Big Data: The Race Is On

One of the buzzwords in the IT world apart from cloud computing technology is big data. For a lot of people, (the concept) is hard to comprehend because no matter the size of the data, data has been around us all the time. Why now in a sudden, big data becomes significant and gathers so much attention? And how big is one’s data to be considered as BIG data? 

Big Data

Big data is claimed to be valuable in improving service and user experience, and sometimes, even to refine prediction. So, as a not-so-big company, what is the size of data we have? If it can be considered as big data, how can we make use of it? I pondered a little and told the cloud surveillance development team on how we can tap on big data to improve our service. 

Currently, we are using a customer's last page view as default for their next login page. This is hoped to reduce the unnecessary clicking and to bring the customer straight to the "intended" page. We went ahead with this decision only based on the assumption that customers would always want to visit their last logout page the next time they login.  However, this built-in mechanism may not be necessarily right even when we observed a high hit rate on the relevant pages. 

Hence, I suggested that they crunch individual customer’s data for a period of one month based on two parameters, frequency of page log and total time spent on a page, and strike a balance between the two.  Therefore, if a customer’s behavior changes, the intended first view page would also change accordingly to improve user experience. The method is considered a deployment of the big data concept on a smaller scale.

Big Data

According to Viktor Mayer-Schönberger and Kenneth Cukier in their book, Big Data, “Data was no longer regarded as static or stale, whose usefulness was finished once the purpose for which it was collected was achieved, such as after the plane landed (or in Google’s case, once a search query had been processed). Rather, data became a raw material of business, a vital economic input, used to create a new form of economic value. In fact, with the right mindset, data can be cleverly reused to become a fountain of innovation and new services. The data can reveal secrets to those with humility, the willingness, and the tools to listen.”

In the past we depended on samplings when dealing with large populations and numbers. This was due to the constraints of tools to collect, organize, store and analyze data, which often times did not provide enough confidence to the participants and led to many cases of self-censorship. But with the era of big data, where N=all, using all the available data lets us see details we never could when we were limited to smaller quantity of data.

When we can make use of data effectively, some market surveys become irrelevant because now you realize that the answers to your questions are somehow buried deep down somewhere in the pool of your big data, something that you possess all these while. If you know how to excavate the dormant value, it’d give you much accurate findings than those sophisticated pricey market surveys.   

Big Data

For example, when you dine in a restaurant, a waitress approached you with the sweetest smile she could muster and passed you a survey form to fill. If the service column were filled with “excellent”, she would have a chance for a pay hike. In such a case, you would oblige hoping that your response helps her to get a raise. 

In a market survey however, we usually tend to ask why in our effort to understand the preference of our customers. But when we’re dealing with big dataset, it’s more towards what, rather than why. The big data tells you outright about what is happening, and what you should do next. 

That’s how the Internet giants, Google, Amazon and Facebook become humongous and invincible. For them to improve their services in all aspects; they dig into their own data, find the logic, extract the hidden value, and act according to pattern of the data. With astronomical quantity of data, the numbers speak for themselves, without any need of conceptual model and hypothesis.

Big data marks the beginning of a major transformation, from quantitative to qualitative change. Since we are providing two cloud services, TimeTec as a cloud based workforce management system and IPCamera as cloud surveillance system; we will start to collect data in a larger scale. How can we differentiate ourselves among the competitors? This relies on how data holders open up their big-data mindset, continuously improve the algorithms, innovate the services and enhance user experience too.

When words, locations and interactions are considered data; when one can dataficate almost everything; the big data race is on. The earlier a web firm can capture and reuse its data, the accumulative of data exhaust would turn into a huge competitive advantage for the company, and raises the barrier of entry against its rivals.

The Invasion via Invention

Information Technology has invaded almost every industry. The invasion is actually welcomed because once IT pierced through the hull of the industries; it injects juices, and rejuvenates the industries to move forward with a faster pace. We observed how IT has helped revamp industries in the eighties and nineties during the last century. For examples, Microsoft Office improves office automation, Adobe perfects graphic design and publishing, CAD/CAM excels as aided tools for engineering, accounting software increases efficiency for financial reports preparation and etc., and this is all happening with Moore’s Law working behind the scenes while doubling computing power in every 18 months.

But those were the good years when IT companies came in as friends rather than foes. They knocked on your doors, delivered amazing hardware and software, took your money, and left you without interrupting your business. At that time, IT business meant selling IT products, and it never trespassed between industries to compete with you and grab a piece of your market share.

Information Technology

When the smart IT guys leaned further in, all in the name of producing ‘better stuff’ for you, they get to know more about your operations, your business logic and process. When the Internet technology started to emerge in the late nineties, and provided them with virtual power, the invasions suddenly turned “hostile”. They started having less interest to sell IT products to improve your business. While the old-school bosses are still struggling to comprehend the virtual world phenomena, they have already made your border borderless, crossover to open fire. And we observe a lot of industries losing their grounds to these newcomers.

