idealism

My New Challenge

This is my first week here at my dad’s company in KL, and I’m already foreseeing countless of practices and systems that need changed.

First of all, the accounting system is beyond obsolete. The old SQL-based system simply cannot handle the growing diversification of products sold by the company, hence creating inventory imbalances. Also, the growing size of business also meant growing tediousness of manual processes. The sales and administrative executives have been spending too much time with double inputs of data and thus have not been adding value to the business. I suggested changing to SAP a year ago and they are in the finalizing stage of setting up the new system. Hopefully this new system will help reduce unnecesary work and put the sales team back on focusing on marketing the products.

This brings the next observation. I think the company needs a minor corporate culture adjustment. As most Asian companies, most of the decision makings, no matter how trivial, rely heavily on the GM. With a growing business, this will become an overload for the poor guy. There have been incidents when issues requiring immediate actions get neglected and damanges were done. What we need is some autonomy in some of the areas. I will need to convince and influence the GM and his executive to practice such. Let the admin do the admin decisions. Let the accountant make the call and simply report to the GM what has been done.

Last but not least, no matter how much valuable data we have accumulated on the business and market over the past years, even if manually recorded, most of the details have not been put into valuable use. From my years of painful experience at the big corporations, I have learnt the value of historical data to tell the future (somewhat). Patterns can be calculated and most of the history, under similar internal and external factors, can happen again. That is the predictability of the business world, and can help bloom new ideas to accelerate growth.

Enough for business talks. My job for today is to figure out sales trend vs. prior year and understand the connection to the growing expenses. I have only 2 more hour before I call it a day (I have made it a point not to go beyond my productive hours).

Next Steps…

So my last day with P&G (oops!) was on Friday, and I’ve been clearing some pending domestic items (e.g. checking out HDB HUB, close deal with car dealer, etc) for the past few days. It feels weird not being in the office during workdays. This shows I have been cooping myself in the comfort of the enclosed workplace for too long. I should be feeling free…

So what’s next? Not that I do not know what to expect. I already have everything planned. From tomorrow for next 5 days, I’d be taking a break in Bangkok. There’d be lotsa food and shopping along with visiting my in-laws. Frankly, I can’t wait. I’ve always enjoyed my stay in Bangkok in the last few years.

When I return next week, I’d be packing a bit for 2 weeks stay in KL. Yes, I’d be staying 2 weeks in a go and fly back Singapore for weekends twice a month. Who knows? I might grow to like it there again like I did 5 years ago.

So the plan for my dad’s company? Simple. Dad plans to sell the company when he retires next year. I will have to prove that I can bring the company back in shape to keep it. That’s the first step. The 2nd step is to rebuild the company to such that I can run it remotely from Singapore (via e-mail, netmeeting etc.). It’d be revolutionary for a small company like this, but not impossible. Then the third step will be to venture for businesses other than just processed coconut products. Still thinking about this one, so wish me luck!