Commentary

Startup landscape in Singapore

Singaporean companies that have made it big on the international stage can be counted on the fingers of one hand: Capitaland, Singtel, Singapore Airlines (in part thanks to the nature of its business, to be fair), Singapore Technologies, DBS... it becomes difficult to think of more. Compared with the achievements of some other Asian economies that modernised post-WWII – think Japan, Korea, Taiwan – while ‘brand Singapore’ is well established globally, few of its home-grown companies have succeeded outside their home territory in any significant way. There are multiple reasons for this state of affairs, some historical, some cultural and others geographical. The first two will take many years to change, however the constraints imposed on companies’ efforts to expand overseas by Singapore’s geography and its effect on management’s mind-set can be addressed relatively easily. That’s where Market Intelligence comes in. As a small and compact market with relatively homogenous sets of consumers and B2B customers, Singapore is very well known territory to its home-grown market leaders. They know what their customers like, how much they are willing to pay for it and who they are competing with for those dollars. In other words, doing business in Singapore is second nature to these home-grown companies. Not so the rest of the world. Most overseas markets worth exploring (and there are many, with markets many times the size of Singapore’s) are more complex, harder to understand, more heavily competed, and above all just very different from Singapore. But help is at hand. Market Intelligence (MI) – especially end-to-end MI that makes use of multiple information sources supplemented by strategic analysis that prioritises options and produces strategic recommendations grounded in hard facts, is a highly cost-effective means of identifying overseas expansion opportunities and making rational decisions about global growth. Market Intelligence has two main building blocks, and companies venturing overseas or thinking of doing so need both. First, ongoing market monitoring, which tracks a company’s international business environment, including its existing and potential markets, competitors, regulations, disruptive technologies and so on. This keeps all the key decision makers informed on a frequent and regular basis, often via an automated system that selects the information that is most relevant to each stakeholder, with a special ‘feed’ for the CEO. And secondly, issue-driven projects, which look more in-depth at a particular strategic opportunity such as a possible acquisition, a new market entry or a competitive gap, or a threat, such as an unexpected competitor, a budding price war or a squeeze on supply chain margins. In GIA’s latest global market intelligence survey of 989 companies, 91% of companies in the Asia-Pacific region said they had benefited from Market Intelligence, and 83% planned to spend more on Market Intelligence in the next two years. But adopting Market Intelligence and making it work for the company is something that has to come from the very top. The companies that benefit most from Market Intelligence have the function reporting directly to the CEO or at most one layer removed. Those companies that use Market Intelligence less successfully have up to four layers between the MI head and the top boss. Global success stories which relied on Market Intelligence to assist their meteoric rise during the 1980s and 1990s, and still rely on it heavily today, include Motorola, Shell and GM. Maybe one day that list will be joined by a Singaporean brand name – if so it will be one with a visionary CEO. Pete Read, Senior Vice President at Global Intelligence Alliance

The speed of change in business has accelerated tremendously over the last decade.

In its latest annual analysis of the fastest-growing firms in Singapore, credit and business-information bureau DP Information Group found that 217 companies here managed to turn in net profit and achieve at least 10 per cent turnover growth each year over the last three years.

Most should know that no one is allowed to bring a camera phone to a Singapore Army camp. It just happens that I am in the midst of my reservist, and without my time sapping iPhone by my side, we did the next best thing. We talked.

