bookstores to display them. Not only that, you may find your book sitting helplessly and timidly on the shelf among the bestsellers, do you have extra dollars to churn out for advertising and promotion?

However, at present time, who doesn't have a vast pool of real and virtual friends on Facebook? This resource can easily be tapped onto to engage in sales and marketing. When my friend sent the book out to his readers, they tagged him with the picture of the book that had safely arrived; it became a viral post that boost the sales even more. And, this was not an isolated case; I have a few other amateur writer friends who shared the same success story.

Internet technology has changed the way we think; the life we live; the business we run, and push the limited resources in the past to almost limitless at present. How does one make use of the Internet resources? Can someone teach us and give us some guidance? YES and NO. The Internet world is still full of continuously evolving concept and technology; you just have to open your eyes.

My strategy to build an Internet ecosystem in our business operation is very simple - when things can be done the Internet way, just go for it. That is why we are more Internet savvy than our competitors. And fuzzy logic is applied in Biometrics system; the same trial and error concept can be applied to clear the blur, to get a certain end result.   

Just like when we started our new Software as a Service (SaaS) business, TimeTec Cloud, I told the Cloud team, we can adopt the system from FingerTec, but from what we have learned so far, the ecosystem seems laggard and insufficient. A cloud service needs a deeper Internet thinking; for example business intelligence derived from Big Data and etc. We have to explore the missing components, add to our system and enhance it even in blind sometimes, but it is still better than not trying anything.