Here’s an example: Amazon not just posed an impending threat to conventional book retailers like Barnes and Noble, it extended warfare to include publishers, resulting in the recent merger of Penguin and Random House, with eBooks and Kindle. It continued the attack on WalMart for the groceries market, gobbling up everything it saw fit to be sold in its online store.

Here’s another example: Apple created another upheaval paradigm shift by turning cell phones into smart phones, changing the phones that supposedly serves the body parts of ears and mouths into eyes and fingers, thus putting the once dominant Nokia in a hemorrhaging state, and accidentally slaughtering the digital cameras and game consoles market along its way.  Now, think of the wearable IT gadgets, and think of the self-driving car. IT marches into almost every aspect of our life, just name it.

Google's Sergey Brin wearing Google Glass

In general, the bloodshed of IT invasion may be a bad thing for industry players, but it is definitely a good thing to customers. IT invasion brings inventions, new ideas and directions, eliminates the incompetent players, while still refreshing the industries with new bloods.

Imagine a decade ago, we’re just an IT player supplying electronic publishing solution to the newspaper industry to automate their operations.  And now, we are one of the invaders for workforce management and access control industry. We use biometrics algorithm, TCP/IP communications, Windows applications, Web and mobile technology, Cloud services, accomplishing them with other IT knowhow to break through barriers, and turning ourselves as one of the leaders in this industry. No doubt, the competition is becoming fiercer with more newcomers, but the industry is apparently also becoming more interesting and beneficial to the customers.

On top of our products being IT-coated, FingerTec also uses IT to improve business operations. But to unleash the real power of IT, we have to burrow deeper into the industry knowhow, creating something new that the industry agrees with. That’s why we have established FingerTec Academia, to have thorough academic research for the industry we intend to serve. We believe the industry would welcome invasion via invention, seeing its usefulness to them.

Turning Honesty into Customer Confidence

Just like marriage, there are no small details in business. There are, of course, suspicions. As such, I had suspected for quite some time that the Electromagnetic locks that we've been supplied with were well under the claimed holding force in their invoices. The problem was, I have no measuring instrument to prove that the ‘white paper’ is wrong. This requires a special instrument, called precision magnetometer, to pull the two electromagnetic slabs apart when the electricity is turned on. The exact reading that it takes the moment the two slabs are separated indicates the holding force for the EM lock. 

To eradicate my doubt, I sent a few samples to a lab to carry out the test. The finding? Averagely down 30-40% from its specifications. 

Once I had the confirmation from the lab, I immediately ordered the amendment of the specifications to the exact amount on all affected marketing materials, and started to look for suppliers that valued quality and honesty.

His reply:

You are too particular. It is just a peripheral in an access control system. I’ve been in this business for 15 years; I assure you that no customers will make any complaints as long as your price is right. And nobody actually cares about the discrepancy of the holding force of an EM Lock as long as it’s beyond the force-open power of any human being under any normal circumstances. What’s the issue?

My reply:

Yes, your statement is most probably right. But, when our products sometimes go along with the accessories traveling around the globe; who knows what circumstances we might encounter? That’s the issue.

At the end, I paid a higher price and swallowed the extra cost, steadfastly insisting to uphold honesty as one of FingerTec’s (and my) business policies. Yes, it will reduce my profit in the beginning, but I believe this is the virtue that guarantees us long-term trust from customers.

 

When my wife couldn't get her cosmetic lotion, La Roche–Posay Anthelios 50 Mineral Ultra Light Sunscreen SPF 50 in local markets last month, she dared not buy it from any less prominent online store. She went straight to amazon.com, placed and paid her order online, and waited for the delivery. You know you can trust Amazon, and if anything goes wrong you can still get your refund.

As online commercials are getting more popular nowadays, we don't physically see many of our partners. In fact, we normally only trade with and support them online, which explains the problem of end-users whose names we might not even know if they don’t register their FingerTec products online. Without physical interactions, customer confidence level is becoming the essence of any successful e-commerce operation. Honesty, then, is the very basic element for vendors to earn customers’ trust, and later to translate it into customer confidence.  

The Fine Line Between Entrepreneurs and Businessmen

Can you discern the differences between businessmen and entrepreneurs? In vocabulary, both are synonymously similar.  Both have to form a company, start a business, sell products to customers and pay their dues.  But it does sound better when you’re known as an entrepreneur rather than a businessman. Nonetheless, a so-called entrepreneur would stay a businessman, if he lacks substance in being an entrepreneur.  

Businessmanship is not a word, but entrepreneurship is. So, what is entrepreneurship? Once, I asked a college student majoring in Finance and Economics; and he just stared blank at me. Of course, anyone can consult Google and find a bunch of answers, but if I did it that way, then my blogpost would look placidly plain, wouldn’t it?