Technology offers employers, recruiters and hiring managers powerful new recruitment tools, but the pace of change can be an obstacle and face-to-face methods need to remain central to the process. Many organisations rushed to incorporate social media in their recruitment process, even if they were not sure how to put their new tools to effective use. We’ve seen countless cases of organisations rushing into the online networking space before developing a proper strategy or thinking about what they want to achieve. With the rise in popularity of Web 2.0 tools and technologies like Facebook, wikis and blogs, all the talk has been about how these online spaces could help firms find those elusive passive candidates, and many organisations - recruiters included - rushed to establish an online presence. Here was a medium that provided free access to thousands of potential candidates. But without thinking ahead, the increasing use of these mediums means employers no longer totally own their brand. We have to accept that allowing employees to blog and discuss matters on social forums isn’t without its risks and employees must remember that they are representing the company. This is where a clear strategy and policy around what employees can and cannot do comes into play. There is more to consider than simply broadening your search base. As we all know, it’s quality not quantity that matters. If companies want to be active in online communities, their image and reputation have to be carefully managed and monitored, and they need to act quickly to address any issues because they can become widespread very quickly and have a significant impact on candidate attraction. That’s not to say we should steer away from using social media. Technology has an important part to play in the recruitment process. With many candidates now being much more strategic in their approach to online networking, taking advantage of the sites linked to career-related groups and forums is a sensible move. But this form of networking must not be done at the expense of face-to-face methods, which remain central to the recruitment process. We need to look at it as just one of the attraction tools that we can use. Taking the time to get to know someone is still crucial in identifying the right role for them and picking up the phone to candidates or meeting them in person just can’t be substituted. Above all, technology and social media must be used to add value to the recruitment process. Used at the right time and in the right way, it’s a highly effective way of communicating. Used exclusively, at the expense of speaking to people, it becomes counterproductive. Nobody uses only one method of communication or interaction – it’s about using the right method at the right time in the right way. For any organisation considering incorporating social media into the recruitment process, we would advise them to:  

I never took kindly to the idea of respecting my elders and betters. There is a fallacy in that smug paternalistic expression – because your elders are not necessary better than you. As it happens, I have immense respect for a number of people from an earlier generation, because they have seen and experienced more than I have, and learnt from their experiences. It is not age that makes the difference, though, because many of their contemporaries remain as ignorant now as they were then, despite all their extra experience.

Virtually every activity within an organization in Singapore involves business content. The majority of operational activities involve creating, capturing, collaborating around, reviewing, reporting, publishing, and preserving that content. The product of these activities are essentially business records, which in turn need to be classified, have appropriate retention policies applied, and tracked throughout their lifecycle.

Many bosses find themselves in leadership positions without ever having consciously made the choice to become a leader, let alone a great leader.

The first step in developing any workable sales strategy in Singapore or any part of the world is to study the process of making a sale.

