New Year, Renewed Excitements

(Note: This is my keynote speech for the Company’s Annual Dinner on 2^nd January, 2010)

2009 is a bittersweet year for many. Just as the outbreak of H1N1 sent shocks to the human race all over the world, the economics turmoil hit, wounding many nations and businesses.

Even though we feel the effects of the merciless disasters, FingerTec had no time to grieve; we continue marching according to the planned activities. New products, R2i, i-Kadex, DigiPay, TA100T are launched this year, and Smart Keylock 8800, FaceID and TCMS Web Version are due to be released just around the corner.

On top of that we have some new products in our pipeline for 2010 too. But all in all, with the growing maturity of all the technologies from the hardware to the software, it sparks a new direction, a new diversification to our present business model.

It is a new business model based on Cloud Computing Technology, along with the debut of TCMS V2 Web version in 2010, and the built-in Web Server technology in our terminals.

I agree that there is no guarantee for success in any new business venture, but the mere idea of it has renewed my excitement. It is worth a try, a very serious try.

Our sales team should renew their excitements too this year with a new mission burdened on their shoulders. The mission is to guide the distributors through and through by using the new FingerTec Distributor Business Guidebook as the “Going In” strategy, besides the much-awaited new products led by face recognition technology and Cloud Computing Technology.

And in 2010, in conjunction with the 10^th Anniversary celebration of FingerTec, I proudly present to you the 10^th Anniversary Celebration logo, which bores a spirited tagline: A Milestone For The Next Leap. It marks our passed glories as a profound milestone, reminding us to be prepared for greater challenges in the next leap. Things without challenge lack excitements, don’t you agree?

In this New Year, with the renewal of our excitements, I also urge you to revisit our company’s motto, Think and Reinventing. Indeed, that’s the very fundamental principle that I want to stay permanent with us without a slightest change. On the contrary, it could be further enhanced.

I quote a few paragraphs from my previous comprehension article for this motto I wrote a few years back as a punch line to refresh your mind.

Think & Reinventing

The more you can think, the more valuable you are. Especially when we are now living in the Information Age. Information Age generates myriad of data everyday, data would turn into garbage if we skip the thinking process. Knowledge would be derived from data if we add thinking substance into it; and wisdom could further be derived from knowledge if more thinking process and analysis are involved.

I like this proverb that goes "Nothing can't be achieved, only when it's beyond your imagination." In fact, any good execution should be the result of good thinking and comprehension.

Thinking will lead to improvement in your daily work; improvement will lead to reinvention of jobs, of products, of services, of administration, of marketing and of everything.

Reinvention spirit should stay in our blood to give us more boosts and push everyday, to continually find out what can be done to improve our life, our work and our environment. Once identified, find a way, make a change, see the result, review the performance, and repeat the process all over again. I value creativity, but I value reinvention more.

Many Small Steps; eventually would lead us to a Big Leap.

I wish you all the best in the coming new year.

by Teh Hon Seng, CEO, FingerTec HQ

FingerTec Distributor Business Guidebook

The whole company just came back from an all expenses paid trip to Shanghai. After a wind down, I am planning to spend most of my time in this last month of 2009 to write FingerTec Distributor Business Guidebook.

Company trip to Shanghai

What is a brand good for if it is just a logo affixed on a product? I always ponder about this, and I would not hesitate to do more for FingerTec. The Guidebook is in fact a round up of practical branding efforts we have done all these years and to extend it in an organized way for an easier adoption by our distributors. The main objectives are to help them increase sales, to improve cash flow and to reduce support costs in a more efficient way, I must say.

The Enlightenment

The idea had dawned on me on the last day I wrapped up my India trip, on the way to Mumbai Chhatrapati Shivaji International Airport. I saw our effortless methods in strengthening Malaysia’s market and our global strategies in penetrating the international market can be combined and fine-tuned to further benefit our worldwide distributors, besides using our plentiful readily available branding materials.

The Buddha sat under the Bodhi Tree for 49 days to find his Enlightenment, but he spent the rest of his life teaching the theory of Karma, which spawn from the Enlightenment. I foresaw we would face a similar challenge. It is not merely the writing of the Guidebook, but if there is a gap between a distributor’s daily operation and the Guidebook, how should we convince the distributors to change their business conducts that they had accustomed to, even if they agreed to do it the FingerTec way.

Buddha and the Enlightenment

Patching up the flaws

I always detect flaws in some of our partners’ FingerTec business operations that deter their growths. When I was invited to give a talk, I would share my view (of course, a broad one without too much details) with them on how to tap on FingerTec resources for better business expansion, but it’s normally ended up in futile because old operation habits diehard. This time, a detailed Guidebook with follow-up monitoring system may yield a more constructive result.

Our first 5-year plan started in 2001 was more focused on technological research and development, which laid a strong groundwork for FingerTec products to soar. The second 5-year plan with a global marketing strategy was to spread our wings to as many countries as possible in the world. For this, I summed it up as a “Going Out” strategy, having our products currently presence in over 100 countries.

From Going-Out to Going-In

From Going-Out to Going-In

I had made up my mind long ago that the next 5-year plan should be a continuation of “Going Out”, which naturally succeeded by “Going In” strategy. But this strategy is bothering me every now and then, because it seems to me that we need to have a string of different sub-action plans in order to deal with different local partners, or to set up operation offices abroad to ensure the success of the plan. And I also realized that if we followed this costly conventional path, we will eventually loss in a maze of disorientation in our future plan.

For 2010, also the 10^th Anniversary of FingerTec, this is the next 5-year milestone I set for FingerTec, to unite the Diaspora FingerTec partners around the world and to unleash FingerTec branding power through emphasizing the uniformity of strategy that extended from practical branding to business operation.

by Teh Hon Seng, CEO, FingerTec HQ