Typical businessman

Some friends compared me with one of our common friends, and asked why am I more successful even though we are almost in the same industry? My reply amused them. I said, while we both started small, I applied businessmen practices to achieve the results of an entrepreneur; while he, an MBA graduate, did it the reverse way.

A businessman’s approaches are calculative; he will be frugal when the resources are limited in order to survive but he would never sacrifice the vision. Just like Bill Gates or Steve Jobs or Jeff Bezos, if a garage is good enough for an office in the beginning, then it is an office. 

Unlike businessmen, money shouldn’t be the only lure to start a journey for an entrepreneur. Yes, you can act like a calculative businessman, but you have to develop a mindset maintained like an entrepreneur. The right mindset is more crucial than a recipe that a step-by-step guide tells you on what to do to become an entrepreneur.

Would you have everybody sit down for a proper meeting, or you’d go straight to tackle a problem even without one? Do you fancy a SWOT analysis before anything is fundamentally laid down, or passionately jumpstart something that is instinctively right? Would you prefer a first-class report that will score you an A academically, or you would do a first class job even without a report? Would you choose to collect customer feedback from disseminating well-designed questionnaires, or you’d rather breathe in tandem with your customers? These, are the questions.

What is entrepreneurship?

To run an MBA-like enterprise, you may look professional, yet you could end up as just a businessman, if the luxurious pack that contains all kinds of tools, equipments, methods, strategies and skills eventually shrink to merely an objective on your monthly balance sheet. 

All the expensive formalities that come from the business books may not yield you the anticipated results if ones don’t pursue the core concepts, but hunt only for the details. And the few cores are in fact spiritual, rather than physical substances.

A businessman cares more in making money; an entrepreneur cares in a larger perspective, including humanitarian community and social responsibility. A businessman is nearsighted; focuses mainly on a monthly sale. An entrepreneur is visionary; stresses on research and development. A businessman trades to trade; an entrepreneur builds to trade. A businessman considers employees as costs; an entrepreneur treats them as assets. A businessman strategizes on exploitation; an entrepreneur believes in human resource development. A businessman turns himself into a selfish rich man; an entrepreneur brings wealth to the society at the same time.

How to become an entrepreneur? Maybe you can learn to become one from any B school, but I trust entrepreneurship flows naturally in one’s blood, and that makes one a true entrepreneur.

Marketing is Supreme Than Sales

I started my career in sales, selling PCs with standard software to home and corporate users. Later on, I moved on to sell Electronic Publishing Solutions to newspapers industry on a project basis. From sales of a few thousand dollars upgraded to over a million dollars in a single order, you may consider this a great leap forward.

But I disliked doing sales, especially project-based sales. You bade and pitched and diverted all your resources and times, writing thick proposals, presenting multiple presentations, and on top of that, you have to build relationships by becoming a Cheap Entertainment Officer rather than Chief Executive Officer.  Even after all that, you might still fail to secure the project. It is worse if the industry is so niche that all you have are only a few potential clients in your region. It’s like your fate is not in your hands but belongs to a handful few.

That’s why I relentlessly sought for new ventures that can turn my own fate around when the newspapers industry was facing its own predicament from the Internet threat. When by chance I settled on Biometrics, the road forked. Whether to aim for the lavish government projects; or to be more commercial, where we can land on a broader customer base? Or perhaps we can be greedy and stomach both?

Life is definitely full of choices. I finally chose to go along with my passion and inclination. With that, I might have achieved success and happiness; or even if I failed, it would be a failure with dignity.  And today, here we are, standing tall and firm in the commercial sector, but premature at that time when I made the decision without hesitation.

I still dislike doing sales. However, to avoid hefty selling process, a product has to speak for itself. And if customers shouldn’t be begged to buy your products, you have to be able to spread your feathers like a peacock to attract customers.  Your inner system must behave like a magnetic field to draw customers. If selling is oblivious and diminishing, marketing must be obvious and overpowering. The larger image marketing system stand in the way of sales, the better the sales would be.

In the big picture, our sales persons are chasing more than just sales, they’re also chasing stories from our resellers to enrich the content of our monthly e-newsletters. Furthermore, they collect quality email addresses as recipients of our monthly e-newsletter from our resellers, with more in mind than to just accomplish their individual sale figures. The wide reach of a good marketing system’s message has proven to yield better results and assist resellers to reduce their sales cycle to close deals.  Hence, when we hire, our sales personnel are from a plethora of backgrounds, but rarely sales.

Over the years, I have enjoyed seeing sales growth, being relaxed a bit in my office to improve our marketing system, to improve our support system, to improve our software and hardware products, to improve everything I think can be improved, with a clear vision and more importantly our own fate to where we are headed. With the oblique approach, ‘sales’ is no longer a worry to pursue a larger goal in life. 