When I first started working as a copywriter in Singapore in 1996, I was asked by my boss, “Since you are the only one with a marketing degree in this agency, I want you to tell me how we can grow our client base. How much time do you need to come up with a plan?” I answered my boss confidently, “I can tell you right now.” He looked at me and scowled (he does that a lot), “Oh really?” And I told him of my most brilliant plan to boost our sales, “Boss, we should advertise! None of our competitors are advertising. Let’s be the first one to do that. It will give us a tremendous first mover advantage.” The torrent of swear words that came hurtling at me after that was like a mighty wave of tsunami crashing down on poor me. I will skip the unprintable parts and tell you the gist of it. “We can’t advertise, you idiot! Clients won’t read your advertisements. The only people who will read are competitors!” What Do You Mean Nobody Reads Advertisements? We have no problem recommending TV commercials that cost $200,000 each to produce (and that’s a lot of money in 1996), and we don’t believe in advertising? What gives? If nobody reads advertisements, why are we telling clients to spend tons of money to produce advertisements and then ten times that amount to buy media space? Isn’t advertising the way great brands become great brands? I never got my answer from that boss of mine. A year later I left the agency. I applied for copywriting positions in company after company and I always get asked this question without fail, “How many awards have you won?” What does it matter if I win awards or not? I finally found a ‘mini-conglomerate’ that didn’t care if I have won any creative awards as long as I can produce ads that sell. Within 6 months I became head of marketing communications. But it still did not answer my burning question: How come advertising agencies don’t advertise? Not A Very Honest Profession, It Seems Took me a long but I finally figured it out thanks to this brilliant book called The Rise Of PR And The Fall Of Advertising by Al Ries and Laura Ries. Advertising agencies don’t advertise because that is not the way brands are built. Advertisements are what you say about yourself and what you say about yourself has zero credibility. In fact, I saw one Gallup Honesty Survey that asked the American public to rank what an honest profession is and nurses ended up at the top with a 79% rating. Right at the bottom, with a 9% rating are car salesmen. The second most dishonest profession is advertising practitioners with a 10% rating. In fact, lawyers and politicians are ranked higher in the honesty rating, at 18% and 20% respectively. In America, where people don’t think too highly of lawyers or politicians, they are ranked as more honest than advertising people! So, if people perceive advertising to be a dishonest profession, what are the chances that they will believe what they see in an advertisement? In fact, ask yourself this: When was the last time you actually read an advertisement? And I am not talking about your competitors’ ads. When? Brands Are Built With PR But Maintained With Advertising PR is hard to get. PR is hard to manage. PR is slow. PR is frustrating. PR is hard to control – one of the most common complaints I have heard is that you tell a journalist one thing and he/she will write something else. But PR has one thing that advertising doesn’t have – credibility. So, you have no choice but to rely on PR especially when you are small. But eventually, you will run out of PR ideas. All brands do. That is when you kick in the advertising to maintain the brand. Hopefully, the brand would have been established by then. The simple answer to the question of why ad agencies don’t (or rarely) advertise is that advertising is not the way to build an advertising agency brand. PR is. So, how do ad agencies get publicity? By winning awards! And all these creative awards are not necessarily indicative of the advertisements’ effectiveness in building the brand or in boosting sales. But they look impressive. When an ad wins an award, a lot of publicity is given to the ad and by extension, the ad agency that created it. This is what builds the brand. I am not saying that advertising is not important. It is. But its role is one of maintaining the brand, not building the brand. And if advertising is the way to build brands, how come even top ad agencies hire PR firms? When I met the Asia-Pacific chairman of a top UK agency at a lunch that was arranged by a friend, who is a PR consultant, I asked the chairman of this ad agency how he knew my friend and he told me, “Oh, they are our PR firm.” Then I asked him, “Why does an ad agency, especially one as successful as yours, need a PR agency?” The chairman looked at me and smiled before he answered, “I know what you are driving at, Jacky. I have been warned by your friend. And yes, I have read the same Al Ries book! Let’s just say that we all need a little bit of PR help every now and then and leave it at that shall we? Let’s enjoy lunch instead.” There you have it. Jacky Tai is a Principal Consultant of StrategiCom. Jacky works with a crack team of talented consultants and researchers to help B2B companies across various industries gain an unfair advantage over competitors by effectively differentiating, dramatising and communicating the brand. Jacky is the author of highly-acclaimed branding books – Transforming Your Business Into A Brand (2007) and Killer Differentiators (2008) and B2B: 10 Rules To Transform Your Business Into A Brand. He can be reached at [email protected].  

Work-Life balance.

As a result of globalisation, the workforce has become increasingly diverse with respect to national and cultural origins. Technology has been the great enabler for this third wave of globalisation. It has enabled organisations to conduct business anywhere and to expand operations beyond their national borders for both customers and employees.

Managing a team of high performers requires an innovative and detailed HR and leadership approach involving an effective talent attraction and recruitment process, ongoing development plans, motivating rewards and recognition programs, and a proactive retention strategy. According to respondents of Randstad’s World of Work Report, the main reasons for a planned job change were for better opportunities for growth and advancement (39%) and salary and remuneration (21%). As the Singtel Singapore Grand Prix roars into town, Randstad illustrates how managers can take a leaf out of the Formula One book to manage a high performance team for their businesses.

I often hear people saying that Linkedin is useless and that, except opening an account and filling up profile for online resumes, they generally don't use it. In fact Linkedin is the world’s largest social network for professionals, there are over 500,000 linkedin users in Singapore itself.

The impact of social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube and many more has been so strong that companies have taken notice of the apparent benefits and are jumping onto the bandwagon in droves. Gone are the days when marketers and advertisers ‘blast’ their messaging with little regard to the target audience’s real-time opinion and input.