Choices, Choices, Choices

Imagine if your sales strategy is to talk only bad things about your rivals and channel your entire advertisement budget to condemn their products and services; do you think it can help you boost sales? What if you don’t think you have done enough, can you go beyond?

Your next step may be, you soften it a bit by adding cash prize contests to hit the soft spots of potential customers, and later invite an international superstar to sing, dance and gallop your brand out. 

After a while, when you notice your brand's response is only lukewarm, you harden your tactics and include aggressiveness, this time sending some hooligans to create havoc at your rival's marketing events, and tear down their banners, splash red paints on their advertising vehicles, and beat up their supporters. “No problem,” you said, since you have the cops in your pocket. 

Pathetic.

You might think the above despicable actions are some fictitious and exaggerated illustrations in a Hollywood movie and restricted to only underworld organizations that control brothels, massage parlors or nightclubs; you won’t think it would ever happen in normal life, right? And if someone uses that strategy in business, you might think, he would most probably end up facing a fiery lawsuit, or behind bars.

But these are exactly the common scenarios happening now in Malaysia, especially with the General Elections around the corner. Even in a civilized society, the barbaric approaches in the political arena may not be necessarily worse than the less civilized. And the dire consequences may not necessarily occur to them, even when they’re evidently against the law.

My political view is quite simple. You need to have a choice to deter political hegemony. When a country spends too long a time controlled by a political party or a dictator, any tactic used can become very dirty. Normal commercial practices might not be applied anymore. Yes, you can have the Antitrust Law to promote market competition; but in politics, tyranny cannot be revoked.

If we appreciate market competition in a fairground, we should value the same for the political playground. If you have choices, the invisible hand of economics will steer the market so you’ll get better products according to your preference. Market competition promotes improvement. So, a mature country has to encourage alternation in political parties, and has a healthy rotation of those in power to maximize their people’s rights.

If we have no choice, we’re left with only one destination. Regardless of the light in the beginning, it leads to calamity in the end.  

Lead by Example

After I read a column in our local tabloid, The Sun, I decided to write a complaint letter to the CEO that the columnist had mentioned, which he said is also his close friend. This is because, he quoted, both of them praised Amazon’s high quality on customer service.

I half expected I would get any reply from this CEO from a leading online recruitment company in this region, when I know usually one’s high approval on something might not necessary apply to his own organization, especially when we already have some awful experience dealing with them, which further leaves me with no illusion.  

Lead by example? Talk the walk or walk the talk?

This, is how the corresponding letter looks like:

DISSATISFACTION OVER SERVICES PROVIDED BY X COMPANY

FingerTec Worldwide has been X’s client for many years and until now, we are still engaging with your services to recruit suitable personnel for our business. Deemed as one of the leading Internet Recruitment websites in the Asia-Pacific with 11 millions jobseekers available, it is in my opinion that X does not reach my expectations. Please let me elaborate on that point.

The Company has been looking for R&D personnel candidates for more than a year without many applicants or much success. The scarce candidates who applied for the positions were not reliable candidates and most of them failed to turn up even though the interviews had been agreed and scheduled beforehand. The problem is, we are not looking for high-level skillful employee to fulfill our requirements; we do welcome fresh graduates. Nevertheless, even though this is a simple requirement, X fails to provide us quality candidates for consideration.

I do understand that X does not guarantee suitable applicants, but X’s ignorance to the fact that your services provided yield negative results even after a long period of time is appalling. As a responsible company, you should be concerned with this trend and have the courtesy to put in more effort to ensure success. Unfortunately this effort is in vain when it comes to X.

We are your paying customers and we pay to get your services. The resources that we have spent should result in the services we requested. This is a simple economical concept understood by even the simplest layman. If your services fail to fulfill our requirements, you shouldn’t accept future orders or at least provide us some form of compensation to remedy our losses. I look forward to getting a reply from X regarding this matter, and will appreciate your prompt cooperation in dealing with this issue.

"My mom asked me to walk a straight line"

I recalled a very minor incident that happened two years ago when a manager from this particular company called to demand payment on an “arrear” of less than USD50, which had been long overdue, according to him. My HR Manager argued that we paid cash in advance to get their services, so how could we still owe them money? And our system showed no such record. Even though this untraceable “debt” is due to their own mistake, they were steadfast and insisted we cleared the old “debt” in order for them to process our new ad placement. In short, the whole episode did not look the slightest like Amazon.  I wonder how this CEO said he valued Amazon’s service quality as high?

So, my complaint letter went down the drain without any reply, which is not unexpected.

That’s why I believe LinkedIn, Facebook and some other online platforms closing in from different angles to grab the online recruitment businesses in this region will not meet much resistance.